Sustainable food

All food makes a journey from source to consumer. This journey is calculated in food miles.

Food with more food miles requires more energy and is less sustainable. Food with fewer food miles requires less energy and is more sustainable.

In this article you can learn:

• what food miles are
• the difference between processed and fresh food
• how food production can impact the environment
• how we can make more sustainable food choices

This resource is suitable for Health and Wellbeing for primary school learners.

In this video, the Great Spoon explains what food miles are and why local food is often a more sustainable option.

Food miles measure the distance a food has travelled to get to your plate using transport that produces carbon emissions. Some food travels from the farm it is grown on to a shop to be sold. Other foods travel to a factory first and then to a supermarket or shop.

Food that is grown and produced locally is a more sustainable option for our environment.

We have access to food products from all over the world. For example, cheese from Europe and bananas from South America. Almost anything can be imported.

Processed foods will contain a list of different ingredients. Each ingredient will already have travelled some distance before they are all mixed together.

For example, a prepackaged fruit salad from the supermarket could contain strawberries from Scotland, pineapple from Costa Rica and grapes from Egypt.

• Each of these foods created food miles on their way to the factory where they were prepared and packed.
• They then gained more food miles on their journey to the supermarket.
• Finally, further food miles would have been added if a customer travelled to and from the supermarket by car or bus.

Learn more about food processing: What is food processing?

Fresh foods gain miles when they are transported from where they are grown to where they will be bought by the consumer.

For example, pears from Argentina will have travelled over 7,000 miles to reach the UK. All the energy needed to transport the pears from Argentina creates a carbon footprint.

We need energy to grow, produce and transport food. Producing some food uses more energy than others. Lots of our energy comes from fossil fuels which all produce carbon emissions.

Learn more about energy here.

Carbon emissions are gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. These are released into the Earth’s atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels to release energy. Carbon emissions are a cause of global warming and some cause pollution.

Global warming is part of climate change. It means the increase in overall temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon emissions acts like a greenhouse surrounding our Earth. They prevent heat escaping from the Earth’s atmosphere and this makes the planet warmer.

Our food choices have an impact on our environment.

By looking out for stickers and packaging that tells us where our food has come from, we can try to reduce our food miles by buying local, sustainable food.

We can also eat less of foods that it takes a lot of energy to produce.

Examples of food that use a lot of energy

• meat and dairy
• food that is grown in heated greenhouses
• heavily processed foods

Here is a list of key words about sustainable food and food miles:

• sustainable - if a food source is sustainable it means it can continue to be used without running out. For example, if we always fish in the same part of the sea and never allow the fish population to breed and grow again the fish supply in that area will eventually run out.
• local - a place close by, somewhere near to where you live. A shop in your town would be your local shop as opposed to a shop you had to travel to.
• imported foods - foods that have been brought into a country from another country to be sold.

Try this short true-or-false quiz to test your knowledge on sustainable food production.

Think about your favourite foods. Investigate where each of the ingredients came from and calculate their food miles.