Eat Real Eat Local Campaign is Making its Mark

I (and many others) have been talking and tweeting about Hellmann's Eat Real Eat Local Campaign and how you can get involved:

1. Read the labels and choose local when you can,


2. Commit to eat real eat local by using #realfood when you email, twitter, facebook, blog. Every time you do, Hellmann's donates 25 cents to Evergreen Foundation (they've already had over 115,000 actions taken, so Evergreen gets $25,000 to fund many of their great green projects).


3. Get your local grocer on board ...which is my reason for this post - but first a little background...

It all started back in May when a group of food bloggers from across Canada were invited to Toronto to talk about eating local and the challenges in each region. (That's some of us at the top of the post)
I've written often about the benefits of eating locally produced food (it truly is my preference);
the joy of finding restaurants that support local producers (and there are lots around, if you look for them, ask where they get their ingredients );
and taking you on a visit or two to my favorite local producers, like Ran-Cher Acres.

Truthfully, I've always enjoyed eating local first, but it was only after my trip to the food bloggers panel back in May that I really started reading labels and signs. I'm embarrassed to say, I had no idea that most of the garlic I was using is from China....that's not to say I won't use it, just that if there's a local option, I'll choose that first.

And reading packaging and labels has often been disappointing. I expect imports in the winter. After all, Nova Scotia is cold, snow or freezing rain are often in the forecast and while there are a few hot houses, most fresh food is imported. What I don't expect, are the same imports when the local markets have an abundance of beautiful, fresh produce.

All that blabbing just to say Congratulations to Sobey's for making a concerted effort to identify locally grown produce and they're working on how to do the same on packaged meats.