hormones and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and that animals be given access to the outdoors. By contrast, the Food and Drug Administration vaguely describes natu- ral as, “Nothing artificial or synthetic has been included in, or has been add- ed to a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.” With the exception of meat, it is up to the manufacturer to define what natural means. (In 2009, the USDA defined “naturally raised” meat as, “… raised entirely without growth promoters, antibiotics, and never been fed animal byproducts.” It says nothing about GMOs or humane animal treat- ment.)


Organic advocates


point out that a genetically modified animal could be fed genetically modified feed and confined to a nar- row pen and still be billed as natural. A loaf of natural bread could be made with grains repeatedly sprayed with pesticides and man- made fertilizer. “Natural refers to the end product,” explains the Organic Trade Association. “It does not provide any information about how the prod- uct was produced.”


What about buying local? Rodale


argues that, while focusing on local is great for reducing farm-to-plate miles, if it isn’t organic, it isn’t necessarily addressing the larger issue of pesticide and antibiotic use.


Noting that more than 4 billion pounds of pesticides are used annu- ally in the United States, she points to studies from the National Institutes of Health and the Mount Sinai Medi- cal Center Children’s Environmen- tal Health Center that suggest links between agricultural antibiotic use and the rise in drug-resistant staph infections in humans, and between oganophosphate pesticides and cancer and diabetes. “It is fine to buy local, but if there are chemicals in it, then the farmer is contaminating your own community,” Rodale says. “That’s even worse.”


The Locavore Way In early 2005, Jennifer Maiser and a handful of friends in San Francisco de- cided to limit what they ate for a month to what was produced within 100 miles of home base. By August, 1,000 people had signed on at Maiser’s EatLocal Challenge.com. By 2007, “locavore” was the Word of the Year of the New Oxford American Dictionary. “It just snowballed,” recalls Maiser.


of The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget.


She chooses organic and local whenever possible, and if the food is on the Environmental Working Group’s dirty-dozen list of most pesticide- drenched food, she might even buy organic from afar. Yet, she is a Locavore at heart.


“It has an impact, on local econo- mies and small farmers, and from a cook’s point of view the food is just fresher,” she says. McWilliams, a vegan and


author of Just Food: Where Lo- cavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, agrees. But he takes issue with the notion that, because it ne- cessitates fewer transportation miles, eating local is a better choice for the environment. He notes that the ship-


ping of food constitutes just 9 to 11 percent of its “life-cycle assessment” (the toll it takes on the environment), while things like water use, fertil- izer application and harvest-


“I think it had a lot to do with changes in the organic movement. In the 1990s, if you were eating organic, you pretty much were eating food from a local farmer. But when the big companies came in and you could get organic produce grown in Mexico, it wasn’t the same anymore. We still wanted to know where our food was coming from.”


Professional dancer-turned-eth-


nobotanist Leda Meredith started a 250- mile challenge in 2007, in part to see if a time-crunched professional in wintery Brooklyn could achieve what Loca- vores in warmer climes had. At first, adjusting to the realities was rough. Local cooking oil was hard to find (she saved the rendered fat from her locally raised duck and used it to pop locally grown popcorn) and her one-bedroom apartment was not ideal for stockpil- ing canned produce (she keeps canned local tomatoes and dried wild mush- rooms under her bed).


“But, by year’s end, it had become my new normal,” says Meredith, author


ing techniques suck up far more. Is it really greener to buy local hothouse tomatoes if, according to McWilliams, they can require up to 10 times the energy? Is it really more sustainable to buy local rice from an arid state if aquifers were drained to grow it? Another issue concerns econo- mies of scale. For instance, a shipper sending a truck with 2,000 apples across 2,000 miles would consume the same amount of fuel per apple as a lo- cal farmer who takes a pickup 50 miles to sell 50 apples. “Local is not neces- sarily greener,” accounts McWilliams. So, what is? Eating less meat, he contends. And mounting studies back up his point. Most recently, a 2009 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nu- trition found that a carnivorous diet requires 2.9 times more water, 2.5 times more energy, 3 times more fer- tilizer and 1.4 times more pesticides than a vegetarian diet. “If I eat less meat or eat a vegan diet, I am automatically shrinking the


natural awakenings March 2011 15


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