Perspective: Vicki Robin on the 10-Mile Diet
By WorldLink Staff | December 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment
The story of our food comes alive when we eat closer to the source. Author Vicki Robin shares her experience of eating food grown within 10 miles of her home on Whidbey Island, Washington.
What inspired you to undertake the 10-mile diet project?
Vicki Robin: I lived with the Ecological Footprint graphs (what we have and what we spend as a human community on a finite planet) and knew we were in overshoot, far out of balance. I knew we’d shot past 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere with no brakes on the runaway climate train. When I learned the data about Peak Oil/Gas/Coal/Uranium/You-name-it and paired that with Climate Change, the picture was even starker.
For me, relocalization – revitalizing regional economies and ways of life – became the one sane choice.
Working locally on Whidbey Island with the Transition model brought another stark fact in view. Even here, a semi-rural community, we cannot feed ourselves for even a few weeks on what we produce. As author of Your Money or Your Life, I’d challenged American’s relationship with money and stuff – but our food addiction was “off the table” so to speak . . . because my own hand was in the cookie jar. I’d been a dieting, binging, weight-obsessed American woman for 6+ decades – and considered it none of anybody’s business.
But when I see the truth of something, I want to test whether I can actually live it. Sustainability as an extreme sport. So you can see, I’m a perfect subject for a 10-mile diet hyper-local eating experiment – I had no axe to grind about dietary correctness. I was curious and I was convinced that I was testing a limit we were all facing – unaware.
In September 2010, I took up the challenge. For a month. With relish (local of course).
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