Age group: Any

How long it will take: 45 minutes

What materials you will need: An atlas/world map and an assortment of food packages, or examples of food including:

• something fair traded
• some unwrapped fruit/vegetables, as locally grown as possible
• a potato
• a packet from frozen oven chips
• Pringles or something similar
• some out of season fruit/vegetables
• packages of processed food
• packet of dry rice

The aim of the activity: To introduce the idea of ‘Food Miles’ – to explain that food miles are the distance food has been transported to reach your table.

What to do:
Get the group to discuss the following questions:

• Where were things bought – what sort of shop, how far away, how did you get there?
• Can they see where the food was grown?
• What could have been grown in Britain?
• How do you think it was grown?
• If it was grown overseas how did it get here?
• How has it been stored?
• How much packaging is there on it? Why?

It might be good to bring in a relatively old person (50 should do) and get them to talk about how different it was even when they were young.

Here are some issues that you may want to raise in the discussion:

• Energy used in transporting – food miles
• Relative amounts of energy used – e.g. transported unfrozen by ship compared with flown frozen/chilled
• Packaging
• Processing and additives
• Seasonal food
• Use of land and meat eating?

An alternative approach:
Here is another approach to the food miles activity. At the closing circle of one group night session ask the children to choose one day before next week and keep a note of all the food the family has at home and where it originated from.

Ask half the group to bring with them a label or other evidence they have at home of food that had come from a long way away. Ask the other half to bring evidence of something as local as possible.

Next session have a big map of the world in the middle of the circle or stuck to a wall. Everyone reports back on what they noted. Then the items they’ve brought in are spread around the map or sticky dots are used to represent them to show country of origin.

Lastly, use a tape measure to see how many or how few miles the sample items had travelled. In the closing circle ask the children if they could live on food that has been produced very locally.