No Local

Why don't people eat local then?
The main two reasons I hear against eating local are cost and convienience. Folks seem to think eating local means buying gourmet versions of everyday products at high prices. To that I say Onions! $0.90c a kilo. Lets face it living is expensive full stop but eating local saves you money. Buying unprocessed food in it's raw state from the grower in season is always going to be cheaper than it's processed equivalent. Even processed food can be cheaper if you make it. You might think your 0.99c packet of pasta from Indonesia is a bargain but if I told you you could make the same quantity using local ingredients for 0.30c would you still think buying local was expensive?
	OK you say, who has the time these days to make pasta or the time to hunt out local growers? I say Onions again! - 20kgs of Onions - purchased in 5 minutes flat once a year. Much more efficient than a weekly traipse around the shops to buy 5 onions. This isn't scientific but I think the average family would spend a couple of full 40 hour weeks a year grocery shopping. That's a lot of time that you could be spending tending a garden or cooking. Something that most people find more enjoyable than shopping.
At it's most fundamental eating local means thinking about what you want to eat and organising your time around getting it or making it. Rather than thinking "I have to do the grocery shopping" and buying whatever's in the specials bin by the front door of the store. I know what I'd rather do and believe me I spend a lot less time doing it. Spending time thinking about what you feel like eating is great!
	Your body tells you to eat seasonally if you listen to it. I don't sit down in the middle of winter and think wow I feel like eating crumbed prawns from Thailand with a light summer salad. If you spend time thinking about what you eat, then before you know it you'll be eating with the seasons, which invariably leads to eating a lot more local food. Eating local shouldn't be some artificial dogma driven exercise - if it is you'll make hard work of it and you'll be back to year round chicken breasts and fettucine in no time.
And I'm not alone in my views. If you haven't noticed a whole new vocabularly has sprung up around our desire to eat local. You'll hear folks getting exercised over Food Miles, Carbon Footprints and calling themselves "Locavores". Or you may have heard of the 100 Mile Diet and Barbara Kingsolver and her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. And if you've managed to read this far then you've passed the test and go on to the next round where there will be less opinionated spleen venting and more useful info on how to eat local ...