Food Miles Cookbook

Food miles are the distance food has travelled from its point of origin to you. In America, retail experts calculate that the average distance for any one item of food is around 1,100 miles. The contents of the average European shopping trolley travel 2,200 miles.

—Joanna Blythman, "Eat local and sever the food chains," The Independent, October 23, 1993

Food Miles Pretest Survey - please take the survey before you read any of the links; this is not a graded survey

Food Miles Cookbook

Each student will submit a recipe to contribute to the Food Miles Cookbook. The recipes will be submitted electronically, but the calculations will be submitted with the rubric on paper.

Food Miles Recipes

Food Miles Calculation Sheet - this sheet is written up in the format of how calculations should be shown; you may want to print it out and write on it or look at it as you set your work up

Food Miles Sample - this is a sample of how your project should look and the format that is expected; use 12 point, Times New Roman when you type your recipe

Resources

Local & Seasonal

What’s Fresh Near You? - Find out when your recipe’s ingredients are in season, scroll to “Northern California” and then select the month to get a list of what ingredients are in season.

The Local Food Wheel - offers Bay Area local and seasonal food choices

Buy Fresh Buy Local Guide - enter your zip code and see what foods are locally grown near you

Marin Farmer’s Market - contains recipes, local markets and seasonal guide

Locavores - celebrating locally grown food in the Bay Area

Food Miles Calculator

If you aren’t sure if something if grown locally, you can look at the Local Food Wheel above or do an Internet query. Type in things like, “Growing avocados in California.” These links below help you to find out how many miles your food travels.

Food Miles calculator - type in your location and what country your food came from

Geobytes - type in your city and the city where (you think) the food came from and it will give you the distance

How To ...

Make salt

Cure olives