A Food Miles Barcode Reader

[StuartDH]

I was talking to someone the other day about how useful it would be to have a food miles barcode reader. It could be like a small USB pen that holds the information about barcodes on food. To enable you to quickly shop for items in a supermarket and total up the food miles.

Is there such a device already out there?

[goosey]

It would be such a good idea to have that sort of information stored on the bar code with everything else.

I live in Holland and what puzzles me is that- for example, when I buy strawberries in the summer, that the super markets here are flush with Spanish strawberries which are cheaper than Dutch ones. But when I was back in England on Holiday we were buying Dutch strawberries because they were cheaper than English ones! It's crazy.

The shelf life is always better for locally produced food as they haven't been shipped huge distances at regulated temperatures and when food gets to room temperature deteriorate very quickly - this is very noticeable with bananas, as we don't grow them here we always have to buy imported.

There is always the thought as well that some poor and developing countries rely on the West to buy their produce. Without the West to export to, the people who work on these plantations suffer and their work supply drys up.
It's a dilema - help poor countries and ruin the planet?

I would like to say that I always by the locally produced things, but finances as they are that isn't always possible. I would also like to be able say I buy fair trade food - but this counter balances the arguement.

A bit of a mixed up post sorry - I am not very eloquent at getting my thoughts into words.

[paul m]

Yes, agreed, that it is better for me to buy things grown in Yorkshire rather than France etc .... Some things seem particularly bizarre such as buying USAmerican apples at the same time as British and other European apples are easily available.
.... but there is also the question of how the mileage is covered. Buying lemons and oranges from Spain or elsewhere in the Mediterranean (that are brought to UK by train or boat) is clearly better than buying things which have been flown in from Asia/America. So we need to know how things are transported - not always easily guessed ... apparently mangoes from India are flown here while mangoes from Argentina are boated ....
Truly, shopping has become a very tricky and time-consuming business: some of our supermarkets are now providing the information on labels (which are getting increasingly detailed and with ever smaller print ) ) ... but that's a good sign.

Are the same things happening in other countries?

[Suzanne B]

What about the poor old Linguistine being shipped from Britain to Thailand to be hand peeled?
Seems a tad unnessary and what a long way to go to be killed! (assuming they were still alive, it was on the news this week and now I can't find a thing about it )
Apparently the carbon footprint for sending them to Thailand and back is the same as them being peeled (what a horrible word) by machine here!!