The Bounty Around Us

The food world is catching up with Fred Berman.

The emphasis lately in that changing and often socially conscious world has been on eating local foods, organic alone not being enough to cure the ills of the world. No pesticides or herbicides, yes, but also no food that burns up more calories getting to the dinner plate than it can deliver once it's there.

Author Barbara Kingsolver is the latest to discover food doesn't have to travel hundreds of miles in a refrigerated truck. She writes about that discovery in her new book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life."

And for their book, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon spent a year eating only food that came from within 100 miles of their Vancouver, B.C., apartment.

That's nothing for Berman: Most of the food he and his family ate for more than 20 years came from within 500 yards of where they lived. An organic farmer for 27 years and a chef for 24, he's glad the books have made more people aware of the benefits of eating locally grown food. But he was already there.
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