An environmental group called the Food Commission is unhappy and disappointed because of the sales of bottled water from Japan. The water, it angrily argues in public, has traveled 10,000 "food miles" before it reached Western customers. Transporting water halfway across the world is surely the extremely stupid use of fuel when there is plenty of water in the UK. It is also worrying that we were wasting our fuel by buying prawns from Indonesia（7,000 food miles ） and carrots from South Africa (5,900 food miles).
一个名为食品委员会的环保组织对来自日本的瓶装水销售感到不满和失望。该组织在公开场合愤怒地辩称，瓶装水在到达西方消费者之前已经行驶了10000食物英里。在英国水资源充足的情况下，将水运输到世界的另一端肯定是一种极其愚蠢的燃料使用方式。同样令人担忧的是，我们从印度尼西亚购买虾（7000食物英里）和从南非购买胡萝卜（5900食物英里）也是在浪费燃料。
Counting the number of miles traveled done by a product is a strange way of trying to tell the true situation of the environmental damage due to industry. Most food is transported around the world on container ships that are extremely energy efficient. It should be noticed that a ton of butter transported 25 miles in a truck to a farmers' market doesn't necessarily use less fuel on its journey than a similar product transported hundreds of miles by sea. Besides, the idea of "food miles" ignores the amount of fuel used in the production. It is possible to cut down your food miles by buying tomatoes grown in Britain rather than those grown in Ghana. The difference is that the British ones will have been raised in heated greenhouse and the Ghanaian ones in the open sun.
计算商品行驶的英里数是一种奇怪的方式，试图告诉人们工业造成的环境破坏的真实情况。大多数食品都是用能源效率极高的集装箱船运输到世界各地的。应该注意的是，一吨黄油用卡车运往25英里外的农贸市场，并不一定比一吨类似商品用海运数百英里的路程消耗更少的燃料。此外，“食物里程”的概念忽略了生产过程中使用的燃料量。通过购买在英国而不是加纳种植的西红柿，可以减少食物里程。区别在于，英国西红柿在温室中生长，而加纳西红柿则在阳光下生长。
What is the idea of "food miles" does provide, however, is the chance to cut out Third World countries from First World food markets. The number of miles traveled by our food should, as I see it, be regarded as a sign of the success of the global trade system, not a sign of damage to the environment.
然而，“食物英里”的概念确实提供了将第三世界国家从第一世界食品市场中剔除的机会。在我看来，我们的食物行驶里程应该被视为全球贸易体系成功的标志，而不是对环境的破坏。
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