100 Mile Diet

The 100 Mile Diet:
A Year of Local Eating

First edition cover of Canadian release
Author	Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
Country	Canada
Subject	Diet (nutrition)
Genre	Non-fiction, memoir
Published	March 2007 (Random House)
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	272 pp.
ISBN
OCLC	74028846

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (or Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally) is a non-fiction book written by Canadian writers Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. In the book, the authors recount their experiences, including motivations and challenges, on restricting their diet, for one year, to include only foods grown within 100 miles of their residence. Beginning in March 2005, with little preparation the urban couple began only purchasing foods with ingredients they knew were all from within 100 miles. Finding little in grocery stores, they relied on farmers' markets and visits to local farms. Staples in their diet included seafood, chicken, root vegetable, berries, and corn. They lacked cooking oils, rice, and sugar. They preserved foods for use in the winter but ended with extra supplies.

The couple first wrote about the experience in articles for the online magazine The Tyee. The popularity of the articles led to a book deal. In the book, Smith and MacKinnon each write alternate chapters, 12 in total. The first chapter is written by MacKinnon and focuses on the first month of their experience. They write in the first person as a memoir that explores their own dietary experiences and personal feelings.

In the Canadian market, the book spent five weeks on Maclean's nonfiction bestseller list. The book spent 20 weeks on The Vancouver Sun's nonfiction bestseller list. The authors won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize from the British Columbia Booksellers Association for the best contribution to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia. The 100-mile diet concept, along with advocates of local food, were covered by media across North America. In 2009, Food Network Canada aired The 100 Mile Challenge, a television series co-created by MacKinnon and Smith and based on the book.

Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon's idea of local eating began while visiting their cabin in northern British Columbia in August 2004. Their food supplies were nearly exhausted so to feed their dinner guests they scrounged the surrounding land for food. Their dinner of Dolly Varden trout, wild mushrooms, dandelion leaves, apples, sour cherries, and rose hips, along with potatoes and garlic from the garden, so impressed the couple that once back home, in their Kitsilano apartment in Vancouver, they pursued the idea of eating only local food. They eventually decided to try a diet consisting of eating food, for one year, grown within 100 miles of their home. They began the diet symbolically on the first day of spring, March 21. Beginning in June, they wrote articles for The Tyee about their experience. The couple, both in their 30s, each had experience in writing: Smith as a freelance journalist who had taught non-fiction writing, and MacKinnon as the author of the award-winning historical non-fiction book Dead Man in Paradise and a past editor of Adbusters magazine.