Food Mile Myths?

There was quite a glut of interesting news about eating local and food miles this weekend. First, an article appeared in the the Times of London that summed up the work of Chris Goodall, author of How To Live A Low-Carbon Life. He calculated that creating food took so much energy, that the number of calories it takes you to walk some place actually are responsible for more carbon emissions than driving that same distance.

The other numbers appeared in an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. A New Zealand study found that despite the emphasis on local food, it is often more carbon efficient to eat food shipped to you. Oftentimes, local food is grown in places where it is not supposed to grow, thus taking more energy to force it into ripeness than shipping it would.

Obviously, you can probably find fault with both of these numbers, but they should serve as a reminder that a lot of the ideas people have about living a less impactful life might need a lot more study and refinement before we get them right.