Think globally, eat locally

When you're cooking dinner, you probably consider the tastiness of the meal, the healthiness of the ingredients, the calories, and the cost -- but do you consider the mileage?

The local food movement is all about eating closer to home. The philosophy is simple: Food that is shipped long distances isn't as fresh, and therefore isn't as flavorful or healthy. Such foods also have a bigger carbon footprint than those produced locally.

Each ingredient on a North American's plate typically travels 1,500 miles to get from field to table. To help reverse that trend, and to get more in tune with the local ecosystem, local food advocates -- or locavores -- look closer to home: often a 100-mile radius from where they live and eat.

The movement is also about community responsibility. Buying from local farmers and food producers supports local economies instead of corporations that run factory farms and long-haul shipping lines. Many shoppers also find big discounts at local farmers markets -- or save even more by eating homegrown veggies from backyard gardens.

And foodies know that the fresher the ingredients, the tastier the meal. Gourmet restaurants featuring local menus are cropping up all over.

Obviously, there are challenges and limitations to eating local produce. You're not likely to grow avocados in Alberta or produce maple syrup in Arizona. Some locavores make exceptions for region-specific foods, or to supplement limited midwinter diets. In the spirit of health and moral spending, they'll pick organic non-local foods if they can't buy local, family farm products over corporate, and local retailers over supermarket chains.

Whether you're a hippie, a foodie, or just a frugal shopper, making an effort to put more local products on your table can have a positive impact on your community, the environment, and your taste buds.

• 10 reasons to eat local food - from the environmental to the epicurean.
• Locavores - a group of Bay Area foodies and environmentalists who attempt to eat only foods produced within a 100-mile radius of San Francisco.
• Seeing red: Eating locally and debunking the red-blue divide - Barbara Kingsolver, author and avid gardener, recounts her family's efforts to eat only local food for a year.
• Local harvest - find local and organic foods close to home.

Directory categories: Local food, bioregionalism, environmental movements and philosophies, sustainable eating, sustainable development

Originally posted on The Spark, a daily blog where Yahoo! Directory editors highlight new and interesting content on the Web.