100 mile hiking diet.

Has anyone considered the 100 mile diet, where you try to only eat food produced and processed and packaged all within 100 miles of where you live, with of course the least amount of processing and packaging? Could it still work while hiking?

I understand that hiking is only a small part of our total calories, and impact, but I like to think it is one of the best opportunities I have to practice living well.

I think it could work here, in New Brunswick, where I hike.

My main staples are stuff like oats, lentils, skim milk powder, honey, raisins, currants, dried veggies. Of that, the honey is local for sure. Not sure about the other stuff. Probably not. Probably could be though, if I looked into it. I might have to switch from lentils to split peas, which would be an easy switch. Also maybe local organic oats and stuff rather than quacker oats, but it doesn't cost that much more.

From what I have read however, the transportation doesn't take as much energy as alot of other stuff, like fertilizers, conversion of plants to meat, and over processing and over packaging. I think we should look to local alternatives, but the other stuff is more important. We have McCain foods here for example, but I don't think frozen pizzas are the answer.

I would like to know what local foods, not overprocessed,
would be good for hiking. Anyone else considered such things?

Maybe I've been smoking too much pot barley lately.

Not really, but now that you mention it, could be enlightening.
At first thought, I'd be eating a lot of beef and cotton.
There is a 'health' food market we shop regularly that gets much of its stock locally, which is a huge list. The probem when hiking long distances is locating such places. Where I camped last weekend, the local towns were tiny and everything was trucked in. No 'organic' products anywhere, that caught my eye.

could add a whole new meaning to 'cotton kills'. lol

I haven't applied this concept to my hiking diet, yet, but I try to apply it as much as I can to my daily diet. It is a good goal to shoot for, but I am not much for 100% purity on these matters - that's why I'm not a real vegetarian, even though I am about 95% of the way there.

Come to think of it, I use the 95% rule in many aspects of my life. F'rinstance, I have always found that, if I can meet 95% of the stated objectives of my job (as formulated by my employer) and the 95% I do includes all the most important stuff, my boss is usually delighted with my work performance. And if my house is 95% clean, I'm pretty happy with that.

Now, if I could just get back 95% of my hair, that would be perfect!

Interesting idea and would be a challenge to apply down here as most of the produce in supermarkets comes from all over the continent. Meats can come from anywhere, fruit and vegetables from as far away as north Western Australia (google "Ord River Irrigation Scheme").

Don't think you would have much hope applying this to when you are on the trail as you can be a long way from anything down here. And small towns just don't have the resources to provide the range of goods that most of us would be use to.

Day-to-day it could be done for some things in the Sydney basin. I recently discovered a local Asian grocery store buys vegetables from market gardens in our region of Sydney and gets multiple deliveries a day from them. There was a local kill butcher (meaning he slaughtered and butchered) about 10km away, don't know if he is still there though.

I have to admit never having thought of this before and it has been an enjoyable mental exercise to ponder over. Looks to me to be a "Act Local, Think Global" idea, which is good.

Cheers,
Michael.

Hey, you can go a long way on oatmeal and moose jerky