277order to evaluate the environmental performance of
food production systems. In the 1 990 s, Tim Lang
(Professor of Food Policy, City University, London)
coined the term “food miles”. Food miles is a term
that refers to the distance that a food item travels
from the place where it is produced to the place
where it is eaten. The idea behind food miles was to
highlight the hidden ecological, social and economic
consequences of food production to consumers in a
simple way. In recent years, food miles have in-
creased very rapidly. Between 1978 and 2002, the
amount of food trucked increased by 23 percent.
And the distance for each trip increased by over 5 0
percent. In 2002, food transport accounted for an
estimated 30 billion vehicle kilometres. The original
idea behind the food miles concept was that the dis-
tance that farm produce travelled before consump-
tion was a good indicator of the amount of CO2 that
had been emitted.
That idea has been seriously challenged, because
transport accounts for only a very small proportion of
the CO2 emissions from farm produce. In some cases,
carbon emissions are much lower for items produced
in tropical countries rather than in temperate coun-
tries. In other cases, emissions are much lower when
they come from the most efficient source. Consider-
ing these limits, it seems more appropriate to con-
sider how food is produced and with what kind of
energy. A suitable strategy is the Life-Cycle Assess-
ment (LCA) of the food supply chain. LCA is a method-
ology used for analysing and assessing the
environmental impacts of a material, product or serv-
ice throughout its entire life cycle, from the extraction
of raw materials and their processing, through man-
ufacturing, transport, use and final disposal: an
analysis from cradle to grave. Recently, Life-Cycle As-
sessments have been utilized to evaluate and improve
the environmental performance of food production
systems. In order to find the possible directions to
sustainable food production and consumption, LCA
has been applied for more than 15 years to agricul-
tural and food systems, identifying their environmen-
tal impacts throughout their life cycle and supporting
environmental decision-making. A variety of data-
bases and methodological approaches have been out-
lined over this period to support the applications of
LCA to food systems. LCA results have been used in
the development of eco-labelling criteria with the aim
of informing consumers of the environmental char-
acteristics of products. However, most analyses are
limited to case studies of either a single food or a lim-
ited set of items. The challenge is to develop and ex-
ploit the tools necessary to better understand the
sustainability of food chains, optimize sustainable pri-
mary production and identify consumer attitudes to-
wards sustainable food production.Mediterranean diet
The Mediterranean diet is an example of sustain-
able food production. It is a dietary pattern that can
combine taste and health, environmental protec-
tion, biodiversity protection and consumption of
local and seasonal products. The concept of a
Mediterranean diet was developed for the first time
in 1939, by Lorenzo Piroddi, a nutritionist who un-
derstood the connection between diet and diabetes,
bulimia and obesity, as confirmed by the studies
conducted by Ancel Keys and his school afterwards.
The main features of the Mediterranean diet are:- a high intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts
and cereals, mostly wholemeal; - the prevalence of the use of olive oil, compared with
a modest intake of saturated fats; - a moderate intake of fish, also as a function of
distance from the sea; - a regular but limited intake of dairy products
(mainly in the form of yogurt and cheese); - a moderate consumption of meat and poultry;
- a moderate intake of ethanol and active ingredients
such as resveratrol, mainly in the form of wine
consumed during meals.
"The Mediterranean Diet is a set of skills, knowl-
edge, practices and traditions that range from land-
scape to the table, including crops, harvesting,
fishing, preservation, processing, preparation and,