What Here Tastes Like

by: Matthew P. Moll

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For one year, Leda Meredith – dancer, botanist, author, Brooklyn dweller – adhered to a strict diet.  Not a diet to eliminate carbs or to indulge in the newest weight loss fad, but a diet that would sanctify her as an official  “locavore.”  Everything she ate must have been grown within 250 miles of her Park Slope home in Brooklyn.

Food security, environmental activism and farmer’s rights all motivated her new lifestyle, but she also adopted the locavore diet because, as she says, local food just tastes better and forced her to diversify her cooking.

“This was a chance to get creative in the kitchen and try new things,” Meredith said.

The diet required more planning and preparation than her previous nutritional regimen, also drawn from farmer’s markets and her own Brooklyn garden plot. The geographic restriction imposed by her new diet created unforeseen complications.

She ran into problems long before she picked her first parsnip.  Most noticeably, salt.

“Unfortunately, salt is not naturally produced anywhere within 250 miles,” Meredith said.

And, she adds: “I was not going to go a year without cooking with salt.”

She also made other exceptions, for olive oil and coffee, for example.

However, she did choose to refrain from other indulgences, such as satisfying her sweet tooth: sugar is not grown anywhere near Brooklyn. Leda decided to treat herself to products containing sugar only if she received them as an unsolicited gift.

“One of the first things I am asked is what I do about chocolate,” said Meredith who received several baskets of the nonlocal dessert during Christmas. “It was as if people thought it was a major food group I could not live without.”

“I couldn’t let it go to waste.”

She also found ways to can or preserve food she could not live without. Her well-stocked larder kept her fed during months where certain foods are not available locally.

When it was time to store her colony of canned and jarred goods, Leda became familiar with a problem most New Yorkers are quite familiar with. When the kitchen shelves were full, Leda needed to find space for her extra sustenance in a one bedroom apartment.

“I soon got over the idea of having food exclusively in the kitchen,” Meredith said. “I was storing food under my bed, on bookshelves, where ever I could find room. Any place was a good place.”

Since she began the 250-mile diet, Meredith has become a spokesperson for local food. She has met with groups that range from CSA members who are familiar with diets like hers to area festivals and street fair attendees who thought food is only found in supermarkets.

To the former group she is the “extreme sports” version of eating locally.  Many casually shop at farmers markets or have a CSA share, but don’t depend on local food for every meal.

While some engaged Meredith with questions about the financial feasibility of eating locally, others asked what impact eating locally has on the diet of immigrant populations.

Meredith did not deny that eating locally in New York might deprive some immigrants of enjoying food they grew up eating. On her blog she explained that certain plants such as mango trees, which grow freely in South America are not sustainable in the United States due to the climate and geographical differences of native plants.

She received complaints from some readers who argued that by advocating a local diet, she was asking people to give up their culture.

A commenter named Miram wrote:

“Sitting down together over home foods also keeps group memories sharp, and promotes group identity. It would be asking too much of human beings to leave so important a part of their past and identity as their ethnic cuisine behind…”

Meredith responded that by supporting a local diet, she was not explicitly suggesting that people abandon their cultural preferences.

“I was just basing my observation on science,” said Meredith teaches botany classes through New York Botanical Gardrens. “But on the topic of food you are not just dealing with questions of the environment you are dealing with people’s history and that can be a touchy subject.”

Meredith said the response to her diet and her subsequent talks have mostly been met with enthusiasm for local food. Often people who see her a second time inform her that they have recently joined a CSA or started shopping at farmers markets.

“The great thing about talking about local food is that you are encouraging people on what to do rather than what not to do,” Meredith said. “There is immediate payback for doing something good you get to eat something delicious.”

For more about Meredith you can visit her blog at http://ledameredith.net/wordpress. You can also find her book Botany, Ballet and Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes at Amazon.com