I spent a memorable year working at a macrobiotic bakery without ever seriously pondering becoming macrobiotic. It wasn't unlike being a vegetarian working at Sizzler.
Macrobiotics, for the uninitiated, is a complex method of eating simply. It involves a lot of eating grains and avoiding sugar, coffee and highly processed foods. People on a macrobiotic diet tend to avoid extreme foods, as there's a whole yin yang thing to it.
I'm sure someone will write in and tell me I'm explaining it wrong, but that's the gist of it as I recall. To be honest, I wasn't paying a lot of attention at the time. I was too busy scarfing fast food burgers and curly fries and washing them down with a couple of Jolt colas while my boss looked on in horror.
One aspect of the diet that struck a chord, and yet I still largely ignored, was the idea of eating locally grown food. This all came rushing back to me when I heard about "The 100-Mile Diet." The book, by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, recounts the year they decided to eat only food grown within a 100-mile radius of where they lived. Of course, they lived in Vancouver, surrounded by lush, rain-fueled plants. A quick glance at the 100 miles surrounding Las Vegas reveals the fertile farmlands of Death Valley, Laughlin and the Nevada Test Site. Glow-in-the-dark chuckwalla, anyone?
There are farms and local food to be found in our 100-mile radius, but certainly not enough to sustain the population. If everyone in Las Vegas was suddenly forced to go on the 100-mile diet, within a week we would have denuded the desert of every cactus, date palm and lizard that wasn't fast enough to dodge a starving buffet junkie. We'd all be trying to come up with recipes for creosote bushes and sand.
I suppose we could resort to cannibalism, but I don't think that's really what the authors of "The 100-Mile Diet" had in mind. Besides, I'm pretty sure that's morally wrong.
Barring life becoming a post-apocalyptic horror movie, it's unlikely a significant portion of the Las Vegas populace is going to switch over completely to the 100-mile diet.
Typical Las Vegans can't do research, unless you're talking about a system for beating the house on Pai Gow poker. Then, suddenly everyone is doing advanced calculus and whipping out the charts, spreadsheets and a BlackBerry patched into a NASA satellite.
But just because it would be a serious challenge here is no reason that you, an obviously intelligent and discerning reader, shouldn't try to add some aspects of the diet to your life.
A 100-mile diet would cut preservatives, chemicals and the ever-present corn syrup out of your life. Fresh food tastes better, as anyone who's eaten cafeteria green beans from a 50-gallon drum can tell you.
At the very least, you should eat consciously. Be aware of where your food comes from and the hard work and effort and fuel it takes to get that food to you. On the average, people eat food from 1,500 miles away, but due to the rich central California farmland, it's probably closer to 500 miles for Las Vegans.
Eating more local food and food bought directly from the producer will give you a greater connection to your land and community. People who feel that communal connection are less likely to do crazy things like, oh, I don't know, build condos at Spring Mountain Ranch or try to secure water rights from farmers so they can build the world's largest Slip 'N Slide.
F. Andrew Taylor is a Las Vegas freelance writer. His column appears twice monthly. Contact him at fandrewt@cox.net.
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