My baby's 10,000 mile diet

A few years ago, I read 100 Mile Diet & really started to think about where my food comes from. I've tried to cut down on my 'food miles' a little, though not substantially, because I have such a fondness for fruit that is not grown anywhere near here. We order most of our produce from SPUD & they give us a (rough) calculation of our food miles on each invoice.

Since starting solids with Sprout, our food miles average has gone way up. His favourite foods are: avocados, banana & mango. He also eats a lot of rice & quinoa. Not one of these things is, or to my knowledge, can be grown anywhere near Vancouver.

We do try in other ways to make Sprout's little carbon footprint smaller: cloth diapers & wipes, avoiding creams, shampoos, etc made with toxic chemicals, borrowing or buying used toys, clothes & gear, going places on foot/transit, feeding him mostly whole foods that don't require much, if any packaging. We also invest more in quality gear (like a stroller) that we can use for a long time (even with two kids) & potentially resell, rather than buying lower-end stuff that will break & require replacement, sending double the stuff to the landfill, eventually.

It seems we could probably work on some things yet, like avoiding plastic in packaging, toys & food containers. I also want to start hanging more of our laundry, including the diapers, out to dry on our improvised clotheslines on the deck. I'd like to eat less processed food, which would nearly eliminate our consumption of plastic packaging. I doubt we'll ever have a 100-mile diet, however.