Food miles - not such a clear-cut issue

It's stiry fry for tea tonight and you stop by the supermarket on your way home to pick up your ingredients - a pack of mange tout, baby sweetcorn, beansprouts and pak choi. However, when you get home and happen to glance at where these veg have actually come from, not one was grown in Europe.

The term food miles is one which is increasingly heard and refers to how far an item has travelled from production to the consumer. You've only just got to grips with reading the nutritional content on labels and now you're being asked to consider where it's come from too. So why is this an important issue?

Possible concerns relating to food miles include

• The energy used to transport them thousands of miles across the globe and the associated carbon emissions.
• With time the vitamin content of fruit and veg can deteriorate, so by the time they reach you they aren't as nutritious as when they were first picked.
• Not supporting British producers - why buy plums from South Africa or Chile in September when you can have home-grown?

However, before you swear to never buy anything produced outside our shores again, consider this

• The energy cost of producing and transporting tomatoes from Spain is actually less than those produced in the UK. How? The climate in Spain means far less additional energy is needed in their production. So buying British won't necessarily mean it is more environmentally friendly.
• Driving ten miles further each week to a farm for their potatoes rather than buying those from your local supermarket, is likely to generate far more carbon emissions.
• Farmers in less economically developed countries are often reliant on exporting their produce, so without our demand for more exotic fruit and veg, their livelihood would suffer.

So like many issues, food miles isn't black and white. There might be some produce you decide to buy that was produced locally and others you are happy to buy from further afield.