links for 2006-09-16

Wow, I disagree with everything that Nora said. I've always gotten small dessert spoons, been happy with the amount of salt in the food, and ask for pepper on my salad. She sounds like a brat in that essay.

THANK YOU for posting the Food Miles bit. I've had a lot of friends and colleagues over the years extolling the whole "local foods" movement, and the first article beautifully states my counterargument. Good to see actual studies backing up the commonsense economics.

There are a few points in the "food miles" article, which make it kind of similarly "propaganda", as reports the article compleins about.

One thing is that the article itself has no links to the original studies.

From that article, one must conclude that the study was made on items which (in their final form) travel relatively well (frozen lamb, apples, onions, processed dairy stuff (I guess that's cheese)), so that it can be transported in insulated (or refrigerated) containers by sea. And then, it does not really matter if the goods take 2 months to get the the UK stores.

Considering that, the study is correct that the transport energy per unit is lower than if it were transported in small quantities in a series of vans and lorries.

I guess that the article is also correct about the lower intensity of the production in New Zealand. The question is, however, to which extent this "grey" energy affects the complete energy balance.

It would be interesting to look at the energy balance for fresh produce which had to be shipped by air freight. And even then, I think I would prefer to wait until May to get "locally grown" plant-ripened strawberries at the green market.