PBS has a series of shows called “e2: the economies of being environmentally conscious” (narrated by Brad Pitt)… and the most recent episode called “Food Miles” was pretty terrific. Terrific how, you might ask? Reason one: because the show focuses on My Philadelphia. Reason two: because of the depth of information it presents on eating local foods.
(what’s weird is that this is a ‘transport’ and not a ‘food’ episode, but so be it.)
Michael Pollan, the writer that is/has been bringing a good deal of visibility to the issues surrounding the American diet and relationship to food, was one of the talking heads. He and his colleagues say that eating locally is good (…most of the time). There are tremendous benefits to eating local foods – it’s usually fresher and tastes better than food that’s been shipped from a distant land – and on top of that, it saves tons of energy in shipping costs. And usually, local farmers aren’t using the petroleum-based pesticides that big factory farms do. So, eating locally saves fuel in 2 ways, and helps local small farmers to boot.
However, it’s funny that Michael and the others kept saying “most of the time” it’s good to eat local. They didn’t really talk about when or why it’s not good to eat local… and understandably so, since it’s only a 30 minute show and they need to stay positive and give the viewers a relatively easy-to-digest view on the issue. But based on that nuance, it is obvious that eating local has a few issues… or maybe, that it’s difficult to quantify when and where one should consider eating non-locally. That’s where things get complicated. Most of all, it’s unclear how to measure carbon footprints for most food, be they local foods or otherwise. A great article in the New Yorker from last year talks about this, focusing on Tesco, a British grocery store. Tesco proposed labeling foods with the carbon footprint, which has proven to be a daunting task. Do you include the energy it takes fertilize the goods, to bottle them, or even the energy it will take in your home kitchen to cook them? Does it sometimes make sense to ship certain foods all the way from New Zealand? Sometimes it does!
So, in all, it seems like “eat local, most of the time” is just about right. Check out the local farmers market! Happy eating.
