It’s pretty easy to eat local food in New York City. Scattered throughout the five boroughs are farmers markets and CSAs are plentiful. Since I moved to Brooklyn I’ve joined the Park Slope Co-op that displays a map of its farms and suppliers on its website. There are also plenty of restaurants that feature local and season foods on its menu (I recently went to Nick and Toni’s Café, which I highly recommend).
And for those desiring to gather and produce their own local fare, we have illicit urban agrarian societies in New York that go foraging or keep bees. But as it turns out, not all local foods are created equally.
Monday’s Daily News ran an article on toxicity of local fish – and despite the danger, how many low-income people are turning to fishing as a source of food. This raised all sorts of conflicting thoughts for me.
1. OMG! we have polluted our local waters so badly that we shouldn’t eat what they produce.
2. We have a society where we have hungry people eating toxic food. What can we be doing about that?
3. Another question comes to mind, similar to the one raised the other day by Liz Schwartz, but is “eating locally” elitist?
I’m curious about others thoughts and concerns. Please leave a comment!
Cross-posted from The Jew and the Carrot