Learn to “talk” the local food talk with these helpful definitions of words commonly used to describe local and healthy food.

100-mile diet: A selection of food products limited to items that are produced within a 100-mile radius of where the consumer lives.

Carbon footprint: The total amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by a product during its lifetime or generated in support of the activity of a human.

Food miles: The distance food travels from its place of production to the place where it is consumed.

Foodshed: A region where local food is both produced and consumed. A foodshed can be defined in a variety of ways, but generally includes the land that the food grows on and the routes it must travel before ending up on consumers’ tables.

Grass-fed: A diet for ruminant livestock consisting of nothing other than mother’s milk, fresh grass, forage and grass-type hay from birth to slaughter; in addition the livestock must have continuous access to pasture during the growing season.

Locavore: A person who exclusively or primarily eats foods produced within a predetermined radius from his or her home. (The New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year in 2007.)

Natural: Food products prepared without the use of artificial flavors or coloring, chemical preservatives or synthetic ingredients and minimally processed in a way that does not fundamentally alter the raw product.

Organic: A farm product grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides.