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Who Travels More, You or Your Food?
October 16 2009 by Casey Bower
Lately, it seems that every time I sit down to eat someone is asking "is the food local?" Where do you get your tomatoes? Are apples in season right now?
Not long ago, price ruled the market, and people just wanted to get their produce, fruit and meat for the lowest price... but, things are changing, and fast!
Where it was once "cool" to not eat your veggies, it is now "hip" to not only eat your veggies, but grow them too... or at least know where they come from. The garden is cool again, understanding seasons is in and eating exclusively local meals is the bees knees.
Why?
There are many reasons to eat locally other than the amazingly fresh taste of a vine ripened tomato or a peach still warm from the sun, but the one reason that I think is appropriate to discuss on youmustbetrippin.com is your foods carbon footprint.
This blog is about travel, we enjoy getting out of town, out of the state, and even out of the country. In our travels, we get to see the wonder and the beauty of the world, and we know how important it is to maintain that beauty. There is an important motto for those who travel responsibly, it is, "Leave no trace." The idea of this motto is that you will leave each site that you visit just as you found it so that the next person, or the next generation can enjoy it exactly as you did. As travelers, it is important to look at ways that we can help to make our carbon footprint smaller while still enjoying the wonder and adventure of Getting out of Dodge.
Here's the question, who travels more, you or your food?
Example: I was at the store, looking for an orange, but all that I could find were oranges from Chile. I have nothing against Chile, but I live in Phoenix, AZ where citrus trees line the street, you could literally reach out the window while driving and grab an orange... On the way home, I stopped at a friend's house, and did just that, grabbed an Orange out of his tree! Now, let's think about those two oranges for a minute. The Chilean Oranges traveled roughly 5,300 miles to get to the market in my town. My neighbor's house is roughly 3 miles away from where I live. Imagine how much gas it takes to get those oranges 5,300 miles VS the gas it takes me to go and get a local Orange. Also, the Chilean Orange probably had to be frozen since it probably took them over a week to arrive, blah blah blah... that story is for a different blog, this one is strictly about travel.
Fun with Math: Now take that example and expand it to every piece of fruit, every vegetable, and all of the other items that wind up on your plate. On average, ingredients in American meals contain food from 5 other countries, and the food on the plate has traveled around 1,500 miles. At 3 of these meals a day, your food could be traveling as much as 234,000 miles a year.
Using these figures, you would need to travel across the USA at least 10 times a week to equal the distance that your food travels.
If this is new to you, I hope that the Energy efficient light bulb is going off in your head right now. As travelers, we can drastically reduce our carbon travel footprint not by traveling less, but by eating foods that do less traveling. After all, we benefit from sightseeing and traveling on the open road, our food does not.
If you are interested in learning more about eating local, check out slowfoodusa.org or localharvest.org to find a local farmers market.
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