Local food

For the purposes of this post I have imported a news story I recently wrote as an assignment for a journalism class, and chased it with a piece of fresh, homegrown editorializing.

Local Governments Imply Local Food is Healthier but Lack Evidence
By Nathan H Bird

“Foods grown/produced and distributed locally are much healthier”, states a resolution endorsed by the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) during their recent annual convention in Vancouver. However, this claim does not appear to be based on any scientific evidence.

The resolution, entitled Barriers to Small Scale Food Production & Distribution, seeks in part to encourage the provincial government to “provide a public education component to recognize and support the distribution of local foods”.

The resolution's author, Cariboo Regional District director Roberta Faust, said that local food is “raised in a more natural way”, contains fewer “chemicals”, and that “the fresher you get food the more vitamin content” it has. But although she described the resolution as a “no brainer”, she was unable to cite any non-anecdotal evidence in support of her contention.

In fact, a 2010 review of the scientific literature by the Dietitians of Canada found that “there is no conclusive evidence to support the claim that locally grown foods are more nutritious than foods produced and imported from longer distances”.

The review, entitled The 100 Mile Diet: Is it Healthier and Safer for the Population?, suggests that local foods have much more nuanced nutritional consequences than Faust's resolution claims. For example, although it cited evidence that certain nutrients begin to decline in certain types of produce after they are harvested, it also noted that temperature and humidity play a key role in this process, and that local foods can “be exposed to room temperature/heat for longer periods” than non-local foods.

The review also stated that “more research is required” to determine whether the amount of nutrients lost in this fashion are sufficient to consider fresh produce more healthful; and it highlighted the fact that maintaining a local diet can make it difficult to follow Canada's Food Guide, which calls for moderation and variety.

When the review was brought to her attention, Faust said “I think our dietitians are just a bit behind the times.”

Barriers to Small Scale Food Production & Distribution was accepted, and won endorsement by the UBCM during their recent annual meeting despite apparently contradicting the conclusion of the Dietitians of Canada.

UBCM spokesperson Paul Taylor said that unless a resolution contains a particularly egregious claim they tend to “just let it roll.” This approach, Taylor said, saves the organization time and effort and “puts the onus on the parties developing the resolutions, because they undermine their own case if they make wobbly statements”.

Taylor also said that resolutions tend to be judged primarily on the basis of the actions they propose, rather than on their stated rationalizations. Because of this, he said, “I think most people would be willing to stand by [this] resolution” even in view of it's debatable claim.

In addition to the public education component, the resolution proposes that the “UBCM lobby the provincial government to encourage, support and enable small-scale food producers to provide foods locally without any unnecessary barriers”. It also cites the “more positive impact on the environment” local foods are widely believed to have, in addition to stating that they are much healthier.

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An interesting side note to this story is that I called some BC dietitians (numbers obtained from the Dietitians of Canada website) hoping to get a nice quote along the lines of: "of course local food isn't much healthier", or something like that. In fact, both of the dietitians I interviewed said that they thought local food was healthier; although, like Roberta Faust, neither of them could back up that assertion. One of the dietitians said that local food was "a lot more nutritious", and when I told her about the 2010 review mentioned above (here is a link to it) and asked her upon what she was basing this claim, she replied that it was her own "personal opinion". I thought that was amazing, considering this person's job description. It seems clear to me that whether or not local food is "a lot more nutritious" simply isn't a matter of opinion.

Unfortunately, it is not infrequently that I encounter those who apparently can't tell the difference between matters of opinion and matters of fact.

Roberta Faust, for example, struck me as a very sincere, impassioned woman who had worked hard on the wording of her resolution, worked hard to have it taken seriously, and was unabashedly proud of what she had done. But it also struck me that she hadn't put the slightest amount of effort into determining whether or not the convictions motivating her efforts were accurate.

What is going on here, I think, is that some of those who have come to appreciate some virtue or other of locally-grown food have found it irresistible to then proceed to the conclusion that it is superior in every respect. Such a conclusion befits their belief system. And, accordingly, their intuition tells them it's true, no matter what the pesky facts are.

"Isn't the basis of belief that it doesn't require the difficulties of factual, measurable truth?", a friend recently asked me, perhaps rhetorically. I couldn't disagree more. Whether we are in government, whether we are professional dispensers of advice, whether we are community members, consumers, or parents: I think we have a clear responsibility to do our utmost in ensuring that our beliefs are entirely constrained by these "difficulties".