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Are you all set for the Food for Change Challenge? I’m not sure I am, but I’m going to make it work.

If you weren’t here last week, when I proposed the challenge after seeing Food Inc., here is the plan (although I’ve changed my mind on how to choose the winner).

1. Skip HFCS and go local for animal protein. Try to go all week, Aug. 3-9, without eating two categories of industrial food’s biggest and most-disturbing products: high-fructose corn-syrup and ordinary supermarket meat, poultry, milk, eggs or fish. If you use processed foods, read ingredients labels carefully to avoid HFCS. Extraordinary—and permissible for the challenge—meat, poultry, milk and eggs are those whose producer (that is, the farmer or rancher that raised them) can be identified. That’s usually going to be a local or regional supplier. Extraordinary fish includes wild-caught salmon and other fish that are Best Choices on the Seafood Watch list from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

2. Write about your experiences. You can do it by posting comments on this or other Food for Change Challenge posts I put up or by writing about it on your own blog. If you do the latter, send me a link via the Foodperson.com contact form by August 11. I’ll write a post August 12 providing links to the blog entries as well as to the blog comments.

3. Win Local Burger t-shirt. This really nice shirt (organic cotton, size L, but I’d called it an M) can be yours. Last week I said I’d pick the best comment or blog post. I’ve decided that may be too hard, so instead I’ll put all writers’ names in a hat or something similar and draw one. Local Burger is a Lawrence business that specializes in burgers made from locally sourced, all-grassfed beef, elk, buffalo and pastured pork, chicken and turkey.

That’s it. Let me know if I’m forgetting something! I’m hoping to post tomorrow a list of sources for locally produced food in the Douglas County, Kansas, area, which probably will spill over into the Kansas City area to the east and to various parts west. If you have suggestions, you can wait till you see the list, or let me know now in the comments section below or on the contact form.

Let the industrial avoidance begin!