When it comes to reducing your holiday's carbon footprint, most of us think immediately about how we are getting to and from our alpine playgrounds, followed perhaps by the type of accommodation we choose to stay in.  Often it is very difficult to reduce our impact from these due to the limitations of practicality and cost.  But fear not - there is one more big thing to think about which happens to be one of the most exciting and that is food.

Its difficult to find any exact figures on the environmental impact of the food industry as a whole.  A quick bit of web research tells us that around 13% of global emissions come from agriculture alone.  But when you start factoring in the processing, packaging, transport, cooking and waste associated with our food, it becomes clear that what we eat really does have a huge impact on the environment.

There's no doubt about it - travel is good for us but bad for our food.  The best food you'll ever taste is that which has been plucked from the garden just minutes before.  Whether you are travelling to a mountain town or a piece of tropical paradise, it is often the culture that has built up around the food that is grown, raised and eaten there that makes that place so special and unique.  In Morzine and across the Alps in general, the cuisine is very heavily focused around cheese, meat, potatoes, salad and hearty vegetables.  In the summer, the fertile valley's and high altitude mountain pastures known as alpages are graced by the iconic bell-brandishing cow - a sight so quintessentially part of everyone's romantic vision of summer in the mountains.  And if you've ever seen a typical French veggie patch, its invariably a thing of pure natural beauty, masterfully combined with perfect aesthetic order, packed with both familiar vegetables and more unusual local climate-specific varieties.  Add to this a mountain backdrop and what you'll see in the summer throughout any mountain town is nothing short of stunning. 

A typical winter trip to the mountains will more than likely include more than one sampling of a traditional Savoyard dish such as tartiflette, raclette, fondue or pierrade.  And its from the origins of traditional cultural necessity that these are still popular winter dishes.  Before the conveniences of modern transport infrastructure, winter diets were limited to meat, cheese and predominantly vegetables and fruit that could be stored.  Luckily winter happens to be the time when our bodies and souls need dense, rich and comforting foods like this.

But don't be under the illusion that you can dramatically reduce your carbon footprint and ease your conscience after flying to the alps and staying in a warm cosy chalet, simply by stuffing yourself with local cheese and meat-based feasts. First of all, you'll need to make sure that the things you are eating are in fact locally grown or produced.  Many chalets and restaurants will be using the cheapest food they can find, which more often than not will be from lands afar or at best, meats and cheeses from factory farms hundreds of kilometres away in France, transported many more kilometres to a factory and processed industrially before finally making the long journey to your plate in the mountains and sold as an 'authentic local dish'.  So its worth asking before you order.  The Gourmetski chalet company have a strong purchasing policy when it comes to their food, sourcing mainly seasonal ingredients as locally as possible.  If there are any chalet or restaurant owners reading this who'd like to tell us about their local sourcing policies, we'd love to hear from you so that we can include you in the 'food' section of our website.  

However, its not just where our food comes from that affects sustainability.  Sadly the cheesy, meaty delights that are synonymous with mountain cuisine are the highest carbon foods we can eat due to the nature of their production and this often outweighs the environmental impacts of transporting it.  Whilst holidays can be times for indulging in treats and extravagant feasts, increasingly many of us like to take trips to naturally beautiful places to improve our health and well-being.  The mountains feed our souls and answer the calls of our dreams, whilst giving us amazing exercise at the same time.  You'll rarely see a sad face in a ski resort and it is the year-round energy that the mountains bring out in people that keeps them happily living there through all seasons.  

It just so happens that the foods best for us are also best for the planet.  The very best foods for us grow on trees and shrubs - health advocates the world over tell us fruits and nuts are an important part of a healthy diet.  Trees absorb carbon and carry out countless other beneficial environmental functions whilst providing us with perfect food.  Although unrealistic for most of us, this athlete convincingly shows that a diet consisting almost entirely of fruit could in fact provide everything we need for optimum health.  Vegetables, if grown organically as part of a polyculture instead of huge single fields of monocrops, also store carbon (at least for part of the year) and in the case of legumes (beans, pulses etc), fix nitrogen into the soil improving it's health and assisting the growth of surrounding plants.  

Every Wednesday, rain, snow or shine, Morzine's market offers a whole array of local produce.  The highlight is a stall from Veigy which sells seasonal fruit and vegetables grown down the valley, just a stone's throw from Lake Leman where the warmer climate clearly helps in growing a wonderful variety of great quality delights, all of which are currently in the process of gaining organic certification.  Other stalls offer local meats and cheeses, artisan bread and fish from Lake Leman.
 
By all means, we should all treat ourselves to a naughty melted cheese and meat delight or two whilst on holiday if we fancy it (its worth noting that softer cheeses and goats cheese have lower carbon footprints, as does fowl rather than red meats) but make sure it's local and you'll be happy in the knowledge that you are helping to preserve local culture by supporting small businesses using traditional techniques.  If you are on the slopes and don't mind covering a little distance, possibly the best example of such a business is the hidden gem of Restaurant Le Lapisa over the border in Switzerland, where every one of their meat and dairy dishes originates from the adjoining farm.  Animal welfare doesn't get much better than here where the free-range livestock will have spent their lives with views of the Dents du Midi whilst eating from the lush meadows which, after the snow melts, sprout up from beneath the Grand Paradis piste that you will ski down as you leave.
 
Its ironic that many come to the mountains to experience nature at its finest whilst the holiday itself is contributing to nature's demise.  But instead of dwelling too much on this, perhaps we should take the opportunity to draw the wisdom, wonder and energy from the mountains to nourish our souls and remind us of the beauty of the natural world and our ability to protect and preserve it for us and future generations.  By making changes to our eating habits both on holiday and at home, we can all contribute significantly to the health of the planet and in turn, continue to enjoy the activities it offers us for years to come.