FAQs
What is a localvore?
Depends on who you ask. We think it's a person who tries to buy some of what they eat outside mainstream food production because they've recognized there are health, environmental, economic and animal cruelty issues associated with most Grocery Store Food. A localvore is not someone who only eats food grown 100 miles or less from where they live. Nor is a localvore a boring, rich, urban hippie-type.
Wait, why should I be a localvore?
There are three straightforward reasons:
1) Your health. If your food is local, it was probably grown + processed on a small scale and with organic standards (and you can always take a short road trip to visit the farm, etc and find out for sure). Your local produce was not soaked in chemical fertlilzers. Your local beef is not laced with growth hormones and antibiotics. This means it is better for you.
2) The environment. We do not need to have products trucked or flown in from thousands of miles away when the same foodstuffs can come from our very own region. Sure, there are some things we can't get in New England, but consider the mileage behind the stuff like cheese, meat and veggies, which we can get around here. Also, consider the byproducts of massive food processing plants and factory farms, which leach thousands of pounds of sick-animal excrement into the water supply.
3) The economy. Or more specifically, how you spend your money. Do you want to line the pockets of The Men in Monkey Suits who make up big food and don't care at all about you, or would you rather support a regular ole working person like yourself who you could actually have a face-to-face interaction with? By the way, big food is already getting plenty of your money, by the way of taxpayer funded subsidies.
I hear it's expensive to be a localvore. Is this true?
Sadly, it's expensive just to be alive, especially in Boston. What we're finding is that the higher prices we've been paying for good local food ($8/lb for ground beef, for example, or $3 dozen for eggs/$400 for a weekly share of fruits+veggies from a
CSA) is now becoming the reality for a lot of food coming out of the factory farms. We probably do spend a little more on some things, but we often buy in bulk (a $35 bag of potatoes that lasted through the winter) and we cook a lot from scratch. This is often cheaper than buying prepacked things, so it's kind of a wash.
How do I know this stuff is safe, just coming off of some kooky, backwoods farm?
We understand your concern, but it's just not like that. Local dairy farms (including raw milk dairy farms) are inspected and tested regularly by government officials, just like any other farm in the country. Any local meat that you, a consumer, can get your hands on has been slaughtered and packaged in a government approved slaughterhouse. If it's food and you're buying it in a shoppe or at a farmer's market, it's subject to the same rules and regulations as anything you could find in a Major Grocery Store.
Everyone eats food from a grocery store, and we're all fine. What's the problem?
Apart from us having the highest rates of heart disease, diabetes and being the fattest people on the planet, I guess that's true -- some people make it through unscathed. Sort of depends on how you define unscathed. Since the 1920s, scientists have been coming up with proof that preservatives, chemicals fertilizers and other artificial agents that make Big Food so big are actually quite bad for us (and our unborn children, ladies). Also, before the industrial revolution, this was the way people ate for, oh, several thousand years or so.
Where do I start? There's no way I can just become a localvore.
This is *the* most frequently asked questions. Start with one thing that's easy to commit to or important to you somehow. If one of the stores we've listed is nearby, go there and buy their milk and cheeses. Or join one of the CSAs and be a localvore every week for most of the year (it works out to about $20 per week). Or take your sweetheart to the farmer's market and have her pick out stuff for dinner, then take it home and make something together.
I want more information on all of this stuff. Where should I go?
There are a few fine titles on the topic: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (but anything really by him), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, Organic, Inc. by Samuel Fromartz and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Ellix Katz. We also recommend watching "Our Daily Bread," a documentary about European Big Food or anything Jamie Oliver's done on his show on the topic. You can search Youtube for this stuff. It will change your life.
