Adventures in Local Food

by Stefanie T. Stauffer

As much as I love to travel, the most difficult part for me is the food. Travel used to provide an opportunity to try exotic and delicious foods, but more often now it just ends up meaning airports and restaurants near highways that are notorious for abundant offerings of overly processed food—food that is not very cheap and is certainly not delicious. In fact, it’s this less than ideal situation that encourages me to go out of my way to bring my own food with me or to only patronize local stores and restaurants serving freshly prepared food when in transit (like in my recent trip to California).

Of course, the funny thing is that I actually do like cooking and would prefer to spend money at local stores and restaurants as it is, especially when in California, so it surprised me that having to do so while traveling would become a burden. But then I remembered that this difficulty stems primarily from the ever-dwindling selection of independently owned food businesses at the hands of the constant spread of mass-produced, low-quality chain restaurants across the globe. Both as a traveler and as a sociologist, I’ve seen clearly how transnational corporations have consolidated control over the mechanisms of food production and food distribution that resulted in the proliferation of regional, national, and global chains serving low quality food to people at relatively low prices that we see now.

Whether we’re talking about gazpacho from McDonald’s in southern Spain, cantaloupe milkshakes from a gigantic Burger King in Budapest, Hungary, or Taco Bell from a strip-mall in suburban Ohio, it doesn’t matter. Each scenario is made possible by the global spread of “fast food” establishments and their more expensive “fast casual” counterparts. It is a spread made possible by the increasing power of corporations vis a vis food production that has had unforeseen impacts both on our quality of life and on our interactions with one another.

It’s in this way that traveling always reminds me why I appreciate the opportunity to visit local restaurants, farmer’s markets and locally-owned grocery stores (along with urban farms) that much more when I get to my destination. It reinforces for me that eating locally-sourced food not only safeguards my personal health, but it also supports local economies in a tangible way. After all, you don’t have to be at home to eat local, and ever since I got a food-borne parasite while traveling in Albania in 2005 (a long story involving giardia, politics and Greek salad), I have acutely understood this connection between food sourcing and health. I also have subsequently been that much more of an adamant supporter of local food production.

This is why we heard in April about some of the local food victories helping to bring about the Rustbelt Revival in Ypsi and it’s also why I provided more context here for why it’s important to me personally that we celebrate and support our local food system whenever possible. Luckily, we are at the time of year where the opportunities to help make local food more viable in our communities are that much closer to our finger tips. So, next time we’ll hear more about those opportunities as we continue to discuss tomatoes, GMOs, and droughts in the food desert. In the meantime, I’ll see you at the farmer’s market with the rest of the people who bring local food to you.