...5, 2014 Go Local Walmart, Target, Superfresh, Food Lion, and Shoppers are only a few of the grocery stores that the United States provides to Americans. In these grocery stores consumers can find most of the necessities they need for a week or two, including food, hygiene products, and medicine. There was a time when these well-known companies such as Walmart and Target did not exist. Instead people would buy food at farmers markets, produce stands, or butcher shops. They would go to the corner store to buy hygiene products and the pharmacy for their medicine. Americans eventually realized that traveling to multiple locations for the bare necessities was a bit of a hassle and so they created grocery stores. Now, costumers do not have to travel to multiple places for their dinner, shampoo, and detergent; instead they can travel to one place. Grocery stores quickly grew into large franchises that have scattered across every state in the US. Though grocery stores make shopping convenient, efficient, and less of a hassle; they also create multiple dilemmas for communities, the environment, and consumers. Consumers can help limit such issues by shopping as if we were still in the days when supermarkets were not around, to the days when people bought locally. The food that Americans eat does not come from the local farmer anymore. Instead it ships to the United States from across the country or even across the world. Since America is importing food instead of buying it from a farmer...
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...Revolution in the early 20th century, many Americans were farmers that created food product then sold them in the local market. However in the 1900’s, people shifted from buying food locally to buying food that was produced from all around the world. Now, acknowledging the disadvantages from buying food in the global market, lots of Americans are starting to go back to purchasing food products that were harvested locally, this is called the “locavore” movement. While the locavore movement brings the consumers healthy and fresh food, this movement also damages, alters the global economy and hurts the farmers worldwide, it also is difficult to practice. The locavore movement brings many health benefits to the consumers. Locally grown food products contain much more nutritional value than non-locally grown food products shipped over the world. Food at the local market was picked within the 24-hour period (Maiser), which means several things. First, the food has less susceptibility to contamination (Maiser). Since locally grown food travels less distance from the farm to the buyers than the same product ships from another country, Locally grown food will have a much lower chance of carrying diseases or harmful contamination. Second, food products that travel less distance has less time to lose their nutritional values (Smith and MacKinnon). This means that buying food locally will ensure the consumers to have food that has high nutritional values, however a person making smart choices...
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...movement intrinsically linked not only to a close-knit collage town, but also to issues of nutrition, sustainability and economics. The nutritional value of food grown locally is far superior to to that of alien products shipped over oceans, countries and borders. “Produce that you purchase at your local farmer's market has often been picked24 hours of your purchase.” (Source A) So here you have a better taste in the food...
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...Locally grown foods have many benefits over foods shipped from other regions. Foods grown locally usually taste better because they are fresher, tend to have more nutritional value, and it is a benefit for the local economy to buy locally. Those are only a few reasons. Buying locally keeps the money within the community. Buying food that is shipped from thousands of miles away, does not put money into the local economy. People tend to enjoy fruits and vegetables that are grown locally and bought at a local farmer’s market rather than packaged or store bought produce. This basically creates more revenue for the local farmers when they sell their produce at a local farmer’s market and creates jobs for the local people, keeping jobs in the community. “Small farmers will be able to get up to 75% of their organic certification costs reimbursed, and some of them can obtain crop insurance.” (source D) We need farmers in every community. By keeping the money within the community, we can also help support local farmers, which will boost the local economy....
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...Description of Harvest Local Foods concept: Harvest Local foods which is located in Philadelphia was founded in 2006. Their main aim is to promote healthy living among their consumers. Their company mission is to promote and educate consumers about the benefits of eating fresh locally grown organic food products. The Harvest Local foods currently have only one branch which is currently located in Lansdowne, Philadelphia. Their commitment to promote healthier lifestyle would work well if they open additional branches to make sure that their consumers get the full benefit of consuming organic food products. They work with more than 50 local farmers from both Philadelphia and New Jersey to make their mission statement a reality. There are...
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...The Local Food Movement Benefits Farms, Food Production, Environment The Local Food Movement, 2010 Pallavi Gogoi is a writer for BusinessWeek Online. She frequently writes on retailing. Just as small family-run, sustainable farms were losing their ability to compete in the food marketplace, the local food movement stepped in with a growing consumer demand for locally grown, organic, fresh produce. In addition to supermarket giants following the trend toward locally grown food and devoting shelf space to such items, local foods are also finding their way into schools, office cafeterias, and even prisons. Although the trend toward organic foods has not waned, consumers are increasingly aware of the environmental impact caused when organic foods must travel to find their way to the local grocery store shelf. For this and other reasons, consumers are opting instead for locally grown counterparts, choosing to eat what is available in each season in their areas rather than purchasing food that must be shipped from other regions. Drive through the rolling foothills of the Appalachian range in southwestern Virginia and you'll come across Abingdon, one of the oldest towns west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If it happens to be a Saturday morning, you might think there's a party going on—every week between 7 a.m. and noon, more than 1,000 people gather in the parking lot on Main Street, next to the police station. This is Abingdon's farmers' market. "For folks here, this is part of the Saturday...
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...concerned about where their food comes from and the journey it takes in order to end up on their dinner plate. These people, known as locavores, are changing the way communities are buying food. In the past, people were unconcerned about where their food came from. "Fresh produce" at the grocery store could easily have traveled thousands of miles in a steamy hot truck and be bathed in chemicals in order to appear a day old when in reality it was picked three months ago; people everywhere would have continued to buy it and not think twice. Times, however, are changing. Eating locally...
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...A locavore, someone who eats locally grown or produced products as much as possible, is becoming a point of controversy. The debate of whether or not the locavore movement would benefit society is something that scientists and environmentalists all over the world are talking about. Although eating food grown from afar has benefits, all people need to synthesize with the locavore movement because of its positive effects on the environment and consumers’ health. To start, the locavore movement helps the environment. While many people buy food produced in another state or country, they don’t realize the long journey to get the food to their grocery store. When food is transported across states or countries, the trucks, planes, or trains in which transport the food is creating “environmental damage”(source A). Although there isn’t a massive...
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...Contemporary Issues In Hospitality Management | | A critical investigation into the enabling and inhibiting factors effecting restaurants propensity to provide local food | | Student No. 09823206 | 8/12/2011 | HH300UWords: 2485 | It is apparent there is growing pressure from global, national and social stakeholders for businesses to become more sustainable in their practises. Although defining sustainable food consumption is fraught with difficulties it is widely accepted to include economic, social, cultural and environmental factors (Reisch 2010). A growing and contentious issue within this framework is the provenance and locality of ingredients within the food-related industries. A change in consumer attitudes towards more ethical consumerism is increasing pressure on food retailers to meet this demand. It could be said restaurants act as a medium for food producers to reach consumer markets, therefore present a suitable context to investigate this topic. Therefore this paper aims to investigate the contributing factors as to why restaurant operators may choose to either adopt or incorporate a ‘local’ ethos, and the rationale to cater for this contemporary trend. The government appears to be making some effort to help the local food sector grow. This could be a result of external pressure from the EU in their commitment to rural affairs (as seen in the recent Common Agricultural Policy reforms CAP 2003-2004) or simply more representative of the general...
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...recent years, the global and local foodshed has changed considerably. Even though the fast food markets such as Mc Donald’s inevitably harness the global resources to increase profit margins, many people do not even realize how and why companies and corporations have changed the agribusiness (Kloppenburg, Hendrickson & Stevenson, 1996, p. 8, 11). More importantly, perhaps, Americans have become more dependent upon the cheap foods and snacks so many fast food businesses offer. It is considerably normal for the average American (family) to eat-out at least three times or greater per week; home prepared meals entail of a high preservative, frozen, fridge to table products. Yet, in my household within the last ten years, our eating habits have changed considerably. Partially coauthored by the socioeconomic impacts of rising petroleum prices, by the knowledge of food production and practices in the United States and abroad and by health considerations, my family largely consumes products from Asia, Caribbean, local farmers and our community gardens (p. 5, 8, 9, 11). We also eat foods seasonally, without exception and buy fair trade products whenever possible. While these consumption patterns might not reflect those of most Americans, and would exemplify what Kloppenburg, Hendrickson & Stevenson (1996) deem alternative producers and eaters; they do not necessarily involve disengagement from the existing food system (p. 8, 9). Rather, they reflect the food system as it has always...
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...The locavore movement is necessary, that's why it has spawned for various reasons, the forefront reasons is the economy, local business support, and the healthiness of local foods. "According to a study by the New Economics Foundation in London, a dollar spent locally generates twice as much income for the local economy" (Maiser. J.). How great would that be? For our economy to become or earn a much desire financial status, all we have to do is eat healthy. Source E agrees that we are helping the economy, " A movement that is gradually reshaping the business of growth and supplying foods to Americans."Economic forces that helped the food production become centralized and rationalized did the same to our population" (Roberts.P.). Being healthy and helping comes and goes, but the wide-spread movement has been around for the past decades. Continued or continuing to shape our lifestyle as well as our economies. Knowing that the economy has a lot to do with the locavore movement it will allow us to make a decent living while giving customers access to healthy, fresh food at affordable prices....
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...want; that means food items too. We like to plan our meals in advance and then go to the grocery and buy the items we need for those meals. We can also just pick out items that are readily available and then plan our meals around those items. What we usually don’t do, is think about where those items come from. Some of the items may come from here in the United States and some may come from other counties. There could be good things and not so good things come from items produced inside and outside of the United States. One of the good things is that the items that are produced and used in the U.S. help our struggling economy. An example of this would be milk that is produced from cows and collected at a farm and brought to a pasteurization plant where it is processed. Since milk spoils so quickly it’s usually sent to a plant that is fairly close to the farm. They test the milk for antibiotics and then it’s pumped into holding tanks and processed in 24 to 72 hours of the time it gets to the plant. It is kept under 45 degrees from the time it gets into the transportation truck until the time it’s processed. After it’s processed it is put in cartons and taken to the store still being kept below 45 degrees. Milk is never shipped to other countries because of the fact it needs to be kept refrigerated. (Milk Processing, 2007) One of the not so good things about products produced in other countries is that they may have to add preservatives to food in order to transport...
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...energy they will have to provide to find food that has been grown locally. They refuse the fact that the positive sides to eating locally out way the negative. For instance, the locavore movement can provide a way to positively affect local economies as well as provide citizens with healthier, fresher food. Food purchased locally will be more nutritious, healthier, and safer than food purchased from far away places because the nutritional value of food decreases over time. Food purchased from stores that sell in bulk or ship in their food over long distances has product that was “... in...
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...The Fresher, The Better It is undeniable that food is essential for survival. What makes food enjoyable is the limitless array of flavors beyond sweet, sour, bitter, or salty. However, what plays a major role in how food tastes is where the food is grown. Depending on freshness, food that is not grown locally will not taste as good as food that is produced locally. Therefore, eating food that has been grown locally will make a difference in one’s diet. Locally grown food will benefit our health and our environment. One will notice the enhanced taste, making the food more flavorful. Locally grown food has many perks including the difference in taste, higher nutritional value, supports the local economy, promotes safer food supplies, and the locals can always tell you where the food came from. The United States is the number one site where obesity is prevalent because of what people eat. It is easy to eat on a low budget depending on the choices individuals make. People become obese when they start making unhealthy choices regarding their diet. If one decides to eat fast food and junk food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it will only be a matter of time before they start noticing health issues. In the article “Is Junk Food Really Cheaper,” Mark Bittman reveals that junk food is not cheaper than a home cooked meal. He argues that you could feed your family a home cooked meal for less than it costs to go to McDonalds. For example, he concedes that “two Big Macs, a cheeseburger...
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...~Reference~CHOICE – The peoples’ Watchdog, Food Miles – Why Eat Local? 2008, 1-4 (links), online, http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/food-and-health/labelling-and-advertising/sustainability/food-miles.aspx | ~Summary~ | ~Analysis~ | A basket of groceries from a supermarket is equivalent to two trips around the world. The term “food miles” simply means the measure of the distance the food travels from production to consumption. CHOICE advocates are calling for localised eating to counter with the huge number of imported food products in the supermarkets.The further a product travels the more fuel is consumed and used for that product to be on the supermarkets shelves and the more fuel is used the more greenhouse gas emissions it makes. By looking at buying food that is grown locally can help to reduce the amount of food miles made by imported food. Arguments have been made on how to reduce food miles. If you were to shop at a local farmers’ market for example, it would support the local food businesses and you would be connecting with the community and there may be beneficial differences. Though locally grown food isn’t always the best food, as some frozen vegetables have higher amounts of vitamins than fresh food does.A recent US study found that food transportation only made up 11 per cent of the food miles total greenhouse gas emissions, sometimes it takes more oil to produce food locally. Local farms and factories where food is grown and produced have more environmental...
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