Friday, February 4, 2011

food miles and costs

We are stuck in snowzilla, snowmageddon, snowpocalypse, whatever you want to call it...we're buried under almost a foot of snow. And more is falling. Our fridge was well stocked on Monday before the snow started falling, but this morning we realized we're out of milk, really low on butter, eggs and peanut butter. This morning we made the decision to go to the nearest store, located off of a snow route instead of going to a specialty, local store further away on more treacherous roads. This means we've effectively broken our diet of locally sourced dairy.

It's a bummer, but at least we have food and a warm house. We're sticking to the no meat for the duration of the experiment, only 3 more days. I have to admit I would love to have a nice beef stew or homemade chicken noodle soup in this cold, cold weather. I came across this interesting study on food miles. Admittedly, I have not made it all the way through the article but it was of some comfort to read that a diet of reduced red meat and dairy generates less greenhouse gases than buying all locally sourced foods.

Throughout this experiment we've found ourselves shopping at local (or regional) grocery stores as opposed to big-box, mega stores (with the exception of today's shopping trip). I've noticed we tend to make more expensive impulse purchases at big-box stores than at smaller grocery stores. I'm sure this is how 'they' like it, but our budget doesn't agree. I plan on doing some calculations at the end of our experiment to tally up just how much we've spent and compare it to our average non-local, non-veggie expenditures.

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