We get plenty of frozen fruit and veg which are lots tastier than canned produce. Why can for canning’s sake, sounds irrational to me.

Food is a precious commodity – it makes sense to grow crops where they grow best and export them, and efficiently grown food is better for the environment….

In the first quote you take from Ms. Webb’s article, “least healthy” quite obviously refers to the “most highly processed food” portion of the sentence, not the “meat and dairy”. Sure you agree that highly processed foods are less healthy than fresh, whole foods?

In the second quote, she certainly doesn’t suggest that local produce could be GROWN through the winter. Rather, she’s suggesting that the emphasis that the large Canadian growers have placed on exports have led to the closure of many “freezing and canning processors”, which WOULD allow for us to enjoy “local produce through the winter” – albeit in canned form, as well as buying fresh imports as needed.

Which brings me to the ol’ “Where could be grown lemons, oranges, grapefruit”, etc. argument that you always seem to pull out in these situations. Do you really think that every proponent of local food thinks that EVERYTHING should be grown locally? If you actually took the time to do some real research or have an actual rational conversation with someone about it, you would learn that the point of eating local food is NOT to eat EXCLUSIVELY local food, but to simply eat what can be grown locally when it’s being grown locally. Every “locavore” I know is still happy to drink coffee, or eat citrus fruit, or even *gasp* buy imported produce in the dead of winter! But when we’re in the middle of our local harvest season, doesn’t it make sense to eat as much fresh and local produce as possible?

And finally – I’m always amused by your constant insistence that eating locally grown food is exclusively the purview of people on the “left”, given that the personal politics of the many local food fans that I know run the gamut from right to left and back again. But hey, why let the facts get in the way of another poorly researched and spite-filled rant?