MNN - Mother Nature Network

At this year's amazing Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco I came across a nifty website that has been around for many years called Eat Well Everywhere (EWE).  A pretty bad acronym for a food website (I think YUM would have been better) but it is a great resource nonetheless. Developed by the same people who created The Meatrix (the viral video about going vegetarian), the site lets you find restaurants, shops and markets that sell local, organic food.  They recently launched a cool little widget which gives you organic shopping at your finger tips:

 

 

One of the best ways to reduce your ecological footprint and improve your health is to eat local and organic foods.  According to the environmental impact model I developed for EVO, food is about a quarter of a person's total impact on the environment.  This large impact comes in part from the energy required to process food and ship it to grocery stores nationwide.  

 

The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service reports that commercial produce can travel as far as 2000 miles before reaching your table. That's a lot of unnecessary CO2 emissions! And most commercial food products use pesticides and herbicides which can contaminate both natural ecosystems and your own human ecosystem.

 

The solution -- eat local and organic.  The Eat Well Everywhere widgets helps you find places that specialize in local, sustainable food.  If you type in your zip code you get a nicely organized list of stores and other resources including caterers, bakers and food delivery services in your area.  Here's what I got for LA: