Nonna's Food and Wine Club,

a Yorkshire night...

Monday 20th October 2008 and Monday 27th October 2008

Il Menu

Aperitivi... Yorkshire Wine or Kelham Island Brewery Pale Rider

Antipasto... individual Yorkshire pudding with award winning Yorkshire sausages & caramelized Yorkshire farm onion gravy

Primi... dressed Whitby Crab with Nonna's Cucina bread and butter

Secondi... roast seven- hills "porchetta" (pork), "Yorkshire- Orchard" apples and cider fritters & Paul's rosemary mash

Dolci... a trio of local desserts including apple & blackberry crumble, steamed treacle sponge & custard and sticky parkin ice cream

 Formaggi... a tasting of Yorkshire finest cheeses 

If food miles interest you...... read on

What are food miles?

Thanks in part to concerns about climate change, more people are considering the impact that everyday goods- including food- have on the environment.

 Food miles, the distance food travels from field to plate, is a way of indicating the environmental impact of the food we eat. Half the vegetables and 95 per cent of the fruit eaten in the UK comes from beyond our shores. Increasingly, it arrives by plane and air travel gives off more CO2 than any other form of transport.

How far are we going for our Yorkshire Food Night?

To get the beer, Kelham Island Brewery, 2.3 miles

To get the wines, Renishaw Vineyard, 9.1 miles

To get the crab, 105 miles

To get the meat, 30 miles

To get the apples and cider, 64.5 miles

To get the cheeses, 20 miles

 TOTAL miles 230.9 miles

With approximately 120 people attending the event, 

it is around 2 food miles per person

The end of the road for food miles?

While the idea of food miles has become common currency, many other processes contribute to the carbon footprint of our food. Agriculture, processing, storage and the way we shop all have to be factored into the bigger carbon emissions picture. Together these factors combine to make the food we eat responsible for a third of UK households' impact on climate change.

Air grievance

 The most contentious food miles are clocked up by the fresh fruit and vegetables arriving by plane from across the globe. Reducing the carbon footprint of food is not as simple as choosing not to buy fresh fruit and vegetables flown in from Africa or South America, however. Although air-freighted produce accounts for less than one per cent of total UK food miles, it is responsible for around 11 per cent of the total CO2 emissions from UK food transport. That's because transport by plane generates 177 times more greenhouse gases than shipping does.

 The most recent increase is affected by imports of animal feed from Brazil and the USA, but it is the green beans grown in Kenya, 70 per cent of which are destined for UK supermarkets, that draw much of the anti-air freight fire. Because of concerns about the carbon emissions generated by air-freighting, Marks and Spencer and Tesco now label fresh produce flown in from abroad with a sticker depicting an airplane.

Lorry loads

Food transport is responsible for 25 per cent of the kilometres clocked up by HGVs on our congested roads. Supermarkets have national distribution systems, so even food grown near a particular branch may have travelled by lorry to a central depot and back to its place of origin. Ingredients used in the food processing industry travel around the country from factory to factory before reaching the shops. All these journeys around Britain mean that HGVs transporting food transport are responsible for a quarter of CO2 emissions.

Car culprits

 It's easy to overlook the fact that the food we eat clocks up extra miles on the drive to the supermarket and back. The last set of figures looking at the distance food travels found a seven per cent increase in city car journeys making longer and more frequent trips to the shops. Cars are responsible for 20 per cent of the UK's CO2 emissions from food transport.

Is home-grown always better?

 Even locally grown and organic food can be kept chilled for months. Refrigeration requires energy; trying to cheat our climate by growing fruit and vegetables outside their natural season is also contributing to climate change. A 2005 Defra report indicated that it can be more energy-efficient to import tomatoes from Spain by lorry than to grow them in a heated greenhouse in the UK. Lettuce grown out of season in the UK also compared unfavourably with Spanish salad when total carbon emissions were measured.

A study carried out at Lincoln University in New Zealand concluded that rearing and distributing British lamb produces more CO2 emissions than importing the meat 11,000 miles by sea. New Zealand farmers use more renewable energy and less fertiliser, so agriculture is much more energy efficient than the UK's, making up for the food miles.

 What is Nonna's doing about food miles?

In 2008, Nonna's was voted Best Local Produce Menu in the EatSheffield awards. Despite Nonna's being a highly acclaimed Italian restaurant, we continue to pride ourselves on using local sustainable ingredients. Just like Italian restaurants in Italy, we use seasonal produce that is locally sourced and tastes good.

These are some of our principles of purchasing:

- All our meat comes from within the 7 hills of Sheffield

 - All our herbs come from North Derbyshire

 - Our milk and cream products come from within 15 miles of us

 - Fruit and vegetables are purchased from Sheffield Market

 - We source sustainable fish from local sources, mainly East coast produce

 - We produce our own Ice- cream, pastas and breads at Nonna's Cucina (20 yards away)

 - We never air freight any produce

 - If we use Italian produce, it is because there is no suitable alternative or we believe less energy is used shipping the goods from a climate better suited to producing the goods with less energy than it is to produce the goods in England (olives is a prime example)

 - We always offer tap water alongside bottled alternatives

 - We are always focused on improving and finding local alternatives

 - We always support local businesses and champion local produce and are proud to bring you an evening like this

- We recycle all glass, cardboard and paper meaning our actual waste is low (we are aiming to recycle plastic and tin by the end of the year)

What you can do 

 Buy locally grown whenever you can, from a shop that is as near as possible to your home. This reduces the fossil fuel emissions associated with transporting food. Fresh food is also healthier as it has a higher nutritional value and is less likely to have the extra chemicals used to preserve food during storage and transit. Avoid eating or buying exotic or non-seasonal produce, especially airfreighted food.

 Visit a local Farmers' Market, where local producers sell their own produce. This reduces food miles and the need for packaging, and encourages organic farming. Country Markets also bring home-made, fresh food to the local community, and the money goes directly back to the producer. There are currently over 500 such markets in the UK, held usually once a week.

 Join a vegetable (or fruit) box scheme. This is a box containing freshly picked, organic, usually locally grown produce delivered weekly to your door or to a local drop off point. Box scheme operators usually offer small, medium and family size boxes. The vegetables in the box will vary from week to week depending on the season.

Daniel Jackson

General Manager

Nonnas Restaurants Ltd