To celebrate the birthday of Pink Ukulele on Saturday, we went out for dinner in the City, at a restaurant called 100 Mile Cafe, which had been highly recommended by a work colleague of PU...
This restaurant serves food which it has mostly sourced from within a one hundred mile radius of Melbourne, with the exception of things like coffee and tea which it is not possible to grow in this climate.
The concept of "Food Miles" has hit the news recently, as a result of increasing concern at the amount of fossil fuels used to get food from it's source to the end user. However, this concept does not take into account the amount of energy taken to produce the product in the first place, and that an overall "Carbon Footprint" might be a better way of measuring the effect of this food being consumed in a particular place.
Research recently released indicates that low energy input industries such as the dairy industry in New Zealand, and maybe also Australia have a lower carbon footprint when their products are consumed in Europe. This even takes into account the fuel consumed in transporting these products from one side of the world to the other.
So, getting back to the meal, it was a splendid one, and it makes sense to source food from the region in which the restaurant is situated, whether or not you go along with the theories.
The French have the eating regionally concept down to a fine art, and it seems to me that we should be following these practices wherever possible. Firstly, because food that doesn't have to travel too far should be fresher, and secondly although we haven't developed regional dishes here in the same way as the French have, it would encourage development of regional cuisines.
The only trouble I have, very selfishly, with this concept is that it might make prawns a much rarer treat for me, but perhaps if we all adopted the regime on a global basis, maybe we would not export our best crayfish, fruit and vegetables to other countries. We would mainly eat what is seasonal, and produced or caught in our own region, except where it is not feasible to do so.
As a relatively rich nation, perhaps it is somewhat of a luxury to be able to choose a restaurant with this ethos. In other parts of the world, people who are starving don't have these choices, and it is a responsibility of human kind to provide least cost food to all parts of the population. Sometimes, doing that would not be compatible with least food miles, or least carbon footprint, but may be a price we have to pay.
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