Buying sustainable produce, eating local can help ease pressure on the planet

In a bid to get Canadians to consider their impact on the planet, World Wildlife Fund Canada has launched a campaign to encourage people to not only eat local but also to use food as a springboard to see how they're affecting the planet.

Some 60 chefs from across the country who have a passion for creating dishes using local-sourced ingredients for their restaurant clientele are involved in the campaign, called Localicious. The restaurants are offering a fixed-price menu or in some cases a single dish prepared from ingredients that are local and sustainable.

Food was an obvious choice to help people look at the pressure we are putting on the planet and how that can be reduced, explained Josh Laughren, director of communications for WWF-Canada. "Everybody eats. And food is also a significant contributor to our impact on the planet through carbon emissions and also through sustainability issues such as seafood that we eat that may be coming from unsustainable sources."

"Local is in and of itself better because you're reducing the distance the food travels to get to your plate and therefore all the greenhouse gases associated with that. The sustainable part is equally as important."

Restaurants in six cities - Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver - are participating in the 17-day celebration that runs to Oct. 18. WWF-Canada gets a donation of $2 minimum per meal from participating restaurants to help in its conservation work.

Localicious is a way to involve restaurants in promoting the local food angle and a way for WWF to promote those restaurants that have long been in the forefront of buying and serving local foods, said Laughren from his Toronto office.

"Historically there's the view that often in Canada we have that something from away is better than something we produce here. It's part of our cultural insecurity sometimes. But having the best chefs in the country carrying the message that local foods are as good or sometimes, because they're fresh, better than imported foods are just as stylish, just as tasty and just as classy is just a great way to get the message out."

Calgary-born chef Paul Rogalski, who co-owns Rouge Restaurant, has embraced the eat-local concept and was also recognized in the spring for his leadership and support of organic and sustainable cuisine by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

"I think a lot of people are understanding that the right thing to do is to eat more locally and I know farmers markets in Calgary have been extremely successful over the past few years. It's almost spiritual for some people to go and get fresh produce and meet the people that are growing it ... and I have to be honest that I fall into that category myself," he said in an interview.

Rogalski has had a garden on the restaurant's property for the past six years, growing such produce as lettuce, herbs, arugula and fruit like crabapples, raspberries, gooseberries and an alpine variety of strawberries.

"This summer we kept ourselves fully sustained with our lettuce and herbs that we grew out in our garden. That's a wonderful thing that you can never be sold out and that you can take a pair of scissors and just go out and cut it," he said.

A recent killing frost had staff scrambling to get everything out of the ground and use the herbs to make pestos and vinegars. Some herbs were dehydrated and the fruits were turned into juice. In the case of the crabapples, the juice was used for vinaigrette or sorbet.