Page 57 - Exercise 7A

Page 57 - Exercise 7A

When you take something out of the fridge. Do you ever look at the label and see whether things are from? You might be surprised to see how far some things have traveled. We call this: Food miles. How far something has been transported before it’s eaten. I’m in a supermarket. It’s in Britain, But supermarkets like this are found in most countries. Here you can buy things from all over the world. These pineapples were grown in Florida in the USA. This butter was produced in New Zealand. That’s on the other side of the world. So this butter is been transported over 20,000 km. This fish was caught in the coast of Peru in South America. These tomatoes were grown in Morocco in Africa. And these beef burgers were made in Australia. All these things have been transported to Britain. Some of them like the butter and the beef burgers were probably carried in ships. Because they’re frozen before their transported. But the fresh fruit and vegetables were all flown here. And all the things have been brought from ports and airports to the supermarket and lorries. So a lot of fuel has been burnt to bring these things here. And that isn’t good for the environment. Of course, some things have been bought and sold and moved around the world for centuries. Tea, coffee and chocolate, for example. The trees and bushes that they come from won’t grow in Britain. So they’ve always been imported. But are all these food miles for fresh food needed? I think it would be better if we just add things that you grown locally. That means that we would only have tomatoes, cucumbers and things like that in the summer. But would that really be a problem? Are we killing the planet? Just so that we can have fresh strawberries in winter.