That may often be true (though in some cases it may actually have a smaller impact to buy products from the global market), but it’s not exactly the kind of reason that vaults it to the top of my priorities. There are so many ways in which our lives impact the local and global environment, it’s hard to know where to begin. I have more personal reasons for looking into local food sources.

I’d like to be able to look my farmer in the eye. I want to find out how she raises her food. I want to know how she treats her animals and what she feeds them. I want to know whether her animals get to wander a pasture and graze or whether they spend time in a feed lot. And I’d like to be welcome to visit her farm. Do her animals eat the kinds of foods that they would eat if left to their own devices, or are they force fed whatever fattens them up the cheapest, even if it makes them sick. It’s nice to know that your lettuce has been grown without chemicals, but I’m more concerned with whether the cows I eat spend their days covered in their own filth and pumped full of antibiotics.

I began my search in two places, the local natural food store in Peoria and a website where they list farmers “who raise their livestock on pasture from birth to market and who actively promote the welfare of their animals and the health of the land.”

Eventually I found out a little information about a local producer named Greengold Acres in Hanna City, IL. They are one of the egg producers featured at Naturally Yours (the local natural food store), and they can be found at a year round Farmers Market in Groveland, a small town just a few miles away.

I didn’t have a lot of time to spare this Saturday morning. The market opened at 8:30 and I would have to be done and back at my mother’s house by 9:15 to relieve my sister. So I got over to the market nice and early.

I was imagining a bustling market, a parking lot full of farmers unpacking crates of produce from their trucks, and young mom’s already milling about seeing what is on offer for the week. It wasn’t quite like that. This farmers market is smaller and more modest than bucolic image in my head. It’s simply a small green house in front of the local feed store where a few local farmers sell their produce once a week.

Inside I met Doug, one of the farmers who runs the market. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to have the conversation I wanted to have. But I got the info I needed.

• Are the cows grass fed? Yes, mostly. They are finished with corn. I think this must be the norm, at least around here.
• Do the cows actually graze in a pasture? Yes. No feed lots, ever.
• Can I visit the farm? Yes. He actually offered this to me without my asking.
• Are they organic? Yes… Well sort of organic. They aren’t certified Organic, because of the cost of certifying. This is something I want to hear a lot more about. From his short explanation, I’m guessing that very few of these small producers are Organic with a capital “O.” The irony is that small farmers don’t do enough volume to shoulder the cost of certifying that their product is actually organic. So they are forced to use other words to describe what they do. Natural, grassfed, pastured, but not Organic. I wonder if the USDA has plans to coopt words like beef, local or farm.

I bought some eggs, some ham, and some steak and quickly scurried back to Morton where I was already late. Next week or the week after that, I’ll stop by when I have more time and have a proper conversation with him and the others who sell their wares there.

A month or two later, frustrated with my inability to lose weight on my own, I looked up Seth’s scientific paper online about what makes food fattening and tried his method. It worked! I started losing weight again.

After a few weeks of sipping sugar water and drinking olive oil, I spent a week in New York for the Del Close Marathon. I was explaining it to a friend and he responded, “Oh you mean the Shangri-la Diet.”

The next day I bought the book and found Seth’s website.

As the months went by and I lost more and more weight, my former prejudice against fats in the diet had been seriously challenged. I was losing weight not by restricting fats (like I had in my 20s), but by adding fats to my diet.

Then I read an interview of Gary Taubes on Seth’s blog. I started reading more about low carb diets.

Finally when I got my Kindle, I read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Taubes. After reading it, I switched to a low carb diet of mostly meat, cheese, eggs and green leafy vegetables, something I had already started to do gradually.

In a discussion on low carb diets on Seth’s website, I saw a reference to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michale Pollan. I downloaded it to my Kindle. I haven’t finished it, but I’m sure it’s going to have a profound affect on how I eat in the future, along with Taubes book. (Pollan chides Taubes in his introduction without mentioning him by name over his 2002 article, “What If It’s All a Big Fat Lie?,” because of what is said about bread. However, their books could easily go hand and hand. For instance, high fructose corn syrup is one of the villains in both books.)

From there, I found eatwild.com, a website with a listing of grass fed beef farms across the United States. Next Saturday, I hope to visit a farm near Springfield. And in June, I’ll be heading to the local farmer’s market in Peoria.

I certainly would not have thought that a book on economics would have so radically changed my eating habits and be responsible for me losing over 50 lbs in little over a year, but in a way, it has. One thing leads to another to another to another.