Our Food Security Challenge

This is the first in a 5-part series of posts. Read on, or click below to read the rest in this series:
Post 1: The What and Why
Post 2: Planning and The First Two Weeks
Post 3: How Feeding Others Comes Back To Feed You
Post 4: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Post 5: The Parameters and How We Did

For the past several years, we have bought our food from local sources as much as possible. When we talk about buying food locally, one of the most common questions we get is about price. Many people we speak with believe that buying local means paying more.  Our short answer is always that buying local isn’t more expensive. But the real answer isn’t a short one.

 

In so many ways, we believe that buying local is cheaper.  But to understand that statement, you need to look at all of the variables. For example, buying packaged food creates waste. It costs money to do something about that waste, something we pay for in our municipal property taxes.

Food Security Challenge Local Apples Nova Scotia

An even bigger example is health. There is a big cost to not eating healthy. The lion’s share of our provincial budget goes to health care. These aren’t things many of us think about when planning weekly meals or grocery shopping, but they sure are when services get cut or taxes increase.

 

So for 2014, we’ve resolved to think a lot more about food. We’ll be sharing some of our thoughts, challenges, and discoveries through our blog and through our social media channels. Primarily, we’ll be looking at these issues through monthly challenges designed to question the way that we think about food in our home.

 

 

In January, we chose to eliminate meat from our diet for one month. Our love for local meat runs deep. We were often incorporating meat into at least two meals a day. January gave us a whole new food repertoire. We discovered delicious vegetarian meals, and felt a whole lot healthier by months end.

 

This month has been more of a challenge.  We have made February our Food Security Challenge Month.

 

This is the bulk of our food for the month of February $123 of it, at least. For an interesting comparison, check out this photo tour of what families around the world eat in a week: http://themetapicture.com/hungry-planet-what-the-world-eats/

This is the bulk of our food for the month of February $123 of it, at least. For an interesting comparison, check out this photo tour of what families around the world eat in a week: http://themetapicture.com/hungry-planet-what-the-world-eats/

 

Food security can mean a couple things. At the personal level, food security is having the means to keep yourself fed. Food is a basic human need, but one that many struggle to meet.

At a broader level, food security is the capacity for a group of people (a region, a province, a country) to keep its population fed. This needs to apply even in the face of a wide range of hypothetical disruptions of supply (extreme weather events, fuel shortages, etc.). In other words, how possible is it for a community to source food locally? The New Economics Foundation’s 2008 report, Nine Meals to Anarchy, looks at just how thin the line is between stocked and bare supermarket shelves, stating that given a major disruption in distribution, it would only take four days for shelves to be emptied.

 

Nova Scotia meat bacon ends

 

We’re looking at both definitions in our challenge.  We have set a $200 food budget, and we’re intent on eating healthy and sourcing locally whenever possible. For us, eating healthy means balanced meals and treating food as fuel that provides what the body needs to stay healthy and strong. We’re both training for running races, so we know pretty quickly when our bodies aren’t getting what they need.

 

Onions Nova Scotia Farmers Market

 

Buying local is an interesting thing to define. For us, we look at local in levels. If it is grown here (Nova Scotia, then the Maritime Provinces) we buy it from ‘here’. The bulk of our diet is made of local, seasonal food. Something grown in Nova Scotia is our preference, but we’re also happy to source food from nearby neighbors. We try to buy direct from the vendor when we can, but we also support local businesses like Petes. We aren’t protectionist. There are a few staples in our diet that are not produced locally. We treat these items as luxury items. For example, we often have smoothies in the morning. We use a mix of local ingredients (local milk and berries frozen from the summer) but we like to add a banana. Bananas don’t grow here so that’s an example of an import we’d buy. We feel like we have less of an excuse to buy apples from Fiji.

 

We’d like this series of posts to become a conversation, and we’d like to invite you to take part in the comment section or with us on Twitter (@drewmoorens & @gillianwesleyns) with the hashtag #foodsecurity.

This is the first in a 5-part series of posts. Read on, or click below to read the rest in this series:
Post 1: The What and Why
Post 2: Planning and The First Two Weeks
Post 3: How Feeding Others Comes Back To Feed You
Post 4: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Post 5: The Parameters and How We Did

– Drew

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The Local Traveler

Two travellers' tales of finding adventure on the East Coast. This blog is dedicated to the best parts of travel, and to discovering, celebrating and promoting things to do in our corner of the world, and sometimes beyond. We especially love craft beer, day trips, romantic escapes, local food & hidden gems. Join our community on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and share tips and photos of your favourite East Coast adventures.

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