The Oil We Eat

Pancakes with Strawberries

 Ah, Breakfast- my favorite meal of the day. There is nothing like waking up to my favorite dish after a good nights rest. Today on the menu was one of my favorite dishes, Pancakes with Strawberry Puree. A quick question to the chief (mom) about the ingredients used it came as no surprise that flour, buttermilk and local strawberries were the most dominant of them all.

The Whole List:

• 3 Cups of all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons of white sugar
• 3 table spoons of baking powder
• 1 ½ teaspoons of baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 3 cups buttermilk
• ½ cup milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup butter
• 3 cups of fresh strawberries

Pancakes w/ Strawberries

Now, I am sure traces of oil can be found in every product listed, whether it is the machinery used to produce it, farm it or sterilize it- oil is everywhere, but for this blogs own personal sake I am just going to focus on the most evident ingredients with more detail to show the consumption of oil in in our foods.

First off is the all-purpose flour, At first I believed flour was simply grinded wheat with no processing required, and was simply packaged in paper bags and shipped out from the farms directly. I was quite mistaken…Flour is not only made up of wheat, it is actually a combination of Wheat, Maize, and roots/seeds from just about anything they can get their hands on. Nevertheless, the amount of oil used begins to rise from day one in the planting of any flour related crop.

The order of operations goes something like this: preparing the land (machine), maintaining the crop (machine), cutting the crop (machine), uplifting the roots (machine).

Already there is four machines operating off of petroleum and the product has yet to leave farm! Just for fun, I found that the average John Deere tractor for a medium sized farm runs anywhere between 2-5 MPG depending on driving style, so really if you own a large plot of land, the petrol contributing to each of the operations every season is not cheap!

From here, crops are either shipped over seas (by tanker ships through massive silos), or are moved to the closest inland mill. This time, requiring ENOURMOUS amounts of oil. The average vessel such as the Emma Maersk, consumes 163g/kWh which totals to 13,000 KG of petrol per hour. For example purposes, lets use the journey from London to the bays of New Brunswick. On average this trip takes around 10 days, assuming the cruise is operating 24 hours a day. This would equate to 240 hours of service, then equaling 3120000 KG of oil for a single trip!

The milling process however was not as simple to trace. What I found after cross-referencing numerous methods from many different countries is that no two mills do anything the same. Some separate crops- some do not, some bleach their flour- others don’t, some have up to 20 break rolls and 20 reduction rolls (massive metal cylinders that crush the crop and essentially turn it to powder) where as others have 2. According to the European Flour Miller Association, on average there is 4 break rolls and 12 reduction rolls in a single facility. However that’s not all, we must take in to account the other machinery used such as the sorting machines, sieves, and conditioning machines that are used to process the intermediate products.

What I thought was a simple scale process instantly jumped up another 100 levels after only minutes of reading. I attempted to find some information about the energy consumption of these machines but without a clue of any manufacturer names of the machines it was very difficult. BUT, I was able to find an image that shows lightly the order flour goes through as soon as it enters the milling facility (seen below)

Milling Process

Now that I have covered flour from the ground and up (literally), what’s left figure out in this oil tangled commodity it’s how its 1. Packaged and 2. Transported.

Much to my surprise, many flour companies are taking a “green” initiative towards their packaging materials. The triple-layered paper bag flour comes in is most often recycled paper from a third-party paper mill. All sounds pleasant thus far, right? …Wrong. It turns out paper mills and assembly lines (where the paper is turned in to something such as bags) are some of the worst oil consumers and polluters throughout all industries. Thinking back this makes sense, for why else would many pulp mills in the area (New Westminster, Campbell river, Dawson Creek) be closing down.

When stumbling upon this information, I decided to look further and find out what really makes paper/pulp mills so brutal on oil consumption. It turns out that the primary cause is the age of most machinery found in these mills. The pulp process has been going on for ages, and not much has changed from fifty years ago with the exception of computer technology.

The transportation of wheat and its intermediate products can be shown through the graph I created below. Whether the method of transport be by boat, train or vehicle, the oil consumption among all three is an astronomical amount. (see below)

Oil Graph

To accompany my very oily pancakes were fresh “locally grown” strawberries. Seeing as how I live in Surrey, the distance these berries travelled could not have been all too long for most blueberries and strawberries are grown just an hour further inland.

However, aside from the pesticide sprayers and plastic container manufacturers, I don’t believe these berries could have required any large amounts of oil. Most likely they were handpicked, and put in a basket to be washed with thousands of others before being packaged in a recycled plastic container and put on a truck to local distribution centers like BC hot house and then to our local grocery stores.

Chicken Sandwich & Fanta Cola

At this point I must apologize for my lunch post will be based out of Sighisoara, Romania on the following day.

I believe the change in my whereabouts will show an interesting insight in to the oil consumption differences between North American and Europe. A quick prediction before I get going is that it will be much harder to trace oil consumption- for even in the larger cities of Europe a lot of the ingredients are fresh from the market and cut in front of you.

When it comes to food, you cannot beat just about anywhere In Europe. For Lunch I enjoyed a fresh Chicken Sandwich consisting of some interesting ingredients I have never had in a sandwich before. See below.

• Foot Long Baguette
• Sliced Chicken Breast
• Hard Boiled Egg
• Tomato
• Lettuce
• Dijon Mustard
•   + a Fanta Cola for a drink.

This time around I think I will focus on the Hard Boiled Egg and Foot Long Baguette to show what I hope will be an interesting perspective.

Chicken Sandwich

Like I said before, it is very difficult to trace the oil consumption in these products for there is a much better chance the owner of the store bought then directly from the farm or local farmers market. Nevertheless I will do my best to show at least some insight.

One observation of mine is that surrounding the entire town of Sighisoara is farmland; therefore fresh produce and ingredients must not be too far away. The photo below is of an egg stand at the local farmers market in Sighisoara on the citadel showing how the middleman and businessman have no real involvement in much of the agricultural trading around Europe. No mass grocery chains really exist, besides the 10x5m corner shops and specialty butchers or bakers that carry all essentials.

Egg Stand

If I were to guess, these eggs were collected from a coupe/ farm of chickens, and then packaged in reusable cardboard boxes and then brought in by the farmer to the town. The only real consumption in this process seems to be through the cardboard (paper/pulp) usage and the oil in transporting the goods from the farms to the markets. Compared to the multinational companies that deal with most of north Americas produce, most of Europe’s grocery trade is based off of traditional practice à the local, family farmed/operated farmers market. However, when it comes to the Foot long Baguette that was freshly baked in the deli you have to remember the main ingredient: flour. And as we saw before, flours top to bottom oil consumption is not little. Though everything in Europe a lot of the time is “home-made” or “directly sold”, some things are composed of intermediate products that use plenty of oil throughout its production.

Lets assume the maize/wheat was farmed just outside of Sighisoara, the process of milling and transporting it to the little markets is still a long one- using tons of oil along the way. Below is a photo I took just outside of Bucharest on the Train of the rolling cornfields that can be seen all through the country.

Romanian Corn Fields

As a whole, my sandwich came in a paper bag, which most likely is composed of used paper material but still requires petroleum, and my Fanta cola I am sure required an insane amount of oil not only in its tin packaging but also in the transportation costs from London- where it claims this can was produced.  Nevertheless I am already sensing that the oil consumption through the food I eat will be substantially lower than if I was to still be in Canada…?

→ Cucumber Salad, Cordon Bleu, Veil Schnitzel, Mashed potatoes, Chocolate Cake

Chicken Cordon- Bleu

Just after I finished eating I began to brainstorm the oil consumption that could be traced in my dinner, and let me say it was difficult. My girlfriend’s grandparents who had prepared this meal for us had picked up the meats and vegetables locally from the farmers market just hours before preparing dinner, and even the chocolate cake was make out of home crafted chocolate! At first I thought well this would be a boring post, because everything was slaughtered just minutes from here or grown just miles away… Until it struck me Cocoa (chocolate) is from no where even close to Romania, and is a commodity that has some controversial ties along with it ( child slavery etc.) that could make this very interesting. And interesting it was..

Cocoa is grown from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree and has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America and Africa. For this articles sake I will follow the consumption of oil in a regular chocolate bar and not one that was hand crafted from cocoa beans (similar to what I had).

The process begins in the Cocoa fields, where workers harvest the cocoa pods and scoop out of the pod anywhere between 50 and 100 cocoa beans along with a gelatin substance that helps the cocoa to ferment. After the fermentation process is complete, the beans are separated from the gelatin substance and left out to dry either at the farm or at a processing plant. The dry beans are then collected and labeled raw cocoa and are shipped in the thousands of kilograms to chocolate manufacturers. At this point of the production process cocoa undergoes little oil consumption (if the drying process was done at the farm), but like all other foreign agricultural goods, the oil used in shipping is what makes the largest contribution. The cocoa bean is usually transported via ship, in large containers. And as we saw before in the Wheat Section, vessel oil consumption is anything but “efficient”.

Upon the cocoa arriving at the chocolate facility, it is tested them immediately put in to production. The first step in the chocolate making process is the blending of mixed beans to create the perfect flavors. The beans are then put in to large cylinders and roasted (via flame) for around two hours. This roasting process again requires large amounts of petroleum. After roasting, the cocoa is stripped of its shell and then crushed in to liquid by large steel grinding stones, and from here is either put under immense pressure to produce cocoa powder or left as cocoa liquid.

Cocoa Beans

Shortly after some fine-tuning to the cocoa, it is then packaged and shipped to chocolate bar producers or distribution centers that sell the raw cocoa products.

In just my short description of the cocoa process, the amount of oil used in the transportation of the beans, and the milling of the beans is one that requires immense amounts of oil. At first I thought cocoa was simply harvested and then crushed to make the powder, and not refined many times to get the product we enjoy around the world.  If you want to see more about this process watch this movie here–  it goes behind the scenes in the process I explained above and gives much better insight than I ever could have.

Aside from my cocoa research, the amount of oil used in my dinner was very scarce. Other than the petrol used to transport the items from the farm to the market, no real intermediate products existed. There was milk in the potatoes, and salt and pepper on the meats, and home made breadcrumbs on the veil, all of which were home made from produce and products just minutes away.

It is hard to believe how much oil goes in to the food we eat, and how over produced everything we eat is! I believe my blog was a good comparison between North America and Europe for the amount of processed foods we have in nearly every meal in Canada is more than most European families will consume in a week or even a month! Everything here is much more ‘home-made’ and much less grocery store bought. I believe the closest McDonalds to me in Sighisoara is a good four-hour train ride away. The way of life is much different, from the lifestyle people live to the activities they do to the food they eat→ and all of it seams to be a lot more natural..

Manning in his article poses many great points that can be related to my 24-hour consumption blog. He says that agriculture is more about making money than the food or energy that is wasted in its production. And such words are growing more and more true around the world as every country begins to “westernize”. I don’t believe it has struck Romania quite yet, for there is no real over-production or processed food.. or at least not yet. Moreover, if you compare the ingredients used in my breakfast (which was in Canada) and the ingredients used in my Dinner (which was in Romania) you can see how Manning’s point cannot be fully applied to the world, but only western civilizations.

Sighisoara Streets