An interview with Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon authors of The 100-Mile Diet (published as Plenty in Canada).

You've heard of living off the grid, but have you considered living without the industrial food system? Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon have done it and written a book about their experience. Their experience provides helpful information about stepping outside the global food system. They also talk about their journey and how it changed their lives. They discuss how to find out if the foods you eat contain genetically modified ingredients or if pesticides are used in their growth, how the 100-Mile Diet can reconnect you with your food, local farmers, the seasons, and much more.

• Hear about the politics of “redundant trade”: why is your local farmer selling his carrots 1000 miles away – and why are you buying carrots from across the country?
• Learn to identify locally-produced foods in your own supermarket.
• Get even more “green” and environmentally friendly by eating locally.
• Make informed choices between organic foods from hundreds of miles away and local produce or animal products.
• Get in synch with the seasons – and be healthier for it.
• Learn how to control food cravings by eating fresh, local foods.
• Face the time-crunch – how cooking can be “quality time” with family and friends, and save your sanity.
• Find the joy of a small garden – and save money and nutrients.
• Locate your own local food sources within 100 miles of where you live.
• Learn how to find out if your local restaurants are tapped in to local growers.
• Find out where to get raw dairy products, and how to handle the political controversy around them.

When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles—call it "the SUV diet." On the first day of spring, 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since then, James and Alisa have gotten up-close-and-personal with issues ranging from the family-farm crisis to the environmental value of organic pears shipped across the globe. They've reconsidered vegetarianism and sunk their hands into community gardening. They've eaten a lot of potatoes.

Alisa Smith is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Smith has a Master's degree in history and has taught magazine writing. James (J.B.) MacKinnon is the author of Dead Man in Paradise (Douglas & McIntyre), which won the 2006 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction. His work as a journalist has earned two national magazine awards, and he is a senior contributing editor to Explore Magazine.

Liz Lipski, PhD, CCN Is the host of the Access to Health Experts interview series. She holds a doctorate and is board certified in Clinical Nutrition, is the author of Digestive Wellness, Digestive Wellness for Children, and Leaky Gut Syndrome. She's the Director of Doctoral Studies at Hawthorn University, and the nutrition editor for Pilates Style Magazine. Dr. Lipski is the founder of several web-based health information sites including Innovative Healing and Access to Health Experts.