Conclusion
At the end of the 24 hours plus lots of time spent investigating I can now conclude that we eat way too much oil. WAAAY too much.
After writing this blog, I’m a little bit horrified by what I now know. Without oil we would have to completely change the way we eat. Go to the home page of this blog, and press Control + F. Type in Machine and highlight all of them. Then scroll up and down and look at how many times the word pops up. It’s shocking. Our whole food and agricultural industry is basically controlled and sustained by machines at this current time which also means that it is being fueled by oil. Just simply the amount of oil it takes to transport our foods is outstanding.
The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food. There’s a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil.
– Manning
Without oil, we would not have enough food to feed the world, and unfortunately for us, oil is not an unlimited resource. We will run out, and it will be sooner than later. I am a little scared about what will happen to us when we do run out of oil.
Agriculture isn’t about food; it’s about commodities that require the outlay of still more energy to become food.
– Manning
But there are ways to slow things down and I know that I will be starting to take these steps. The key to using less oil is buying local. Transporting foods back and forth uses up immense amounts of oil especially since there is only a small amount of gasoline in a large amount of crude oil. By lowering the space needed to travel then we lower the amount of oil we need to use. So next time I go to the super market I will try to select local meats, produce, eggs, and other groceries.
A second idea is to buy organic and free range products as they often use less machinery, pesticide like products, etc. Which means also reducing the amount of oil. If you can grow your own produce, and use compost instead of store bought fertilizers as it uses less oil and is much better for the environment.
If you can try and cut down on the amount of wheat that you consume as wheat is a crop that needs to be heavily processed and is extremely destructive to soil meaning it leads to more chemicals and fertilizers being infused into the earth.
Of course these are just a couple solutions, many of which Manning has already hinted towards in his article but they will help. We’ve made food and farming a business when it should mean so much more than just profit. We should take every aspect of food and farming into consideration.. the animals, the land, the soil, the crops, the farmers… it shouldn’t just be about the money.
But it is only after doing this project and taking this course that I have become truly aware of that.
Calorie Intake
Breakfast
Total: 379
Lunch
Total: 430
Dinner
Total : 520
Total intake: 1,329
Total Oil Usage: Way Over 10,000 gallons
Does this look appealing to you?
Dinner
1 cup of Kin’s Market Local Organic Blueberries
1 1/2 cup of homemade Potato Salad
Ingredients: Mayonnaise, Potatoes (From our garden), Green Onion (From our Garden), Egg, Chili peppers.
1 Slice of Ham – Eating Right, Lucerene, Calgary, Alberta
BC Grown Organic Blueberries
Whenever summer time comes along, I’m always excited for all the fresh fruits that I get to have! One of my favourite fruits in the world is blueberries. Lucky for me BC is one of the biggest and most successful blueberry growing regions in the world. We have excellent blueberry soil and climate. What most people don’t know is that blueberries are a relatively newer type of commercialized fruit. Up until the 20th century, you could really only come across them in the wild as they were very difficult to grow. As agricultural science became more advanced, the secrets of good blueberry farming were unlocked
Blueberries need extremely acidic soil to grow. Because of this, farmers may need to mix the soil with other chemicals in order to heighten the acid content of the soil. Without acidic soil the blueberries will not grow. Luckily enough, BC has quite acidic soil which is perfect for blueberry growing and lessens the amount of additives needed for the soil, which in turn lessens the amount of oil necessary.
A lot of the time blueberry farms are U-Pick or farmer picked but they may also use machines, especially when the blueberries start running low. These machines are oil guzzlers. Which add to the amount of oil involved in making blueberries.
Check out a Blue Berry Picking Machine Here!
Finally the packaging, I’m glad that it is fully recyclable but that still doesn’t mean that oil wasn’t involved in making it. All the blueberry packages are created in a factory to get their perfect carton shapes. Which means that machines and oil are used to make them.
The fact that my blueberries were organic means that no additives or chemicals were used in making them, which lowers their oil usage substantially. In addition, the fact that they are local means that very little gas was used to transport these berries. Overall, although they do use some oil. They are much more oil friendly than a lot of other crops and foods.
This is great news for me because, I LOVE THEM.
Eggs
Eggs are great. What’s not to love about eggs? The eggs used in my Grandma’s Potato salad were Safeways Specialty III large eggs that boast extra omega 3.
These eggs are packaged in Calgary, Alberta by Lucerne which is Safeway’s food company. Because they are coming from Alberta rather than from the States or from other parts of the country, they will use up less gas to be transported to Vancouver. This is still not nearly as oil friendly as buying local.
They are Canadian eggs which means that they are supplied by Canadian egg farmers, but they are not certified humane like some of Safeway’s other eggs (Organics, and Cage Free) which means that these hens are probably kept in cages and I cannot guarantee that they have been treated well.
The packaging states that,
Eggs are produced from Hen fed a special grain, and plant based vegetarian diet using only naturally low in saturated fat canola oil in place of animal fats and by products.
What this means is left to the imagination of the reader, these hens may be fed a mix of corn and grains or any other combination of plants and grains. What is different about these hens though is that in order to get a high content of Omega 3 in their eggs they are fed diets high in omega 3 fatty acids.
In order to increase the amount of omega 3 they feed the hens things like flax and marine algae, which are high in the nutrient. (Specialty Eggs). This means that there is a good chance my hens were fed this as well.
Although the packaging is fully recyclable (according to the Safeway website), it is machine made, which uses up oil. Machines a necessary to form the paper into it’s special shock absorbing carton state.
In addition, eggs and vegetable oil (see below) are the two main ingredients in mayonnaise, which was another ingredient in the potato salad.
This make mayo a pretty oil intense food when you buy it in a package. Mayo that is produced commercially, has been made by machines. It also comes in a plastic or glass container/bottle which means that machines were also used to make the packaging. The most common mayo that we use in my household is Hellmanns. I believe that it is one of the biggest if not the biggest mayo makers in the world.
Hellmanns has begun to switch over all it’s eggs to being free range, and promises to use only free range eggs by 2020. They have also started the Real Food Movement Foundation, which gives grants to people working towards real food. This means food where you know where it comes from, and how it grows. I believe this is an excellent idea and a step in the right direction. (Hellman’s Real Food)
Ham
I love meat and I admit to eating a lot of it. Often I eat more than necessary simply because I enjoy it so much. I should probably try and cut down on the amount of meat I consume and eat a bit greener. The following excerpt from Manning’s article highlights an excellent point,
Green eaters, especially vegetarians, advocate eating low on the food chain, a simple matter of energy flow. Eating a carrot gives the diner all that carrot’s energy, but feeding carrots to a chicken, then eating the chicken, reduces the energy by a factor of ten. The chicken wastes some energy, stores some as feathers, bones, and other [in-]edibles, and uses most of it just to live long enough to be eaten.
Taking that into account, I honestly believe that adopting a more green and less meat orientated diet would be really helpful for me in the long run and I think it will also lower the amount of oil I consume. The ham I ate was from Eating Right, this is one of Safeway’s brands and like most Safeway brand many meat products is hard to find out anything about.
The fact that Safeway has little to no information about their meat processing makes me wonder how the animals are treated and where they get their meat from. I also attempted to contact them by e-mail asking about their ham and pig process but did not receive a reply.
The ham is processed and packaged in Calgary, Alberta. Which means that although there is still a hefty amount of fuel used to transport it to the supermarket, it is less than if the factory was located in another part of the country.
According to Canada Pork International, Almost all commercialized Canadian pigs are grown in a controlled environment. This means they are in enclosed indoor areas. They usually spend their entire short lives in one sow pen, so that they are easily tracked, do not suffer stress from environmental change, and cannot spread disease as easily. While this is convenient for the farmers, I doubt that this is ideal for the pigs.
When the pigs are nice and juicy, they are transported to a slaughterhouse (transportation always uses lots of oil), where they are slaughtered and packaged for their different types of meat. It takes large amounts of energy to power these machines and they work quickly (kill in just seconds) which means it takes a hefty amount of oil to power them. Ham comes from the back hind leg of a pig.
The most disturbing part of this for me is that my ham was tiny, which means it must have come from a small pig. This means that the pigs can’t be very old when they are slaughtered.
Lunch
For lunch, I decided to counter my extremely “oily” breakfast with some fresh food straight from my own garden and some store bought dressing.
I had:
A Garden Salad with Tomatoes, Butter and Green Leaf Lettuce, Snap Peas, Strawberries and Carrots from my own Garden.
Three Tablespoons of Kraft Italian Dressing – Kraft, Canada
Ingredients: Water, Soybean Oil, Vinegar, Glucose-Fructose, Salt, Garlic, Xanthan Gum, Onions, Lemon Juice, Sorbic Acid, Spices, Red Bell Peppers, Parsley, Calcium Disodium, Colour. (No Artificial Flavours)
2 Glasses of Apple Juice – SunRype, Canada
The Salad
At first I thought that the salad without dressing would cost little to no oil to make but then I started to think about it. My grandfather tends our garden with his own hands, and he does not use any chemicals or pesticides therefore all the produce is pretty close to organic, if not completely organic.
The part I did not think about was the fact that although some seeds used in the garden are ones he has saved from last year or prior years. Some he bough this year. I decided to investigate into how seeds are produced, packaged and transported and how much oil that would involve.
Producing certified seeds is harder than you would think. For seeds to be certified and sold they must pass an inspection that proves that there is no cross contamination between plants. To avoid cross contamination, they constantly need to disinfect all their equipment using either machines that gush compressed air or water or cleaning chemicals. This involves using energy in some form, and then chemicals cost oil and energy to produce. In addition, they must carefully tend their fields and prepare them for seed growing. This involves the use of oil guzzling machines such as tractors to plow and harvest. After the seed is grown and collected it is stored. This also involves using oil in transport. Then, before the seeds can be sold they must be conditioned (deeply cleaned) to rid them of any further contamination. This process involves the use of conditioning machines and uses up a fair amount of energy. After the seed is properly conditioned it is once again inspected and then can be packaged and sold either in bulk or in packets. Packaging and transporting the seeds to their destination also requires large amounts of oil. (Producing Seed)
So in actuality, my little salad that I believe was cost almost no oil. Does cost a fair amount. Although garden fresh foods involve much less oil than supermarket purchased foods they still use up a bit of it.
In the past before farming became industrialized, farmers collected seeds themselves by hand, conditioned their seeds by hand and plowed the fields with animals. This method of seed making required little to no oil. Unfortunately, due to the large amount of crops farmers need to produce in order to make a profit, and due to the fact that many seeds such as hybrid seeds are now patented which does not allow farmers to keep their seeds, more seeds are needed. So even seed growers are now dependent on oil and machines.
The Dressing
My dressing was just a typical dressing from Kraft Canada. Kraft is one of the bigger food companies in the world. I know just by that, that this dressing has probably been manufactured in every way possible, but it’s one of my favorite, and when you are allergic to dairy… your choices are limited. I buy it because for me it’s fast and convenient and has a long shelf life. But because it’s made by such a big company it is very hard to investigate into where the ingredients come from as Kraft has suppliers from all around the world and contracts out lots of it’s work.
Dressing bought from the store is something that is super processed. The vegetable content of the dressing is very little and the biggest ingredients are water, oil and vinegar. Because it is so processed, it means that machines are involved in chopping the vegetables (which in the case of this oil are dried), mixing the liquid parts, adding the solid ingredients, and then once again mixing everything together.
As I stated above, since it is a big company, they will be searching for the cheapest possible ingredients to make the largest profit. Meaning that they will cart in ingredients from all over the world and as we know already, transportation is extremely gas guzzling.
In addition the products packaging is machine made, and although it is fully recyclable, the amount of oil involved in making it and the fact that the bottles are plastic which uses oil to be produced makes it all the more costly.
SunRype Apple Juice
The great thing about SunRype is that for one it’s local, based in Kelowna and secondly, they do not have any artificial ingredients in their juices. Which is more than I can say for a lot of other big juice companies. At least you know you are drinking really apple juice and not water with apple flavouring. In addition all their suppliers must be HACCP certified which means that they follow strict food health code regulations. Although, I’m not entirely sure what their environmental initiatives are.
It would be great if they used only local suppliers but they use suppliers from all around the world, which means that they have to transport a lot of goods which uses a lot of oil. In addition, it also adds to the uncertainty of where or how the fruit is being produced.
The fruits are probably being bought and cultivated in the cheapest way possible which is often the least environmentally and oil friendly way possible. But I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Apple Juice is made in a factory where machines press the juice out of the fruit. In addition the fruit may be grinded by machines in order to get the most juice out of them. Then the juice is refined, inspected and packaged all by machine. Trucks transport the juice to where it needs to go.
An advantage of buying SunRype juice is that it has a shorter distance to travel to my local supermarket than juices from the states or other parts of the country. Which reduces the amount of oil it takes to deliver it to the nearest supermarket and then my home.
Breakfast
What Was Consumed:
2 Plain Mini Bagels – Archer Farms – Target Corp. , Minneapolis
Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin Reduced Iron, Thiamin mono-nitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, water, cornmeal, dextrose, salt, canola oil, soybean oil, gluten, fermented rye flour, yeast, calcium pro-pronate, sorbic acid.
2 Teaspoons of Butter – Fraser Valley Creamery – Saputo Int. , Montreal
Ingredients: Pasturized milk, salt, colour.
Nectarine – Family Tree Farms, Califronia, USA
Looking Into Bagels
Bagels are a breakfast weakness for many people. But it’s not just the fact that they are high in calories that makes us guilty, it’s the fact that they are a super processed type of bread when you’re buying them at a store pre packaged. And yet, here I am having a bagel for breakfast, so much guilt.
I also want to point out that my bagels were bought in the United States, which means that it is also more likely they needed more oil to produce them. As Manning States,
If the entire world ate just like the USA- humanity would exhaust all global fossil-fuel reserves in just over 7 years.
I did some research and found out the process through “How Bagels Are Made” :
To begin the bagel making process, all the ingredients are poured into a large vat machine, which mixes them all together to produce the bagel batter. This machine runs on energy and operate like a giant mixing bowl, allowing them to make enough batter for tons of bagels. After the batter is made, it is either frozen to be kept for later or moved to the next machine. While this is happening, special thermometers keep watch of the bagel batter temperature, to make sure the yeast thrives. In the next machine the dough is separated into portions and then moved forward to a machine that turns it into strips. The strips are then fed into a divider that portions them into single bagel batter portions. The batter then goes into a “Forming machine” that forms the bagels into their special donut shape.
They are then moved into a proofing machine where the yeast is allowed to rise and then quickly cooled. The bagels are then moved into a large boiling machine and boiled until they begin to float. Then they are moved to the oven to be cooked and dried. The bagels then move along a conveyor belt for quality control and into the packaging machine to be packaged and then shipped out. (Look below for the amount of oil it takes to ship the bagels)
As you can see bagels take a lot of energy and oil to make. The bagel making process involves a ton of different machines. This is something I had no idea about. The amount of oil it takes to make bagels is ridiculous but lets not stop there. Let’s also investigate into a couple of the ingredients just to give us a better idea of how much oil is actually in a bagel.
But just in case you think that bagels are the only overly manufactured breakfast food, check out this quote from Manning,
The grinding, milling, wetting, drying, and baking of a breakfast cereal requires about four calories of energy for every calorie of food energy it produces. A two-pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of a half-gallon of gasoline in its making.
Which makes me feel a little less guilty about my bagel, but a little more worried about breakfast in general. Imagine being unable to grab a quick bowl of cereal in the morning because the world doesn’t have enough oil to produce cereal..
Flour
I know that these bagels are made out of a variety of different flours. Wheat, Barley, Rye… etc. The truth is that flour can be made out of most grains and the flour making process if often the same. How each type of grain is cultivated is usually the big difference as different grains need different conditions to grow. For the purpose of this blog posting, I’m going to focus on one grain. The grain that is most commonly used – Wheat.
Wheat is the king of grains, and well deserving of it’s title. As Manning stated:
Wheat was the empire builder; its bare botanical facts dictated
the motion and violence that we know as imperialism.
Wheat was the crop that people wanted to grow and it was popular as it allowed people to make various types of breads and foods. But wheat was not easy to grow and not easy to manufacture into flour. The first step to growing wheat is testing the soil to make sure it’s viable enough to grow the crop. As Manning stated:
Wheat is temperate and prefers plowed-up grasslands. The globe has a
limited stock of temperate grasslands..
Therefore growing wheat is not always the easiest thing to do. To properly grow the wheat it is often necessary to pull up the top soil using heavy machinery that run on gas. Top soil is rich in nutrients and will help the seeds grow better. Unfortunately this is very disturbing to the soil and often leads to quicker erosion. In addition, strong fertilizers must be added to the soil as wheat uses up a lot of the soils resources and requires a lot of them to grow. These fertilizers are heavily infused with nitrogen and oil based minerals.
Wheat takes what it needs.
-Manning
Following the soil preparation, the seeds are sown using a tractor or other seeding machinery (which also use gas). Then the wheat must be well watered as wheat needs lots of water to grow. This is often done using machines as well. Watering continues through all growing seasons. When it is finished growing machines harvest it and ship it off to be eaten by animals or manufactured even further as humans cannot eat plain wheat. This involves gas fueled transport to the flour mill in our case.
At the flour mill, the wheat is inspected and stored. Once the wheat is needed, it is put into several machines and heavily cleaned. A separator, aspirator and then disk separator. The wheat is then washed in warm water and spun dry in a washer-dryer type machine. Take into account that every one of these machines is using energy/oil. The wheat is then moved into two more MACHINES, separated and ground. After grinding, it is moved to another machine and conditioned. It is then put into a giant sieve and separated into flours of different fineness. (How Flour is Made)
Finally bleach agents are added to turn the flour it’s white colour and then the flour is inspected and packaged by a large machine to be shipped out to wherever it needs to go.
As you can see wheat is an oil guzzling crop and a soil eroding crop. In addition, it’s a tough crop that needs to be heavily manufactured in order to be used which adds to the amount of oil it uses.
Vegetable Oil
Vegetable Oil is a very different type of oil than the oil we are measuring in this blog. This oil is often used in foods and it’s completely man made by isolating parts of plants to produce oils. But how does one turn a soybean or stalk of corn into a bottle of oil?
Most vegetable oils are made from seeds and corn germs, the seeds are received by the oil producing plants and cleaned by a machine. Then another machine grinds them so that they are easier to press. On the way to being pressed it is heated to allow the oil to come out easier and then a machine presses the oil out. Then another machine refines the oil to make sure that it is top quality and another machine heats the oil. After being heated it is deodorized and cooled, then packaged by machine. Once the oil is packaged it is ready to ship. (How Cooking Oil Is Made)
Vegetable oil can only be made in large quantities by machines. Without the ability to power machines we would not be able to make enough vegetable oil. This is a scary thought as vegetable oils have become much more popular for cooking than things such as animal fats or butters.
Salt
Salt is a basic seasoning that is used in almost everything. We put it in our meat, our pasta, our soup, and sometimes our drink. We also can use it to preserve foods such as dried meats. Most people are aware that it can come from the sea BUT did you know that salt can also be mined?
According to this article Salt can also be mined from the salt deposits in the layers under the Earth. Mining uses a lot of machines and a lot of oil. Not to mention it is eroding and can be harmful to the environment if habits are turned apart in order to mine on them.
Most of our table salt is mined using this method. Meaning that there is ALOT of oil involved in the creation of salt so that we can add a little bit of flavouring to our food.
How Canadian Butter is Made
Butter is something I absolutely love. I love it in toast, and in my cooking. I love it’s creaminess. I love it so much, that I will cheat on my dairy allergy with it. And when I think of butter, I think of how it was traditionally made- the way my grandparents made it on their farm. Farmers collected their milk from the cows and separated the cream from it. Then the cream was churned by hand until it was well thickened. The remaining liquid was drained and there was your butter! Even though I’m sure there are people in the world who still like to occasionally make some hand churned butter. The process is tiresome and time consuming.
Commercialized butter is made in a very different way. First of all, the cows are milked by energy powered machinery and the milk travels into holding canisters that are then transported (more oil) to where the milk and cream is to be separated and then pasteurized (heated quickly to very high temperatures). The separation and pasteurization machines run on energy – either electric or fuel based energy and require a lot of it. After the cream is separated and pasteurized it is moved to a machine run by MORE energy that beats it into a thick buttery substance. The machine then drains the excess liquid and blends the butter again. After this step the butter is then inspected to make sure it passed regulations and then transported to ANOTHER MACHINE in which it is cut, molded and then wrapped. (How to Make Butter)
The packaged butter is then shipped in a truck to wherever it will be sold.
[See below for amount of oil that uses]
All in all, butter is a really oil and energy consuming thing to make.
California Grown Nectarines
California is known for it’s nectarines as the hot sun allows them to get super juicy and sweet. I love a sweet crisp Nectarine in the morning but I wonder how much oil it costs to make one of those tasty little red spheres.
Nectarines are grown on trees. This particular farm told me when I messaged them that they plant their own trees and often hire people to help plant them as well. Most trees yield a good load of nectarines.
Each tree gets placed 8 to 12 feet apart. In the winter when the trees are sleeping, they prune them and spray them. I assume that oil goes into the manufacturing of the chemical sprays that get applied in the winter as chemicals are often heavily processed and made by machinery. In the spring they are fertilized, and sprayed with fungicide. They use machines to apply the spray to the tree, these run on energy. In addition, fertilizer uses a lot of oil in it’s production process, fertilizers are also heavy on chemicals and can even contain oil in their ingredients. The trees continue to be sprayed in the late spring and early summer. In addition, they are irrigated by machines to give them enough water as Californian summers are quite dry. (How To Grow Nectarines)
Once ready, the nectarines are harvested, put in boxes and shipped off to their intended destinations (See below for how much oil a trip from California to Vancouver costs).
I believe that fruits that grow on trees have the potential to be less oil consuming than produce that grows in the ground but the involvement of heavy fertilizers, and the need to spray them increases the amounts of oil necessary to cultivate them.
I opted for the non-organic Nectarines, but organic nectarines will have a far smaller oil footprint. In addition, Nectarines are one of the fruits that people say you should always try to buy organic as they can be heavily sprayed and absorb chemicals quite easily.
Getting The Food To My Plate
Using Gas Buddy.Com I managed to investigate into how much gas the following trips would use…
Driving the produced and packaged bagels from Minneapolis all the way to Vancouver in a small commercial rasied cab truck would require 200 gallons of gas and would produce over 4000 pounds of carbon emissions. A larger truck would need more gas and produce more carbon.
Driving a small truck of Nectarines from the Family Tree Farm in California to Vancouver would use up approximated 100 gallons of gas and produce more than 2500 pounds of carbon emissions.
Driving a small truck of Fraser Valley butter from Montreal to Vancouver would use approximately 300 gallons of gas, and produce more than 6800 pounds of carbon emissions.
In total to move all 3 parts of my breakfast from their places to my local grocer would use up more than 600 gallons of gas, and emit over 13200 pounds of carbon emissions. WOW. And that’s only in one of the smaller models of commercial trucks.
Since 42 gallons of crude oil produces approximately 19 gallons of gasoline (US Energy Information), that would mean that it would require 1,326 gallons of oil just to drive my breakfast to my table. That is 1, 326 gallons of oil for 379 calories of food. Which converts to.. 3.5 gallons of gas per calorie. Manning stated that:
Every single calorie we eat is backed by at
least a calorie of oil, more like ten.
And it seems he was right.
So throughout the rest of my blog, keep this in mind, TRANSPORTATION USES A LOT OF OIL. THE FURTHER YOUR FOOD IS, THE MORE OIL IT USES.
Introduction
Hello Fellow Food Eaters,
Before being assigned this blog the thought of how much gas and energy goes into producing, packaging and transporting the food we eat never crossed my mind. As I continue to investigate I am becoming more and more aware of just how much gas, energy and work goes into producing all our food. I’ve also realized that many times the “cheapest” foods are the ones that seem to have more of an environmental impact. Unfortunately, on a student budget (always being broke) that is a tough thing to hear.
Everyone in the world needs food to survive and the fact that we have more people than we have food can sometimes be a problem. Machinery and science have allowed us to produce more food than we could ever imagine but there is an important catch, in order to produce lots of food we need to use up another resource… oil. Oil fuels the cars we drive and the machines we operate, oil fuels our heat. So how much oil fuels our food making? That I do not know but I hope that writing this blog will bring me closer to figuring it out.
I’ve documented my eating for 24 hours and then have begun to investigate into the cultivation, production, packaging and transport process. Hopefully I will be able to better understand how much oil is involved in the making of our food and learn to make better choices when selecting foods at the supermarket.
Check back in for the conclusion, and in the meantime, happy EATING!
– Nicole Rosa
Citations
In addition, If there is a link in “( )” at the end of a paragraph, it means that I have taken the facts written in the paragraph from the provided website. Before this blog, I had no idea how most of these products were made. Clicking on the website will provide you will an even more detailed explanation of how each thing was produced. In addition, all references to “Manning” come from his article “The Oil We Eat“.