Oh, the places food goes

Sarah Murray follows the journey our dinner makes from field to plate

PROFILE. What do canned tomatoes, yogurt and fresh strawberries have in common? Of course they’re all food, but the better answer is they are all shipped, flown or trucked before they hit the supermarket shelves.

In her new book, “Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat” (St. Martin’s Press, $24.95), Financial Times writer Sarah Murray traces the history of food transportation, an idea inspired by seeing a cargo dock piled with shipping containers. “I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s global trade in the back of a box!’” says Murray.

For Murray — for whom a trip to Memphis means visiting the FedEx hub, not Graceland — food is particularly fascinating because it’s so tough to ship; it’s sloshy, messy and, above all, perishable. “We have had to come up with ingenious inventions to keep it fresh,” says Murray.

Those innovations have affected more than just our tastebuds: From the Roman amphorae used to ship olive oil to refrigerated steamships, food transport technology has shaped history, politics and even architecture.

Murray flew along for a food drop in the Sudan and followed dabbawallas delivering tiffin-box lunches in Mumbai. She sampled the fermented mare’s milk from Mongolian nomads (“rancid”) and military rations (“surprisingly tasty”).

Murray isn’t the killjoy who tells you to stop buying imported Belgian chocolates for the sake of the planet. She challenges the “eat local” movement, pointing out that for all the fine flavor, eating locally grown food will not necessarily cut carbon dioxide emissions. A tomato grown in a heated greenhouse in Britain has a bigger carbon footprint than one shipped there from Spain, and cutting off Kenyan produce would ruin farmers.

“My argument is that we need to look more broadly and dig deeper. The inefficiency is not always where you think it is,” Murray says, citing a potato chip company where only 9 percent of the environmental impact comes from transport. Murray says it’s the “last mile” that food travels by car to table that can do the most planetary damage. So, pile your hybrid high at the super-market; you don’t want to  make a return trip.