There's a lot of oil in your food and that's not just because it's greasy; your food has lots of petrol in it! To put it another way, a lot of petrol or petroleum products like diesel fuel is needed to grow and bring food to your plate. If you live in a city, your food has to be brought from the farm where it is grown to the bazaar where you or your parents buy it. This is usually done by truck or train, both of which are powered by diesel fuel. If you buy food that is not grown locally it has to travel further. If some of the food you eat, like certain fruits, is from a foreign country it will travel by ship, again powered by petrol. Some delicacies are even flown in by aeroplane.

If you eat meat, especially processed meats, chances are it needs to be frozen or kept cool at some stage, to make sure it doesn't spoil. The ice is usually made at an ice factory powered by petrol!

Many of the common foods we eat are affordable only because they are grown on big farms, farms so big that a single person cannot manage the whole farm. Because of their size these farms have to be far away from cities where the land is most suitable for farming. Petrol-powered tractors are needed to till the land for planting, and then, later, to weed and finally to cut and collect the crop. Fertilisers, though their job is to provide food plants with nutrients, are also made of petrol. We need oil even to manufacture pesticides!

In fact, we would not be eating a lot of the food we eat everyday if it were not for oil.

Besides, people all over the world are consuming things like chocolate and colas, things that are not manufactured locally but have to be brought in. But all that transporting causes pollution from cars, trucks, ships and aeroplanes, adding to global warming, and destroying old farming practices. It also keeps India dependent on oil.

In the early days people ate what was grown locally, or at most, was a day's journey by horse or bullock cart. Most towns had farms and dairies on their outskirts. Some things were brought by ship, but these were things that did not spoil. Other things like fresh vegetables and fruits were seasonal and needed to be eaten as soon as possible or bottled and turned into jams and pickles. Today, with large air-conditioned trucks and containers and chemical and mechanical processes to preserve food, food can be transported all over the world. Sometimes it's difficult to tell where they came from.

• Make a list of food you eat during the day and what the ingredients are. Find out where they come from.

• Can you calculate the kilometres your food has travelled before it reached your plate?

• Are there any farms still left in your city? Some may be so small that you hardly notice them. For example, look on the banks of rivers or along the railway tracks.

• What are the seasonal vegetables and fruits where you live, and when are they available?

Many people believe 'distance food travel' is not a good thing and is bad for the environment and for us. We should be eating only local foods. If we ate what was grown nearby we would not just be benefiting the earth and preventing pollution but also improving our health.

Because they have to travel such distances many foods need chemical preservatives to keep them edible till the time they reach us. We end up eating these chemicals along with our food. Some preservatives, like salt, have been used for centuries and are safe when eaten in small quantities. Others, though they are generally considered safe or else they would not be used, are so new that scientists do not actually have a clear idea what the long-term effects on our bodies will be.

Also, mechanical preservation techniques like canning or cartons have their own disposal pollution problems.

A lot of the food we used to eat was seasonal; they followed the seasonal cycles of winter, spring, summer and autumn. Different plants grew at different times and fruits and vegetables ripened differently. During the winter we ate food that warmed us, and in summer we ate cooling foods. Many of these fruits and vegetables were linked to our health. Young babies and pregnant women were given certain foods specifically beneficial to them. Apart from medicines, people also ate and drank certain things when they were ill. Many of these have proved useful in making modern medicines.

• Ask you parents and grandparents what the traditional food of their communities is.

• Was it seasonal?

• Does your community have any special family or community foods that you were given when you were sick?