Green Tip - Food Miles

You’re shopping at Carrefour, searching the endless supply of food and a thought occurs to you that’s never been there before:

“Where does all this food come from?”

Well, glad you asked. In Carrefour, almost none of it comes from Taiwan.

Enter the day and age of the 3000 mile Caesar salad. You’ve got greens from the Caribbean, Croutons made from Canadian bread, Bacon from the US and the premium salad dressing is bottled in India by a European company.  Isn’t globalization grand?

Well…yes…and no. Sure, it’s great that we’re all being lifted up together (ahem, some slower than others), but now we’re stuck with food that just took a flight half way around the world before it gets to us. I don’t know about you, but after I’ve flown from Toronto, I’m not very tasty.

Increasingly today food is flown in instead of shipped on boats in order to preserve freshness. This is a problem because flying is more than 170x more polluting than shipping by boat.

Everyone knows that if you eat an apple right off the tree it’s gonna taste better than the crap you get in stores, yet we forget to make sure we’re getting what we want.  Fortunately for us, Taiwan is blessed with wonderful fruit and some interesting vegetables.

And so we get to FOOD MILES. It’s just what it sounds like, it’s the number of miles food takes before it gets to you plate. Food miles are important because the farther your food travels; the more pollution is produced to get it to you. Not to mention that it’s more likely to be genetically modified or contain preservatives in order to help it stay fresh over long journeys.

There’s really no argument for eating a pineapple from the Caribbean when the pineapples here are so good. But you have to know for sure, and that’s what we’re here to help with. Here’s a helpful guide to some of the major food producing areas of the world. You can try looking it up yourself, or get a clerk to help you. Just show them this:

Where is this from? 這是重哪裡來的…
台灣   Taiwan   Táiwān
非洲   Africa   Fēizhōu
加勒比   Caribbean   Jiālèbǐ
歐洲   Europe   Ōuzhōu
美國   USA   Měiguó
加拿大   Canada   Jiānádà
俄羅斯   Russia   Éluósī
中國   China   Zhōngguó
 澳大利亞   Australia   Àodàlìyà
南美洲  South America    Nán Měizhōu

To read more about this try the BBC’s dossier on Food Miles  at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/foodmiles.shtml

Here’s a nifty food miles calculator:
http://www.organiclinker.com/food-miles.cfm