Welcome to my food blog! This blog is an account of the food I consumed on Sunday, June 23, 2013 between 00:01 and 23:59.
Sunday is my favorite day of the week because it’s funday! I woke up early to join my cycling group for a ride. For breakfast, I ate organic granola from nature’s path (almond and honey) with organic Greek plain yogurt from liberté, maple syrup from La Sucrerie du Mont-Bleu in Quebec and strawberries from yesterday’s market in the West End. So yummy!!!
And of course, breakfast would not be breakfast without a delicious cup of warm coffee!!!!
After breakfast, I went for a bike ride in Stanley Park and West Vancouver.
The packaging from my breakfast included a plastic bag (nature’s path granola), a plastic container (liberté yogurt), a metal can (maple syrup), a compostable container (strawberries) and another plastic bag (coffee). Except for the metal can and the compostable container, all the packaging uses oil. (Freudenrich 2007, 1)
As for transportation, nature’s path granola is from Richmond, BC which is approximately 15 km away from my house. This product was most likely transported by truck to the grocery store and then by foot to my house.
The yogurt from liberté comes all the way from Quebec which is more than 3,600 km away from my house in the West End. The yogurt was also most likely transported by truck to the grocery store.
The coffee I drank is a dark roast bean from Starbucks. According to the coffee bag, the beans were roasted and packed in Seattle, WA and so it had to travel 240 km by truck to a Starbucks close to my house. I tried to find out where the beans were from originally, but the Starbucks website was not very helpful (http://www.starbucks.ca/coffee/dark/french-roast/whole-bean). I tried to email the company and never got a response. According to many websites, Starbucks gets its coffee beans from all over the world so it’s a little difficult to guess where the ones I bought are from.
The strawberries I ate were purchased at the West End farmers market. They are local strawberries from a farm in Richmond, BC. They traveled 15 km by car to make it to the market.
The maple syrup I use is not only amazing, but its actually from a sugar shack in Quebec (many residents of BC have no idea that the maple syrup sold here is not actually the real deal. Sorry for the bad news but you’ll have to travel to Quebec to taste real maple syrup!!!). My parents live in Montreal and they went to la Sucrerie du Mont-Bleu for lunch and brought tons of delicious syrup back with them. Luckily for me, they had a few cans left when I went to visit last May and brought some back with me!! The maple syrup traveled 55 km from the sugar shack to my parent’s house by car and 4000 km by plane with me from Montreal to Vancouver.
In total, my breakfast traveled 7925 km by truck or plane to make it to my house or grocery store (this number does not take into account the distance between where the Starbucks beans are grown and where they are roasted). Also, considering that I don’t have a car, I do all my grocery shopping on foot so I did not add any distance from the place where I purchased the food to my house.
Lunch time!!!! Today’s lunch is a leftover salad from last night.
The ingredients for this salad are quinoa, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, roasted almonds, lime juice and olive oil.
The pepper, tomatoes, cucumber and avocado were all purchased at the West End farmers market yesterday. I am pretty sure they were all from the same Richmond farmer which is 15 km away from the West End. All these produce had to travel by car. They did not have any packaging except for the cherry tomatoes which were in a plastic container made from oil. I carried all my purchases in a reusable bag to avoid using more plastic bags which are also made from oil.
The lime and almonds are both from the state of California and so they had to travel approximately 1000 km by truck to get to Vancouver. The lime had no packaging when I purchased it at the grocery store. I used a plastic bag for the almonds which is made from oil .
The olive oil I used is imported from Italy by Safeway. This means that the olive oil traveled more than 8000 km to Calgary and then another 1200 km to Vancouver. I think the olive oil was probably shipped on a boat from Italy to the Canadian east coast and then it was delivered by truck to Calgary and again by truck to Vancouver. The packaging of the olive oil is a glass bottle.
As for the quinoa, I was very disappointed to find out that it is from Bolivia. I studied Latin American politics last semester and in Bolivia, quinoa used to be very cheap and accessible to all the population; rich or poor. Now that the richer western world is craving the grain, poorer Bolivians are left with rice which is far from having the same nutritional value as quinoa. With that being said, the quinoa traveled 8900 km from Bolivia to Canada and probably did most of the trip by boat. The quinoa was packed in a plastic bag made from oil.
In total, my lunch traveled 19160 km to reach me in Vancouver.
After this amazing lunch (which took me way longer to describe than to actually eat!!!) I went off to Squamish for an afternoon hike!!
After this wonderful hike, my body needed some energy so I ate a few local strawberries (I already took into account the oil used for the strawberries when I described my breakfast). I also ate a hard boiled egg for some much needed proteins.
The free range, organic eggs I had were from Maple Hill farm in Abbortsford. The eggs traveled 70 km to get to Vancouver. They were packed in a cardboard box. After a little bit or digging, I think the egg cartons are also make from oil! (Leigh 2011)
Finally, dinner time!!! After a crazy day, I was way too lazy to cook so I stopped at a little organic coffee house on my way home and picked up two different salads. The first one is Moroccan chicken and the second one is Mediterranean chickpea. The ingredients and produce sold at this coffee house are all organic and local. Both salads came in a compostable container.
For transportation its a little trickier to calculate because I did not purchase every single ingredient. However, because all the produce are local, I will assume that in average, each item had to travel 40 km to Vancouver. Together, both salads contained 14 different ingredients so total of 560 km traveled.
I have a diet very rich in fresh produce to compensate for my gluten intolerance. From the Manning article I learned that produce also contain much oil. Indeed, the soil were produce are grown in full or oil due to the intense amount of fertilizers used by farmers to make their crops grow. Also, the oil in the ground accumulates over time which means that even if a particular farmer does not use fertilizers, the land might still contain oil and thus the food will also contain oil. Furthermore, the water used on the land might contain oil from irrigation (Manning 2004, 39).
Another interesting aspect to consider is that the modern methods of farming also use up much oil. For example, tractors are not only made with materials that contains oil, but they also use oil to work (Manning 2004, 42). I tried to find out more about the farming techniques in Bolivia to reflect on the quinoa I ate. Unfortunately I could not find much information, however, I remember from the course I took that farmers do use modern machinery to farm the land and are often even less conscious of the environment when they use cars and trucks which means the quinoa I ate might have a very oily history.
In summary, I consumed the following amount of oil in just one day:
Transportation: 27715km (by plane, boat or truck)
Packaging: 7 packages made from oil
I eat in average 2000 calories per day which means at least 2000 calories of oil (Manning 2004, 42)
Plus, all the oil used for the faming process
Where I saved points: doing my groceries on foot, not using plastic bags at the grocery store and eating local produce as often as possible.
Total: a lot of oil for just one person!
Voila! This is my blog. I hope you enjoyed it. Good night!
References
Freudenrich, Craig. 2007. How Plastic Works. How Stuff Works. Accessed on July 11, 2013. Available online at: http://science.howstuffworks.com/plastic.htm
Leigh, Elizah. 2011. Which is Best: Recyclable Paperboard or Polystyrene Egg Cartons?. Recycling. Accessed on July 8, 2013. Available online at: http://1800recycling.com/2011/03/recyclable-paperboard-polystyrene-egg-carton/#.UeCJyTnD-01
Manning, Richard. 2004. The Oil We Eat. Harper’s Magazine. 308 (1845): 37-45.