Food and fitness again

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Food study reveals hidden €9bn costs of transport:

"The dramatic increase has resulted in a rise in the amount of CO2 emitted by food transport: 19m tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2002 in the course of getting our food to us, a 12% increase on 1992, the report says. Airfreight, the most polluting form of food transport, is growing fastest."

I seem to be on a food and fitness roll. Oops, sorry, just egging you on. This is a particularly interesting article because it looks how travel costs are factored into the cost of our food. This is a British study but probably holds for most surburbanised/city areas. There is the cost of us driving to get the food and given local shops are on the way on and supermarkets, strategically placed, are the go then we are looking at extra costs in petrol, mileage and then the pollution/climate change factors. Then there are the costs of importing food and the fuel costs involved in freight, especially air freight. Flying food around the world has helped with keeping us supplied with a variety of fresh produce. What is it doing to costs/pollution/climate change and how does that compare with sourcing everything locally. What if you can't source it locally? What if local sourcing is not efficient? I had never thought of it this way and I think it's worth a good long think.