100 Mile Diet
As I prepare for my vacation with Road Scholar to Maryland to work at the DC Central Kitchen preparing meals for the poor and working to build a global village for Heifer International, I’ve been asked to read a few books in advance. That alone has been a very educational and fun experience. Pick up the book “Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet” by Alisa Smith and J. B. Mackinnon for a quick, fun, educational read. It’s much more than about food. I found this section particularly interesting:
“My whole generation, I think, feels these tensions. No one I know seems able to settle in one calling or one place. It no longer seems believeable that there once were people who spent a lifetime working on a single illuminated manuscript. This is an era not of spiritual dedication but of spiritual shopping - of shopping, period. We have delayed or abandoned every form of commitment - from marriage to child-rearing-with the exception of debt. Home renovation is now timed to cycles as rapid as the solstices of high fashion, and we are encouraged to multitask while we drive. There is no "c’est la vie”. In all of this there is some freedom. We thrill at the promise of radical metamorphosis.
“Today Americans spend an average of fourty-eight minutes shopping each day, and seven on religious and spiritual activities. More than two-and-a-half hours watching television, and eight minutes volunteering for civic groups. A typical commute is twenty-five minutes a day - though Americans suffer through forty-seven hours of traffic jams each year- while 2. 8 million people endure extreme daily commutes of ninety minutes or more each way.
"Despite eating more than ever before, our culture may be the only one in history to value food so little. From the African scrublands to the Australian deserts, nomades who collected food daily and never stored it consideredd sharing food to be the ultimate form of wealth… By measures like these, we are nearly all poor.”
I am looking forward to experiencing the 100 Mile Diet one day while in Maryland and look forward to daily sharing this journey with you.
