The book consists of twelve chapters, plus an Epilogue and an Acknowledgements section at the end. Smith and MacKinnon individually write alternating chapters, each of which covers one month from March 2005 to February 2006. In the first chapter MacKinnon tells how his idea for the 100-mile diet began and Smith agrees to try it for one year. They begin symbolically on the first day of Spring, March 21, and define 'local' as 100 miles, a convenient radius that would include the Lower Mainland, the southern half of Vancouver Island, and Whatcom County and Skagit County in Washington state. Their exceptions to this rule include meals eaten while traveling, meals prepared by friends, and business lunches. Their initial month was expensive as they scoured grocery stores for whatever they could find. In the second chapter, Smith describes her and MacKinnon as an unwed urban couple in their early thirties with no children and living in a rented apartment. They recount how eating impacted their relationship before and after the diet, the anonymity of prepackaged foods, the traceability of their diet, and the diets of the indigenous Coast Salish.