living without coffee…50 Mile Challenge

The 50 Mile Challenge started at the beginning of this week. The idea is that those who sign up try to eat only foods which have been sourced within a 50 mile radius of their house. We teamed up with The Local Food Society to launch the 50 Mile Challenge and asked the participants to give us feedback on what challenges they faced.

We are pleased to share one experience below:

How should I start my day? Usually, it takes a shot of coffee to get me going on a Monday morning, but there is a problem with this – I have signed up to the 50 Mile Challenge and obviously coffee doesn’t grow in Devon!

It was at this point that I thought I had probably made a mistake and would have to give up with the challenge. I signed up on a whim and could leave on a whim too. But not one for giving up I didn’t want to fall at the first hurdle. So I thought about cheating. Maybe I could have coffee and just not tell anyone. What a weird idea!

Then it struck me. Yes I love coffee. Lots of us do. But could I really not go without this for one week? It might be a cliché but people all around the world have to do without on a daily basis and here was I moaning, thinking of giving up and even thinking about deceiving myself because I couldn’t give up one item! So, as you may have guessed I carried on with the challenge.

Now I am halfway through and I am beginning to enjoy it. Obviously there are challenges. Buying local is good but it can be hard to know what has grown nearby because there is rarely any labelling. So I have compromised here. I have taken what is in season, a list supplied by The Local Food Society, and used local shops, farm shops and farmers markets to try to get as local as possible. Can I guarantee it was all within 50 miles? Probably not but it was as close as I could get!

What is interesting is that there is more out there than you think. There is variety like you never get in your normal shopping.

So the burning question, will I carry on eating locally when the challenge finishes? Umm…well I will certainly try to eat more local foods as I really feel like I have learnt more about food, where it comes from and what I should expect at this time of year. But I probably will be having that coffee on Monday morning!

Thanks for reading!

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Originally published at shrinkthesupplychain.com on November 6, 2014.