50:50 Challenge
The aim: To reduce the environmental impact of our food choices
The challenge: To eat food produced solely within a 50-mile radius of Peebles for the month of October (the 50:50 challenge)
In October 2009, 70 people in the Tweeddale area of the Scottish Borders took part in a local food challenge. Allowing themselves 3 “exceptions” (treats they continued to eat outside of the 50-mile radius, e.g. chocolate, wine or bananas), volunteers joined together in a real celebration of local food.
To help people with their challenge, TweedGreen, the local transition town community group, produced a local food directory, outlining where people could buy local foods. We are lucky in Peebles that there is still a thriving butcher, greengrocers and several delis, who were all keen to support the challenge and ensure a good supply of local goods.
One of the most common resistances to buying more local food, is that people feel it would mean making a considerable change to their cooking and eating habits, and they would not know where to start. As part of the 50:50 project we produced a mini recipe book, shared by email amongst participants. 71% of participants said they used it, with yummy recipes, such as apple cake with local honey or beetroot flan or pearl barley risotto.
We hosted apple picking days, had a weekly information stand outside a local theatre and meeting place, enjoyed a fantastic launch with Andrew Whitley from the Real Bread Campaign giving us a demonstration of how to make sourdough, were grateful to a local hotel who put together a “local Heroes” menu for the month (and have continued to offer it) when we’d had enough of cooking (!), had a presence at the Peebles Food Festival, put together a local muesli base which continues to be available at Whitmuir Organics who were very supportive of the challenge, and celebrated our successes with a Final Banquet.
Did it have an impact? Well, we certainly had fun celebrating what local food there is available (much more than you might imagine), local retailers commented they had seen an increase in their customer numbers, 60% of participants found that eating more locally also reduced the amount of food waste they produced and over 95% of participants said they will continue to eat more local foods as a result of the challenge. We’re excited about what the future holds, we’re looking to expand this project to a wider audience now and have received funding to help us.