The Green Fork is the official blog of the Eat Well Guide. Click here to Find Good Food.

Oregon’s Statesman Journal reported earlier this month about a guy who abandoned a year-long effort to eat only local food. After 8 months of sticking to the diet, he bought a banana.

Justin Rothboeck told the paper that while sticking to the regimen, he’d felt he was violating the very ideals that locavores espouse, spewing carbon by driving all over the region to find items grown close to home. Until he abandoned the quest, Rothboeck had been so scrupulous that he even refrained from buying jam if it contained pectin that hadn’t been locally sourced.

During the past few years there have been a number of popular books documenting undertakings like Rothboeck’s, most notably Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” and Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon’s “Plenty.” These accounts always start with definitions of what the authors have decided to call “local”, and also include lists of caveats. Each member of Kingsolver’s family chooses one food for which they’ll make exceptions: Kingsolver picks olive oil, while her husband refuses to live without coffee. Smith and McKinnon decide that anything already in their cupboards is fair game, regardless of where it was produced, and they resolve to be gracious and accept what’s offered to them when dining with friends.

The fact is, we’ve strayed so far from simple, common sense diets based on the foods that grow closest to where we live that it’s less convenient to find sustenance from our immediate environment than it is to shop at the local supermarket. The very fact that aspiring locavores need to create definitions and rules is a symptom of just how awkward such a quest can be.

But the intention to eat locally can be much simpler and more straightforward if we stay away from all-or-nothing terms. This is an instance of the proverbial perfect acting as an enemy of the good. If you decide to be so scrupulous that you won’t eat jam that contains pectin produced outside of your bioregion, then it’s understandable that you’d give up and go buy a banana. These quests make great stories, but they’re not particularly practical for most of us on a daily basis.

Here are some guidelines for a more modest, attainable style of local eating: Pay attention to what grows in your area, and look for opportunities to base meals on these foods. Learn to enjoy seasonal ingredients. They make sense: beets and potatoes need to be cooked for a while, and that process makes your house a little warmer during the cold, winter months. Read signs at the supermarket that tell you where their fruits and vegetables are grown. It’s still better to buy something produced a few hundred rather than a few thousand mile from home. And, of course, support your local farmers’ market.

local food, seasonal food, Justin Rothboeck, Devra Gartenstein