Eating Alaska: A Vegetarian Meets Local Food

What happens to a vegetarian in a place where the most available local food focuses on meat? Over the last thirty years, a growing wave of vegetarians has shifted what large food providers produce for that market. No longer do vegetarians need to make their own tofu and go to obscure and niche vegetarian stores to buy specialty products. Vegetarians are a large and powerful market searching for sustainable and ethical sources of protein.

Soy, wheat and nut products created from processed grains and seeds have become common fodder in many households. To replace meat in houses that are used to the standard North American ways of cooking, there are processed and packaged products galore, and many of them are faux meat. Chicken slices that aren't chicken, pepperoni that is good for a pizza but made out of soy, ground brown bits that look like they could be meat, but aren't.

Vegetarians are vegetarians for many different reasons. Some want to focus on plant products for health, others prefer to eat low on the food chain, some dislike large-scale methods of farming animals, others have ethical qualms about eating any animals, however they are raised. Many people have a complex mixture of reasons for becoming and staying vegetarian.

But there is a growing movement to eat locally as well. Eating locally allows us to see more clearly the ways in which our food is raised and the local environmental impacts of that food. While many locavores focus on vegetarian eating, there are many who are eat animals as well. Odd as it might seem, some of these people eat meat for environmental reasons.

Eating Alaska is a film about just that quandary. This film from New Day Films is the tale of a vegetarian put into the position of dressing, cooking and even hunting for deer, fish and other wild game. She explores what local food and hunting mean to those who live in Alaska and develops an appreciation of the culture that surrounds local food.

For those who see local food as a way to self-reliance and community development, expanding our understanding of what local food can be is a potentially challenging but life-changing experience.

Whether it's food that is wild, hunted or gathered, or simply food that is beyond our usual fare in the grocery aisle, connecting with local food can be an experience that transforms the way we think about the ethics and origins of what is on our plate.