Foodfacts and foodfiction

By cutting our meat consumption to practically zero, eating mostly what's in season and buying organic food whenever we have the choice, we thought we were doing our share to help the environment... you know "verbeter de wereld begin bij jezelf." But we missed something... we don't buy local food.

Apparently (and kinda logically when you think of it) there are hidden ecological, social and economic consequences of food production, which is made comprehendable for the brainless consumers by calculating 'food miles.' Put simply, food miles are the measure of the distance a food travels from field to plate. This travel adds substantially to the carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to climate change - which is why food miles matter.

However, it's not just about imported food and traveled miles, it's about centralised systems of supermarkets that have taken over from local and regional markets (using centralised depots and transporting systems), it's about the way the food processing industry works (ingredients travel around the country from factory to factory, before they make their way to the shops), it's about comparative labour costs (British fish is now sent to China for processing, then sent back to the UK to be sold), it's about us travelling further for our shopping (using the car more often to do it) and it's about waste (which must be transported from your home to a landfill site). It's not about calculating every mile your food has travelled, it's about thinking logically when you go shopping. Use some kind of energy-labeled-food-calender, or buy what's in season.

But, what to do when you're surrounded by 30 miles of habitation and no farmers? It takes a whole lot of food miles (by car) to get a potato...

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