What are "food miles" and "foodprint"  ?

FOOD MILES : The distance a food item travels from "field to fork" , or to put it another way, from the farm to your kitchen.   When you purchase food that was produced closer to home ( or grow your own ! ) you reduce greenhouse gas emissions and needless waste.

FOOD PRINT: refers to a person's or products' total impact on the environment after taking all the processes involved in making/growing the item.   For example, how much energy was used in growing the lettuce before it was bagged ( getting the field ready, planting, growing, watering, harvesting, washing, storing...) before it even hit the road.  

 We at New Leaf are working on coming up with a nice easy method of calculating our total foodprints, if for no other reason than just getting in the habit of thinking about where some of this incredible variety comes from and at what cost.  Until that time, here are a few links to sites tha are working on such things:

Redefining Progress.org (this site includes a great kid's footprint game)
Lifecyclesproject.ca