When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically traveled at least 1,500 miles. On the first day of spring, 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia. Their 100-Mile Diet soon turned from idea to a movement that has been emulated by people across the world.

Alisa Smith is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for Reader's Digest. James MacKinnon is the author of the acclaimed narrative nonfiction book Dead Man in Paradise.