Subject: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online Placement
From: "Merilee Kern" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>, "Jasia Steinmetz" <[email-masked]>, "Merilee Kern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:32:18 -0700

http://www.jsonline.com/features/food/local-food-can-be-affordable-professor-says-132027003.html

Food and Cooking 
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Nancy Stohs | First Course

Local food can be affordable, professor says
The eat-local food movement, with its sister nods to buying organic and artisanal, has drawn fire in some circles for being elitist.

While it seems on the surface to be a noble effort, is it right to pressure people with limited means to buy pricier organic produce, to seek out small-batch local foods, or to pay $5 a dozen for eggs from the farmers market?

It's a question worthy of debate, and Jasia Steinmetz, a food and nutrition professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, is ready to debate it.

Steinmetz is the author of a new guide to local eating, called "Eat Local: Simple Steps to Enjoy Real, Healthy and Affordable Food" (New World Publishing, $12.95).

It's right there in the title: "affordable." And she means it.

Spend a few minutes with her on the phone, and you'll soon realize she's no elitist. Her background seemed to set her on a path to appreciation of local foods.

In Milwaukee, where she spent her early childhood, her parents owned a mom-and-pop burger joint. "They served anything that could be done on a grill or in a deep-fryer," said Steinmetz. But at home, the family didn't get burgers and fries - they ate a home-cooked meal every night with meat, potatoes, vegetables, typical for the '60s.

Then the family moved to a succession of small towns in central Wisconsin, starting with Crivitz, where Steinmetz got her first taste (literally) of rural life.

"The idea that we could have wild apple trees and could go out and pick apples was just an amazing discovery to me," she said. "And we had chickens. That was just bizarre that you could go in and get eggs.

"There were a lot of things in that transition year that influenced me," she said.

The notion of eating local - though it wasn't called that then - was driven home when the family landed in Wabeno. In the time her family lived there, first there were two grocery stores, then one, then none. The nearest supermarket suddenly was 45 minutes away.

But already, residents in the low-income community were used to being self-sufficient, and still are, Steinmetz said.

"People hunt, they fish, they know where the wild raspberries are, they garden. They can and freeze food."

That's eating locally.

But Steinmetz understands the trepidation about jumping willy-nilly on the newest dietary bandwagon. And that's why she wrote her book.

Her goal is to help people who believe they should be eating local but don't know how to get started, she said. "It's meant to be simple and empowering."

There are other books on eating locally, she acknowledged. But they're typically cookbooks focusing on the seasons, what she called "asparagus to zucchini" books, and they're certainly "excellent and valuable." Or they're books expounding on the ethics of local eating (dare we say preachy?) and meant to be read cover to cover.

"My book is meant to be a handbook you can put in a purse or bag," Steinmetz said. "The chapters are short .?.?. and at the end of each are simple steps you can take."

The book is divided into five parts: the introduction, finding local food, saving money on local food, eating well (nutrition and cooking tips, but no recipes) and joining the local food movement.

Chapters are indeed short - many only two or three pages long. Lists of helpful tips, resources and steps to take make up much of the text. You can open it up to pretty much any page and start reading.

So what of the saving money aspect? Can eating locally be economical?

Steinmetz makes her best case.

"Initially, you might say, this (local) apple is a little more expensive" than one from the grocery store, she said. "But if it's one you like, you will eat and it won't go to waste."

Think of all the food that gets thrown away in a typical household, she said.

Cutting out processed foods to focus on whole foods saves money, too.

"The most nutrients you can get for your dollar are whole foods because they have the most complex group of nutrients," she said. "And the less processed the foods, the less nutrient loss" that results from cooking.

What's more, the fresher food is, the longer it will last, which translates into a lower chance of its going bad and being tossed.

Get to know your local farmers, and you can go in with friends to buy larger quantities, thus saving money. Or cheaper yet, plant a garden - that's local food, too, and it doesn't get any cheaper.

If the work of growing your own food seems daunting, Steinmetz understands. As we spoke, her husband was processing grapes they grew into grape juice and apples into apple juice. Since they moved onto 10 acres and started a big garden, she's gained new respect for farmers.

To ease the burden, she suggests throwing canning parties, or salsa-making parties - it's more fun to work together, and everybody takes something home.

Ultimately, the loftier reasons for eating local have to factor into the cost. There are so many that Steinmetz has trouble packing them all into one short phone conversation. (They're all in her book, of course).

Among them: lessened impact on the environment, keeping the local ethnic heritage alive, strengthening the community and supporting the local economy, and a safer food supply.

"The most important thing for me is that our children should know real food," she said, "that they should know what food is grown locally and what it tastes like and who's growing what."

Armed with this, they'll seek out better-tasting food and a wider variety throughout their lives.

It's the sensory aspects of food that drive people to make choices of what to eat, she said. Local food simply tastes better. Once people understand this, they'll choose healthier foods and therefore be healthier.

And that saves everybody money.