Enviro-gluton

Nido:

plastic lid- derived from natural gases(oil) and petroleum and heavily  processed

Tin can- Heavy machinery used to bend, shape and construct the container, most likely required oil.

Nutella:

Plastic lid- derived from natural gases and petroleum and heavily  processed

Glass jar- glass has to be melted, homogenized and refined processes which all most likely require oil.

Unfortunately, while here I am forced to drink bottled water because otherwise I will get sick(lesson which was confirmed to me when I drank a glass of coke with ice cubes said to be made from bottled water when in fact it was not).

I have read that we can estimate that the oil required to produce is 33% of the bottle’s contents. Sadly the amounts of water needed to produce a bottle of water are quite high  as well as a bottle of water requires twice the amount it will hold to be produced.

It is also estimated that the plastic used to make these bottles requires 17 million barrels of oil worldwide.

The inefficiency of water bottles reminds me a lot of Manning’s article when he is talking about how much energy is required to produce cereal in comparison to how much nutrients we actually receive from the finished product.

more info here :http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/bottled_water_and_energy.html

So I’ve grouped these four ingredients together because they have not yet been mentioned and they are found in the crêpes, the omelet,the chapati and the soup.

-In this case the eggs are local and free range,so the only aspect I could think of that would require oil would be to process and make the chicken feed to feed the chicken that lay these eggs however I am not sure what they feed their chickens here as they are often just roaming around the towns and seem to feed off the trash. The trash itself has probably endured various degrees of oild use.

-Flour is made from wheat that is ground either by a steel wheels or if you’re a local here you might crush the grain yourself with rocks. The flour that was used in our dishes were most likely factory ground and the wheat grains imported, these two factors tell me wheat was involved.

-In the case of oil I am assuming our guide meant some sort of vegetable oil which as I previously mentioned needs to be processed from various plant seeds to become it’s final product.

I drink tea every morning! Unfortunately tea leaves also have to be processed to become their final product. They go through varios stages of processing, first fermentation, then heating and drying simultaneously. Sigh! Yet more probable oil usage in the processing stages and machinery.

Probably one of my favorite things on this whole summary is Nutella , I’ve been raised on this chocolatey delight, so let’s see what damages I have caused with my mass consumption of it.

-Nutella has, just like Nido and many other things , Soy Lecitin in it which again means the soybean had to through many processes (such as oil extraction) to become it’s current form in Nutella. This means oild was most likely used in production.

-Nutella also uses Skimmed milk powder which means, again this ingredient had to through a massive process derived from milk to become skim milk powder (the same one that Nido had to go through, remember the diagram on my last post? Yeah, I thought you did.)

-Next ingredient is the Fat-reduced cocoa powder which clearly has been processed as powder does not grow on trees!! Cocoa powder is made by a hydraulic press or broma process which seperates the bean into its powder form as well as its butter form. I can only imagine that these systems of processing require oil to be maintained and/or to function.

-Then we have Whey powder. Whey is the liquid obtained when milk has been curdled and strained to make cheese. The liquid is then refined and processed to become whey powder. So the process of whey to be created and then re-processed to become a powder probably consumed a lot of energy to make so again oil use is suspected.

-Next ingredient on the list is Vanilin flavourant. This flavouring agent most likely has oil in it as most flavourants do.

-Next item, vegetable oil which are lipids that been extracted from plant seeds and are, well, oil themselves. Clearly here there is oil use!

-Finally there is sugar. I am not sure what kind of sugar this might be, but let’s pretend it’s white sugar. White sugar is derived from sugar sugar cane plants. It goes through a process called affination to become it’s final form which again, I suspect, would require oil to do.

On top of all the ingredient the Nutella was imported from Italy, so it had to be most likely flown over to meet it’s finally destination.More oil.

Since we are camping most of our trip it is way more convenient and safe to be consuming powdered milk. We have, at least for 24hr summary of our diet, heavily been consuming Nido; I put it in my tea every morning, it was in the crêpes for breakfast, the sauce at lunch as well as the soup at dinner time.

Nido, I think, utilizes a fair amount of oil as it is a pretty intensive process to turn milk or cream into a powdered form.

Here is a little diagram that briefly explains the process.

The process seems like it employs very heavy machinery that could very well be powered by some sort of oil. The storage of milk in the holding tank alone indicates probable oil use as well of the delivery by truck of the liquid milk.

Nido also contains Soy Lecitin which is obtained by the extracting of oil out of soy beans, once oil is derived from the soy bean lecitin is extracted by one of two processes,steam precipitation or centrifugation. In other words, heavy processing is involved just in one of the only ingredients added to Nido.

On top of all this processing, Nido is imported to Tanzania from the Netherlands  adding to oil consumption by needing to be stored and flown far distances.

(image borrowed from https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/information_center/powdered_milk_made.htm)

I decided to,in an effort to avoid redundance, group all my foods by certain categories because inevitable some items will have similar levels of oil use. Here, as you might have guessed, I will be investigating all things agriculture that have not been processed in relation to my earlier described meals. This means Bananas,papayas,carrots,onions, tomatoes,Chaniz and mangoes.

Here, in Tanzania produce works a bit differently, from what our guide (also a farmer) has told me, fruits and vegetables that I have been consuming are all locally grown either coming from the village we are in or one very close by thereby reducing the amount of oil to get the produce from the farm to my plate because the distance is usually minimal.

My guide has also told me that crops are all hand picked and carried by humans instead of machines. The fact that they rely less heavily on tractors and other fuel powered means that not only are they consuming less oil from using the machines, but they are also saving on oil for things like maintenance on these machines.

One aspect that makes up for the above mentioned oil savings is the use of fertilizers and pesticides.I assume(maybe wrongfully) that farms here use some form of pesticide and fertilizer on their crops and a large quantity of those products are petroleum based or in the case of fertilizers amonia based which is derived from natural gas.

So it’s dinner time, at this point I’m fantasizing about sushi, unfortunately it won’t quite be the reality of my meal.We start off with a soup with, but of course, Carrots! and leeks in it. Then some carrots and green peppers in what appears to be a tomato based sauce, pure speculation here, paired with some Chapati. Chapati seems quite similar to the crêpes from morning time though the dough appears to be thicker, almost like Naan bread. To end it all on a sweet note a plate of mango slices are brought out.

On this day we were in kind of a hurry, so we stopped at a local restaurant. The vegetarian choices were slim, but what we got was delicious! A big plate of rice with a side of something that looks like spinach and is called Chaniz (not sure on the exact spelling on that). The rice and Chaniz mixed with a carrot, onion and tomato sauce made for a satisfying meal and I’d like to think the wild cats that were liking up the crumbs thought so too.

Hey guys,

So here it is, your first glimpse at my eating habits! I bet you’re excited. For breakfast we usually start off with a plate of tasty local fruits; today it was papaya and bananas followed by an omelet and crepes that I of course smother in Nutella.  All this accompanied by a pipping hot (don’t want to get sick!!!) cup of Killimanjaro English breakfast tea with a little bit of evaporated milk called Nido. A good start to a long hot day!