9:30 AM – Breakfast
9:30 am – 07/10/2013
Activia Raspberry yogurt × 1
Apple × 2
(Bought from IGA marketplace)
Role of Fossil Fuels
Activia Raspberry Yogurt –
Within in the ingredients used to produce the raspberry yogurt included modified corn starch, which in previous modules has been brought up with “cornification”. I have never noticed that corn starch was part of this product and am surprised to notice that I, too, have been “corn-ified”. The formation of corn starch is the process of corn wet-milled. (I have included a picture of the process of wet milling below, click to enlarge) Also, additional mechanical process is needed to make it “modified” corn starch which adds more fossil fuel consumption.
From the picture, it is clear that many mechanical tools take place during the process which the corn is steeped in water sometimes with sulphur dioxide, to separate and extract different components the kernel. As I researched more about sulphur dioxide, I find that it is the product of the burning of sulfur or burning of materials containing sulfur, which includes coal.
The packaging of the yogurt is done by the Ingeo™ company. Although it is a 100% annually renewable source from plants and uses less fossil fuels in the whole production process, it amount used still adds on to the total fossil fuel consumption for the production, transportation and packaging processes of the yogurt.
Apples –
As for the apples, a thin layer of wax came off when I scraped it with a knife to clean it. Although apples have a natural wax formed but because of the transportation it has to go through to get into marketplaces, to us consumers, another layer of protection is needed to prevent the bumping and destroying of apples. With further research of the wax, I discovered that most common wax coated on apples is a vegetable wax – carnauba wax. From the carnauba palm tree in Brazil, powder from the leaves are extracted through specific mechanical processes, producing two powder components which goes through boiling and filtering process to form carnauba wax. This entire process uses a significant amount of fossil fuels to fuel the machines.
7:00 PM – Dinner
7:00 pm – 07/10/2013
Homemade stir fried udon meal:
Udon
Minced pork
Cabbage
Onions
Garlic
(Bought at TNT supermarket)
To wrap up this blog assignment, I have decided to make a home cook meal to see the role of fossil fuels in a different perspective.
This meal consists of udon, minced pork, cabbage, onions and garlic as ingredients. The saran wrap on the cabbage caught my attention the most and I want to elaborate on why. Saran wrap is something that has crept into our everyday life as well, like corn, it has inserted itself into our lives. We use it to preserve food that we put in the fridge for the next day; we use it to cover food that is left out in the room to prevent spoiling it; and companies use it to wrap food to protect it from the process of transportation or for individual packaging in marketplaces.
The process to produce the plastic saran wrap that households use involves obtaining it from natural gas and processes that involve extremely high temperatures. Natural gas and the machines used for the raw materials to vaporize, to collect the vapor and collect the liquids formed after: All of these have to do with fossil fuel.
This made me do a little research on how people use to preserve food without electricity, refrigerators, saran wrap, most importantly fossil fuels. Cooking methods were different, mostly engaged in smoking, drying, freezing the food in snow, brining food in salt water etc.. These are methods that are still around these days within some countries or to some people’s preferences, but most people don’t engage in these methods that often anymore when it comes to daily meals.
1:00 PM – Lunch
1:00 pm – 07/10/2013
MacDonald nugget meal:
Nuggets × 6
Medium fries × 1
Ice tea × 1
I have decided to make a blog about this particular day because I am curious of finding more about what goes on behind closed curtains in the MacDonald Fast Food industry.
Nuggets consist of 56% corn, from corn fed chicken itself to heavily mechanical processed corn starch and corn oil! It amazes me how we have either convinced ourselves that we are actually eating at least 80% chicken or we just ignore the fact that we are paying to eat a product that consists of more than 50% corn that is processed so heavily that we don’t even detect it when we eat it or we just don’t care whats in it, as long as it tastes good. I found a picture comparing the ingredients needed for a MacDonald nugget and a homemade nugget, the staggering difference of ingredients listed not only states the unhealthy processing of food but also the mechanical processes that has to be used to produce such fast food.
As for the ice tea, purified water is one of the ingredients within that involves mechanical processing to form.
Thinking of the enormous amount of burgers, french fries and drinks they serve everyday, packaging is also has a crucial role in the presentation of the food to the customers. Wood fibre is the main creation of the packaging. Wood fibre is the mainly made to form paper extracted from trees. The transportation of all the end results is massive when it comes to the packaging amount needed for the company.
Despite the fact that I know how disgustingly MacDonald makes their food, I don’t think I can bring myself to stop eating it entirely. Because it’s called “fast food”, efficiency is more important than the quality of the food itself. It is also more appealing to those that want to eat something that tastes good, spend less AND not wait long to get it. When talking about efficiency, machines are the modern technology made to aid in this area. It got me thinking, do I really want to risk my health just to save those dollars when I know what i’m putting in my body can cause permanent harm?