4 ms·

This is going to have some pretty big reprecussions for the restaurants in question. A few years back the same thing happened on the east coast when someone ate

This is going to have some pretty big reprecussions for the restaurants in question. A few years back the same thing happened on the east coast when someone ate a vegan philly "cheese" steak at a vegan joint and swore down that it could NOT be vegan. They ordered one to go and utilized their campus laboratory to discover that, yes, it had casein in it. Turned out that the supplier of the restaurants vegan cheese had not been entirely honest. It looks like the same thing is happening with a lot of these cases. Most people source their vegan "meats" from central import supermarkets and the people doing the translation seem to be leaving out a few crucial facts i.e. "this vegetarian fish contains fish" etc. This is another great reason to source your food locally. When you are having to trace the contents of what is going into your mouth across state borders let alone oceans you're going to have some difficulty. One of my long term plans is to open a restaurant which sources everything locally (with in the county) - it will be inherently vegan but will not champion that so as to not turn people off of the concept but rather push the idea of healthy food supporting local business and thus the overall food security for the community.

pyre 17y ago
It's actually better to eat food that is seasonal than local. Case in point, if you buy local tomatoes during the winter they are grown in a greenhouse that burns more energy than shipping tomatoes up from Mexico. I recently found out that most (maybe all?) rice that's grown in California is grown in an area where they need to pump the water uphill to irrigate that area. Energy/greenhouse gas-wise it's more environmentally-friendly to import the rice from India. Load of people seem to think that 'local' implies something like a small town and therefore must be better and/or closer to the earth or something, but that's not always the case.
- shaunxcode 17y ago
  I agree about seasonal eating patterns and I guess that is implicit if you are eating local organic (i.e. no crazy hydroponic winter tomatoes). Living in utah that would mean the winters would bring a lot of grains, canned/bottled fruit and vegetables from the growing season etc. How does a fresh vegetable stew with some home made bread not sound good? On rice - I actually tried growing rice in my apartment using 5 gallon buckets one suspended in the other so that there is a constant supply of water in the bottom (I think the term is self watering container). I just threw in some soil and tossed a hand full of organic brown rice and it sprouted within the week! I am not sure how much I could have grown had I taken it past that point but I was surprised that it even sprouted!
  - pyre 17y ago
    That's actually pretty cool that your tried to grow your own rice. My comment is mainly because I know there are a lot of people out there with only partial knowledge of the reasons behind things like 'local'. Some people think "it's not being shipped in from Mexico or Columbia so it's obviously not using as much energy" while others just do it to try and support local business. But that first group is grossly misinformed.

pyre 17y ago

It's actually better to eat food that is seasonal than local. Case in point, if you buy local tomatoes during the winter they are grown in a greenhouse that burns more energy than shipping tomatoes up from Mexico. I recently found out that most (maybe all?) rice that's grown in California is grown in an area where they need to pump the water uphill to irrigate that area. Energy/greenhouse gas-wise it's more environmentally-friendly to import the rice from India. Load of people seem to think that 'local' implies something like a small town and therefore must be better and/or closer to the earth or something, but that's not always the case.

shaunxcode 17y ago
I agree about seasonal eating patterns and I guess that is implicit if you are eating local organic (i.e. no crazy hydroponic winter tomatoes). Living in utah that would mean the winters would bring a lot of grains, canned/bottled fruit and vegetables from the growing season etc. How does a fresh vegetable stew with some home made bread not sound good? On rice - I actually tried growing rice in my apartment using 5 gallon buckets one suspended in the other so that there is a constant supply of water in the bottom (I think the term is self watering container). I just threw in some soil and tossed a hand full of organic brown rice and it sprouted within the week! I am not sure how much I could have grown had I taken it past that point but I was surprised that it even sprouted!
- pyre 17y ago
  That's actually pretty cool that your tried to grow your own rice. My comment is mainly because I know there are a lot of people out there with only partial knowledge of the reasons behind things like 'local'. Some people think "it's not being shipped in from Mexico or Columbia so it's obviously not using as much energy" while others just do it to try and support local business. But that first group is grossly misinformed.