Eating local is important to me: it improves the quality of the food I eat, it puts me in touch with the seasons, and it keeps my food dollars in the local economy. But sometimes, I find myself on what you might call an eating tangent. I’ll be strolling through the Brooklyn Flea or a specialty store and see locally made artisan chocolates, coffee roasted within walking distance of my apartment, candies made by a member of my CSA. Into my shopping bag they go, and then I stop: there is no possible way that chocolate is local. Come to think of it, the coffee probably came from Central America, and who knows where the sugar for that taffy was grown. Is “grown” even what you say for sugar? I still have a lot to learn…

“Eating local” sounds straightforward, especially if you have strict boundaries: a 250-mile diet means eating things grown within 250 miles, got it, no problem. But if I look at the reasons why I eat local (better quality, supporting my local economy, more direct contact with producers) there are a lot of locally made products that support those goals even though they use ingredients from far away places. What’s an ethical eater to do?

I can’t speak for everyone, but this eater says GO FOR IT! Splitting hairs is super fun if you’re the kind of person who’s into absolutes, but as I wrote in my last piece I’m more interested in incremental positive change. Sure, buying locally made chocolate means I’m supporting a multinational food chain. But I can pretty much guarantee you that the local chocolatiers I buy from have much better relationships with their suppliers than Hershey does (if you want to get really sad about Halloween candy, read this piece about large scale chocolate production and child slavery). I can feel confident that local coffee roasters and candy makers pay their employees no less than minimum wage (I would guess most pay more in order to attract skilled workers) and because they are small companies working in small batches, the quality is fantastic. When I buy locally made products, my dollars are going to workers and business owners who live in my city, and if I’d like to talk to them about their fair trade standards for the foreign producers they work with, I can, because they’re right here.

I’m glad to have spent some time trying to eat 100% local, because now I notice things like ingredients that must have been grown elsewhere. But just like I can support local farmers who are producing the kinds of produce, meat, and dairy I want to be eating, I feel perfectly justified supporting the local foodmakers whose ingredients aren’t as local but whose hearts are in the same place. Besides, who are we kidding? Chocolate and coffee are two of the main reasons to keep living.

Here are some of my favorite local producers who use carefully sourced, sometimes imported, raw materials.

Mast Brothers is making what they call “craft chocolate” in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Check out this video about one of the farms they source from in the Dominican Republic, and watch this other video about getting their cocoa beans delivered to NYC in the first commercial sailing vessel to unload here since 1939. Another of my local favorites is Nunu Chocolates, which makes chocolate covered graham crackers with fleur de sel that I have described as the closest thing to crack that you can sell legally.

There are plenty of Brooklyn-based coffee roasters. Crop to Cup, Gorilla Coffee, Café Grumpy, Oslo Coffee Roasters, and Brewklyn Grind are all roasting small batches of coffee in my fair borough, with plenty of Fair Trade, Direct Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and Organic options among them. Coffee comes up over and over when people talk about non-local foods they can’t give up. I’d say don’t worry about it too much; just buy the good stuff roasted close to where you live, from someone who can tell you a bit about how and where they buy their beans.

For candy that’s as local and seasonal as it gets, I look to Liddabit Sweets, who got started at the Brooklyn Flea.  Their website says over and over that they use local, seasonal ingredients whenever possible, and they come up with unique flavor combinations like Apple Cider Caramels, Barley/Honey Lollipops, and Chocolate Stout-Gingerbread Caramels made with Brooklyn Brewery’s famous Chocolate Stout.

It may be too late for this Valentine’s Day, and it’s several months too early for next Halloween, but next time you’re looking for a caffeine fix or a sugary treat, don’t give up just because not every single ingredient isn’t locally grown. You can still make a big difference by buying products that are locally made.