In Britain, what is described as “food miles”, the distance which food is transported from the place where it is grown to its point of sale, continues to rise. This has major economic, social and environmental consequences, given the traffic congestion and pollution which (46) ………..(variable) follow. According to (47) ……….. (press) groups, the same amount of food is traveling 50 percent further than twenty years ago. What’s more, the rise in the demand for road haulage over this period has mostly been due to the transport of food and drink. The groups assert that the increase in the number of lorry journeys is (48) ……….. (exceed) and that many of these are far from (49) ……….. (essence). In the distribution system employed by British food (50) ……….. (retail), fleets of lorries bring all goods into more (51) ……….. (center) located warehouses for redistribution across the country. (52) ……….. (logic) as this might appear, the situation whereby some goods get sent back to the same areas from which they came is (53) ……….. (avoid). In response to scathing (54) ……….. (critic) from environmentalists, some food distributors now aim to minimize the impact of food miles by routing vehicles, wherever possible, on motorways after dark. This encourages greater energy (55) ……….. (efficient) whilst also reducing the impact on the residential areas through which they would otherwise pass.