No peanut butter, no tea, no olive oil, no bananas - several thousand conscientious people in Atlantic Canada are about to try out a fully local diet.
All have pledged the "Eat Atlantic Challenge," promising that on Friday they will restrict their food choices to products from the four Eastern provinces.
"This is sort of a formal statement of a commitment I made many years ago," said Leonard Vassallo, a participant in Corner Brook. "We should encourage people to buy local for environmental reasons."
The sustainability co-ordinator for the College of the North Atlantic, a keen vegetable gardener for decades, doesn't expect much of a problem fulfilling his pledge. But he recognizes that local meats, bread and other products can be hard to find in parts of the region.
"[The pledge] would be very hard for a lot of people," Mr. Vassallo said.
This is a good time of year to be eating local, as markets overflow with good produce. But anyone trying to source locally for the first time will have to take a closer look at everything heading for their plates. The fine print shows that pickles at one chain store in Halifax are product of India and bay scallops sold at another place were raised in China.
People vary, though, in terms of the strictness with which they intend to interpret the pledge. Some plan to skip their morning coffee on Friday because the beans come from elsewhere. Others believe it is acceptable to buy these from a local business that has roasted them.
"Obviously we're not going to be policing this but I think, for one day, people can be pretty strict with what they eat," suggested Mark Higgins, a spokesman for Co-op Atlantic, which has organized the pledge drive.
By midday yesterday about 3,000 people had signed on at eatatlantic.ca/index.cfm. Nova Scotia was leading in absolute numbers but Prince Edward Island was far ahead in per capita terms.
"We're thinking of the environment, we're thinking of the community," said Luke den Haan, a tomato grower in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia whose family has taken the pledge. "If our province can produce it we buy it."
