Those of you who have read this blog for a while, will know that I’m a fan of Pollan’s book. Those of you who follow what I’ve been reading on goodreads know that I’ve been reading way too much about this stuff lately.

The article is amusing — not least because he buys his meal at Whole Foods — which seems to be Stein’s primary intent. But he is also calling into question the notion that reducing food miles can have a positive impact. Stein claims that “shipping food in containers is often more energy-efficient than a local farmer trucking small amounts that are then purchased on a separate weekend farmers’-market trip you take in your SUV.” I wish that Stein had spent more time on facts and less on trying to be provocative. I’ve heard the claim a few times recently. Apparently, this topic will also be covered in David King’s new book, The Hot Topic. I’m hoping that King goes into more detail on the subject, because I’d love to read any studies that have been done on the topic. I don’t doubt that it’s true. In terms of pure fuel efficiency, shipping food halfway across the globe might take less energy than getting food from a small farm to my table.

For the last year, we’ve gotten much of our produce from Riverford, a farm in Devon. We love it. We don’t have full blown garden, so we can’t go on about carrots, as some of Stein’s friends apparently do. Instead, we tell everyone how much we love Riverford. But the thing is, it’s not just about food miles. Since we’ve been using Riverford’s veggie box scheme, we’ve noticed a number of benefits other than reducing food miles.

The first is taste. Most of the food tastes better. The milk is fantastic. The cucumbers are the best cucumbers I’ve ever had outside of France. The apples are great. Most of the time. Sometimes they are disappointing, or at least I thought so. Until I picked up an apple at the supermarket yesterday. It tasted of almost nothing. This could all be in my head, but reading Graham Harvey’s We Want Real Food has convinced me that it probably isn’t.

We get to try new things. We’ve discovered jerusalem artichoke, kohlrabi and endless varieties of squash. OK, the squash does get a bit tiring in the winter. It makes good soup, though. Even so, each time a new vegetable shows up, we’re off to the cookbooks and the Internet trying to find out what we can do with it. It’s an adventure.

It’s incredibly convenient. Each week, Joanne orders the box on the website and it shows up at our door. Of course, we need to supplement it, but it’s a large part of our shopping done for us every week.

It’s cheaper than the supermarket. If we bought what came in the box at the supermarket, it would cost twice what we pay for the box, especially if we bought organic. This was probably the most surprising thing about the veggie box scheme.

By and large, I don’t really consider myself a “locavore”. Our cupboards are filled with foods that came from more than 100 miles from our house. We regularly go to The Taqueria for the best damn tacos in the UK and to pick up black beans and masa harina for our own little fiestas. We go to China Town in Soho for all of our favourite Japanese ingredients (and the occasional Chinese item).

The point, though, is that much of our day to day food is coming from a nearby farm. We’re not doing it because we’re Luddite hippies. We’re doing it because it means we get high quality, affordable, and interesting food on a regular basis.

Last weeks’ goals

• Get up at 6am This is going well. I’ve not yet gotten up at 6am on the weekends. I’m always up around 8 o’clock, though. I don’t really think this is a bad thing. I’m getting a bit tired and grumpy around 10 at night. Still, I’m really liking getting up at six. I’ve tried to get up a bit earlier, but this has proved difficult. To work the gym in in the morning, I may need to push this back to 5:45 or 5:30. We’ll see how that goes.
• Drink 3L of water a day This is also going well. Even better since a lovely, blue Sigg bottle arrived at my door (thanks Mike!).
• The ankle is healing. It’s not nearly as purple as it was last week, and I’m no longer taking tons of Ibuprofen. For those of you in the know, I was convinced by the doctor to try Ibuprofen. It seems that I’m not allergic to it, after all. I wonder if I’m still allergic to asparin.

This week’s goal

Replace all junk food snacks with fruit, nuts or vegetables.

Why?

This has to be one of my worst habits. Both in terms of health (now that I’ve quit smoking) and finances. At home, I eat very well, mostly thanks to Joanne, though I’m trying to help with the cooking these days. When I’m working or out a meetings, however, I’m like a ten year old kid. I’ll walk into a corner shop and come out with a soda, crisps / chips or the moral equivalent of a Snickers bar. This isn’t just once a day. There have been some days when I’ll “grab a quick snack” three times. The fact is, I just don’t handle between meal snacking very well.

I suspect that I’m also using this junk / comfort food as a substitute for cigarettes. It has been over five months since I last had a cigarette, so there’s no need for a junk food crutch any more.

How?

I need to make fruit or vegetables more convenient than a Snickers bar. In order to do that, this is what I’m going to do:

1. Bring enough fruit for the week to work on Monday. At least ten pieces of fruit. Two pieces a day.
2. Always have at least one piece of fruit with me.
3. Bring more fruit when I go out on the weekends.

Joanne has made this easier for me. We have a big bowl of fruit that sits on our kitchen counter. All I need to do is remember to grab some fruit when I’m on my way out into the world.

Last week went pretty well, though. I was basically refilling a 1L Vittel bottle to make sure I was getting 3L a day. Making sure I drank 1L before lunch, 1L before I left work and another 1L when I got home seems to work pretty well. Ensuring that I got 3L on the weekend was a bit more trickly, since the weekends are a bit less structured. Of course, I like my weekends that way, so I just have to learn to count.

This week, I’ll be focusing on the ankle, as well as making sure that I continue to get up at 6am and drink 3L of water a day. Next week I move on to one of the harder goals: replacing junk food with healthy snacks.

I’ve narrowed down the list to six things that really bother me or that I need to change for one reason or another. Most of these are focused on improving my eating habits or on reducing stress. At the moment the list is kind of general, but it will get more specific later on. Here’s the list:

1. Wake up earlier
2. Drink more water
3. Eat healthier snacks
4. Chew my food
5. Breath more deeply
6. Reduce alcohol intake

For each item on the list, I’m going to take a week to focus on it. So next week, the focus will be on getting up earlier. The following week, it will be drinking more water. And so on. What I’m hoping is that while I’m focusing on drinking more water, I will continue getting up earlier, as well. At the end of the six weeks, I’m going to give myself four weeks before I decide if this was a success or not.

At the end of each week, I’ll post a blog update about how the week went. If I’m adding a new goal, I’ll describe what the goal is, why the goal is important and how I’m going to achieve it. For each goal, I’m going to be doing research during the week to make sure what I’m doing is actually the right thing to do and to find advice on how other people have achieved the goal. I’ll also be tracking all the goals using Joe’s Goals, which looks like a nice, simple tool for keeping track of this kind of thing. Joe’s goals also has a nice blog widget, so you folks can see how well I’m doing with this stuff, just by visiting my blog (how very exciting for you).

What I’m hoping is that by the end of the 10 weeks, which is more or less the end of the year, I will have changed some bad habits for good habits. And there will be an incentive for me to do this. If I’ve stuck to each of these goals by the end of the year, I get to take the movement one course at the Castle. I’ve been climbing 5a and some 5bs for a while now, but I really need to improve my technique.

So there you have it: my 6 + 4 plan. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m pretty sure that it’s going to go better than these things have gone in the past. Taking each goal one at a time seems like the right way forward.

I applaud Mike’s effort, and should make a similar effor. I should definitely avoid the junk food. I tend to be very good about this for around a month. After a month, I find that I’m sneaking a bag of crisps here and a can of Coke there. Coke? Why would I even drink this stuff? I don’t like the company. I don’t really want to support them. And yet, there have been some weeks when I have one every day. That certainly needs to stop. I’m right there with you Mike. No more Coke.

Mike also wants to get to the point where he is running again. Joanne and I have been doing this lately. I’m not going to lie. It’s been hard. One thing that has helped us along has been Podrunner. David, who knows a thing or two about running, introduced us to it. Joanne started using it immediately, but I didn’t. Let’s just say that it’s not the sort of music that I would listen to. Eventually though, I tried it, and found it really helpful. I had been listening to Modest Mouse’s new album. I absolutely love We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, but there were two problems. The first is that I was tempted to stop running when a song finished. The second was slow songs: I just didn’t keep up the pace. Podrunner helped with both of these issues. I’d definitely recommend trying it, especially if you’re just staring out running. I seem to be able to tune out the music and just focus on the beat (we’re up to 144bmp).

And finally, a shameless plug. Joanne and I will be running a 5k in less than two weeks. Hopefully all our hard work and podrunning will pay off. You can help us out by donating some cash (if you haven’t already), which will go to Trees for Cities.

The Cheese Diaries (XML, iTunes) isn’t half bad. Alex James, the bassist for Blur, has decided to make cheese. I’m enjoying to podcast. I’m hoping, though, that future episodes will concentrate more on the cheese. Alex James is an entertaining host, but now that we’ve heard why he decided to make cheese (Blur fans no longer buy music, apparently, they buy cheese), I’d like to hear more about how he decided what types of cheese to make and the process of making the cheese itself.

Check it out. I recommend it, even if it’s not nearly as fun as visit to Neal’s Yard Dairy, which is one of my favourite Saturday afternoon activities.

Whole Foods Market — where I worked for several years in the nineties — has opened on Kensington High Street. The opening has been well covered in the media, and my friend Valentine dedicated a recent blog post to it.

After reading the news and Valentine’s blog post, I started doing some googling, mostly following up what I had read over Christmas in The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which is sharply critical of Whole Foods’ supposed dedication to small local farmers.

What I found was interesting, to say the least. It seems the Pollan and John Mackey have been engaged in a year long dialogue about Pollan’s criticisms. It begins with a letter from Mackey to Pollan to which Pollan responded. They wrote back and forth, and finally Pollan invited Mackey to come to Berkeley and debate the issues. Eventually, he did. The resulting discussion is available as a webcast. The whole exchange is fascinating, and the webcast is quite entertaining at points. If you’ve read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, I recommend reading through their letters and watching the webcast.

Mackey’s response probably falls somewhere between corporate damage limitation and a heartfelt reaction to Pollan’s criticism of his company. Apparently, Whole Foods lost $2 billion in stock market capitalization after the release of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, though certainly not all of this is attributable to the book’s impact.

What I find encouraging about the whole exchange is that a well written, well researched and passionate book can bring about concrete change. While Pollan’s book may not have been able to change U.S. agricultural policy (yet), he has certainly had an impact on Mackey. Whole Foods has introduced a number of programs to encourage local farming, fair trade and compassionate food production. Some of this may well have happened anyway, but Pollan’s book certainly has a lot to do with it.

Whatever the reasons for the new Whole Foods programs, I am impressed by Mackey’s response. It was personal and honest. Whole Foods didn’t issue press releases (that I know of), but engaged in debate. That said, Mackey’s last blog post smacks of a PR exercise. Whereas the letters and the webcast were thoughtful and straigtforward, this blog post — which is an extended quote from Michael Strong — is a saccharine and overwrought piece in honour of the great and glorious John Mackey.

I would still rather buy our produce from Riverford Farm or from a farmer’s market. I think that the new Kensington store is unlikely to appeal to me. From what I’ve read and what I’ve seen of other Whole Foods stores, it is likely to be as overblown as John Mackey’s last blog post. At least I won’t feel as guilty when we’re shopping at Fresh & Wild, assuming Whole Foods decides to keep these smaller stores open.