The term Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the new buzz word set to supersede the air miles debate. Recent researchers are finding that food miles are far from the whole story when assessing the environmental impact of what we all eat.

As fears of climate change continue to grab headlines foreign food imports and air miles have seemed to state quite simply that local food is good and long-haul is bad. To get a broader view the LCA tries to encapsulate the whole environmental impact of growing, transporting, selling and consuming a product - from farm to fork essentially.

The results can often be interesting. Tomatoes grown in the natural heat in Spain have less global warming potential per say than out of season British tomatoes grown in artificially heated greenhouses. The biggest environmental impact of many food products still comes from their production. Bulk transportation by land or sea is still of relatively low significance.