Kerry Trueman writes on her blog EatingLiberally.com,
 
Stephen Budiansky, self-proclaimed “liberal curmudgeon,” has stuffed together another flimsy, flammable straw man out of boilerplate anti-locavore rhetoric on The New York Times op-ed page, with the patronizing title Math Lessons For Locavores.
 
It’s a familiar formula: start by establishing yourself as the voice of reason by professing your own deep appreciation of the merits of locally grown food as evidenced by the bounty of your own back yard. Then, launch into a diatribe against a mythical army of dour, sour food mile nazis, including ‘celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations,’ whose support for local farmers is based on wildly misguided and naive notions about curbing one’s carbon ‘foodprint.’
 
Throw in a bunch of dubious and/or irrelevant statistics that appear to be truly locally sourced — i.e. pulled out of your own behind. Add a few disingenuous claims about the environmental benefits of industrial agriculture. Wrap things up with a statement so ludicrous that you have to publish it on your own website because hey, The New York Times is only willing to go so far:
 
“…eating food from a long way off is often the single best thing you can do for the environment, as counterintuitive as that sounds.”
 
Budiansky’s argument tars all eat-local proponents with the same broad brush, warning us that we’re turning into a bunch of joyless, sanctimonious schmucks who are flimflamming an unsuspecting public:
 
“For instance, it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley.”
 
Sinful according to whom? As I wrote on page 27 of Rodale’s Whole Green Catalog:
 
“Bear in mind that buying local is often the most low-impact choice — but not always: an out-of-season local tomato grown in a fossil fuel-heated greenhouse could consume more energy than one that’s been field grown and shipped from Mexico.”
 
But hey, what do I know? I’m just one of those local-food advocates who brandishes statistics that are “always selective, usually misleading and often bogus” to back up our “doctrinaire assertions.”