Remember when locavore was a relatively new word in the green lexicon? Now, with the Eat Local Challenge and Revive the Victory Garden movements in full swing, locavoring’s sexier than ever.

Proof of sorts is an article from Grist, appropriately titled eat local, get laid. Grist’s new food advice columnist Lou Bendrick says “pumpkin pie causes such deep, happy associations that its aroma causes sexual arousal in men.” Do farmers’ market pumpkin pie eaters have more sex?

I haven’t tested the theory, but at least one writer’s taken the local food idea a step together to promote local dating. Be a locasexual, urges Barron YoungSmith in Slate, where he makes an environmental case against long-distance relationships in Slate. Is he serious or just being silly? I’m not sure, but I think the best case against long-distance relationships still has to do with the fact that they permit less sex and (consequently?) rarely work out.

Sure, less travel will mean a smaller carbon footprint, but getting overly obsessive about reducing said footprint could lead to a carborexia diagnosis by the NY Times. (via Worsted Witch) Super-extreme carbon cutting’s apparently not so good for romance: “When one half of a couple is less zealous than the other, it can be a strain.” No kidding, if said one half acts like this:

“If you can’t have something in your house that isn’t green or organic, if you can’t eat at a relative’s house because they don’t serve organic food, if you’re criticizing friends because they’re not living up to your standards of green, that’s a problem,” said Elizabeth Carll, a psychologist in Huntington, N.Y., who specializes in anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

The NY Times piece peeved Sharon Astyk, one of the interviewees featured in said article. She complains in Grist that the NY Times published ” a silly article diagnosing a pretend disease” and argues that “Debating which extreme is pathological doesn’t help us find a functional way of life.”

I’m with her to an extent — though I do think a lot of eco-related movements do have the unfortunate tendency to attract people who do seem a bit OCD, whether they be militant vegans or evangelical raw food enthusiasts, who end up giving that subculture an undeserved bad rep.

So maybe we have a new eco challenge: To be green — and normal — while redefining green as normal.

[crossposted on BlogHer]

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