A study by the New Economics Foundation in London found that every £10 spent at a local food business is worth £25 for the local area, compared with just £14 when the same amount is spent in a supermarket.

It's official - buying local is good for you, good for the local economy and exceptionally good for the planet. By spending an extra £1.72, the average family could save a whopping and destructive 36,140 food miles if they were to purchase Westcountry ingredients for their Christmas dinner, for example, rather than supermarket items imported from all over the world.

That means every extra penny spent on dinner would save 210 food miles.

These astonishing statistics were established by experts at Taste of the West after they were asked by the Western Morning News for a breakdown on just how much indiscriminate shopping can cost the planet.

Taste of the West chief executive John Sheaves said: "What we did was to devise a classic Christmas meal, as a demonstration, and then to theoretically buy the ingredients for that meal from any supermarket around Exeter, and cost it out both in terms of price and food miles.

"Then we did the same thing, but buying all ingredients locally - the difference was very, very interesting.

"Our calculations show that the supermarket offering for a family of eight (two adults, two children and four grandparents at Christmas) would cost £205.43 pence and required 36,576 food miles.

"The local offering cost £207.15 pence and required just 436 food miles," said Mr Sheaves. "So for just £1.72 extra, you could buy everything locally and save 36,140 food miles, which is more than one-and-a-half times round the planet - literally saving it!"

There can be no doubt that the transportation of huge quantities of food and drink contributes to the environmental pollution that is said to cause global warming. A quarter of all road freight in the UK is at present devoted to the distribution of food and half the vegetables eaten in this country come from overseas.

Mr Sheaves said: "With meat from further a field, it is very difficult to monitor production and welfare standards. Why not try Internet buying? You are driving less, their vans are moving more food around for less per article so there are fewer CO2 emissions."

"It has just been announced that 2006 was the warmest year on record and I think this is the wake-up call that Western society has been waiting for," said Mr Sheaves. "We really do need to embed a more sustainable culture into society and why not start with what we eat?

"Local food is food with attitude and is far more than just quality, seasonal food which tastes good, important though that is. There is an ethical message which is starting to prick the consumer's conscience.

"This is important because now consumers can play their part in saving the planet by buying locally. These figures demonstrate that by making conscious decisions about where we buy our food, we can make real differences globally."

Why Buy Local Food?

Over the last 20 years many rural areas have been facing unprecedented pressures. Farming and forestry have been pushed to the economic margins by soaring land values, competition of cheaper products from abroad and changing consumer preferences. The economic activity has been in decline; many people have lost their job in agriculture and a lot of land is no longer managed or farmed.

More and more people have started asking where the food on their plate comes from - they buy fresh local produce so their money goes to the producers. This desire has manifested itself through the huge increase in demand for organic food and the growing popularity of food produced locally.

By doing so people contribute financially to their local economy and help foster a sense of community.

‘Plugging the leaks’, a study by the New Economics Foundation (www.neweconomics.org) shows that spending £10 in a local box scheme resulted in a £25.90 investment in the local economy. This is because a high percentage of the £10 is re-spent locally, and of this, a high proportion is spent locally again, thus having a multiplying effect. A comparative study showed that spending £10 at a supermarket results in a £14 investment locally.