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<a href="http://www.gmagazine.com.au/blogs/julie#">G Challenge</a>

G Challenge

Think global, act local, right? Julie Grundy lives the challenge.

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New challenge: eat locally!

Map of Perth

Credit: 100MileDiet.org / Google Maps

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I'm really excited by this month's challenge: eating locally! I always enjoy the food challenges the most, it's an excuse to eat more.

This month we'll be trying to eat locally, keeping our food choices from within Australia. However, a G Magazine survey showed that like me, 40% of G readers already try to choose Australian food. So I think we should step it up a bit and try for the "100 mile" food range, which works out to 160 kilometres from home when we switch to metric measurements.

You can find out which places are within your range by visiting the 100 Mile Diet website and entering the name of where you live. I can see that my range includes the Swan Valley wine region, but doesn't extend down to Margaret River or up to Geraldton. So I might be without cheese and chocolate, and I'm pretty sure that cuts out crayfish and bananas for me.

My first step was to check out what food I already had in my cupboard that was sourced inside my range: not much! Bread, olive oil, red wine vineagar and nearly all of my fresh vegies were within my 160km. Milk and the meat in the freezer came from WA, but further south than my range. I'll allow that for now, but will try to do better during the month.

All of my condiments and little extras, like mustard, sun-dried tomatoes and spices, plus my pasta, were made in Australia but from imported ingredients. Unfortunately a lot of my pantry items were from overseas - tinned beans from Italy, rice from Thailand, just for example. I'll have to see what I can do about that.

What city or town do you live in, and what do you think you'll be able to find within your range?

Comments

Our new website might be of use for this challenge - people can use it to search for food within a certain vicinity. The site is available free, on a non-profit basis, at: http://www.localfoodmap.net/

Food growers can sign up and list their eggs, fruit, vegies, etc, which are displayed on the map with the icon of their choice.

Another useful feature of our site is that customers can "subscribe" to a particular food grower, to receive emails when fruit is in season ready for picking, for example, or when a sheep has been slaughtered.

Sadly at this stage, most outlets listed are in Victoria, so if you wish to see a demonstration of this working, you will have to use "Melbourne Victoria" as your locality. We look forward to seeing some producers from WA signing up! (or people entering details on their behalf...) Share your local food finds with other people!

Rosemary & Gordon Rouse
http://www.localfoodmap.net/

Hey, that looks really cool! Thanks for sharing it with us, I bet it comes in handy!