Food for Thought
Food in the United States travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to fridge, according to the Worldwatch Institute. Shipping food cross-country leaves a large carbon footprint and is becoming more expensive as transportation costs rise.
Naturally, buying local is a remedy. But let’s face it, in the Northeast, there are foods that can not be produced year round and must travel in order to reach our tables. Here at the Skinny Pancake, we continually evaluate our choices when it comes to our menu & the foods we purchase. Our goal is to ensure our choices are socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. While we can’t source local avocados for your favorite Crêpadilla or get fresh local tomatoes in December for the Cannelloni Crêpe, we do question, is there a better way? We are still honing in best practices and always up for an interesting read on the latest food news. Jonny Adler found this article on food systems in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09scholz.html?_r=1&ref=opinion.
What do you think?
December 17th, 2009 at 10:47 am
The reason I thought this article was so interesting is that it challenges what you would think is the best seafood to eat. You would think fresh is better than frozen, for the simple fact that once something is frozen you have to use energy to keep it cold. This article suggests otherwise.
There’s lots of counter-intuitive information like this about our local food system. For another example–I heard that if you live in New England, French wine is greener than Californian wine. How is that possible when Californian wine is so much closer? What I heard is that the means of transportation is often more important than the distance of travel. French wine is usually brought over on ships, which is, right after trains, the most efficient form of goods transportation. By contrast, Californian wine is often brought on trucks.
Another interesting example is the entire concept of a supermarket. When I think of eating local, it feels “greener” to go to a farm and get my food directly from a farmer. As it turns out, that would have every person driving their inefficient vehicle to the farm, rather than each farmer taking their efficiently-packed vehicle full of goods to market, where people drive a short distance in their inefficient vehicle. Certainly, there’s a lot of ways that most supermarkets today could improve their sustainability, but the whole concept of shipping food in efficiently-packed big trucks to a central location is something we all should feel good about. Thus the goal should be making supermarkets greener, not getting rid of supermarkets.
More often than not, eating locally and sustainably is more complicated and at times counter-intuitive than I expect, so paying attention to articles like this one is a great way to learn how to do it better.