A globavore’s manifesto, with data.
And cool maps

A group of SF landscape architecture students has put together what they call the “biography of a taco” – they’ve collected, graphed, and written up comprehensive data on where Juan, of Juan’s Mission taco truck, gets every ingredient for his tacos. The result? Not just a bevy of nifty “tacoshed” maps, a la the one I wish WordPress would let me show here, but evidence that “locavorism” – which Juan resolutely does not practice – is neither a way to make better food, or to have a positive “green” impact. Food transportation adds neglibly to greenhouse gases, and growing ingredients locally is, in many cases, not just far more expensive, but far less resource-efficient. And there’s this bonus factoid, which I found fascinating:

Avocados come from a farm in Chile with an annual profit of $360 million and are shipped to “value-added depots” in the United States that inspect each fruit with an acoustic firmness sensor.