Snack #1

I had a snack between my breakfast and the lunch. I had a snickers bar.

The main ingredients in the chocolate bar is peanuts, caramel and milk chocolate. Although Snickers bars were manufactured in the US and the UK, the main manufacturing is in New Jersey. However, I am certain that the ingredients have to be flown in from other parts of the world. China, India and the US are the main producers of peanuts (http://www.soyatech.com/peanut_facts.htm). Depending on the prices of the peanuts in the US (if it is woo expensive to buy, because it might be cheaper to by form Asia), the Mars company (founder of Snickers) might be importing peanuts. Either way, it has to come from far away. Moreover, similarly to all of the farming practices, for any products, growing  and harvesting of peanuts is energy intensive. It requires machinery, which have to be powered by (most likely) oil. Also, chemicals, like pesticides, contain oil (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html).  Moreover, peanuts have to go through factories to crack the shells and to roast. This also requires energy. If these process took place in either China, US or India, most likely the fossil fuels, like oil, was used to power the factories. Moreover, the peanuts had to be transported from the farm, to factory, to production factory in New Jersey.

In addition, caramel is also energy intensive, As wikipedia states, caramel is made from heating and  melting sugar. so energy was required to power the factory, or a plant, that produces caramel. It is likely that oil was used to produce that. Note that sugar has to be transported from  countries like Brazil (largest producer of sugar). Transported to factory, where caramel is made, and then to factory where Snickers bars are made (most likely there are many more stops before it comes from farm, as sugarcanes to Mars Factory).

Lastly, Snickers Bars contain chocolate. Largest production of cocoa is in Ivory Coast, thus it is likely that initial product was imported to the US from there.

(http://www.zchocolat.com/chocolate/chocolate/cocoa-production.asp)

Also, cocoa has to go trough multiple processes before becoming chocolate. All of these processes are energy intensive and require factory to process and produce the product – chocolate. As was mentioned earlier, factories require fossil fuels (majority of them in the present day anyways), which is likely to be oil. The transportation between the factories, or the origins of the ingredients that are required to be in the chocolate all need oil to be transported with by trucks, trains, ships or planes. Therefore, it takes massive amounts of oil to just transport and make chocolate, as well as any other products that are included in one chocolate bar.

Besides that there is packaging, that is also plastic, which has oil in it, and the printing/labels that are on that package had to be printed on it, thus consuming energy, due to the need of a factory or a plant to print labels on the package.

Lastly, even after all of the use of oil of the many processes that take place to make Snickers bar, after that the chocolate bars have to be transported around the world, including Canada, Vancouver. As with many products, there are many stops between the ports and the storage facilities, from which other types of transportation deliver the bars from one store to another. Thus, adding even more oil into a production and delivering of the chocolate bar.

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