Did you know the food we eat is processed using a large amount of fossil fuels and often travels a long way before arriving on our plates?
The thought that I’ll try to press upon you during this blog is how you can reduce your dependence on foods that require excessive amounts of energy.
I find myself guilty of thinking that carpooling or walking to work is all I can do to reduce my carbon footprint, when a very effective and surprisingly not so well-known way is analyzing my food choices, specifically how that food is produced. Richard Manning states “every calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten.[1]” Energy is embedded in our food, it has come to the point that “[a]griculture isn’t about food; [but now] it’s about commodities that require the outlay of still more energy to become food.[2]” As an example, grinding, milling, wetting, drying, and baking breakfast cereal requires about four calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food that is produced. This doesn’t account for the fuel for transportation, and fuel used by the consumers who travel long distances just to save fifty cents on a box of corn flakes.
Eating high up on the food chain has its consequences. With every step up, more energy is lost or consumed. Lets say my daily diet takes approximately 3,000 calories, then it requires 30,000 to grow that food. To simplify this math, this means A LOT of energy is going into growing, processing, and delivering food. The one calorie in to one calorie out ratio is what needs to be aimed for, otherwise lands will slowly deplete and the energy cycle will slowly die out. The image below shows how energy is lost throughout each step in the food chain.
[3]Energy Loss in Food Chain
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[1] Manning, Richard. The Oil We Eat, Harper’s Magazine, (Feb 2004): 37-45
[2] Manning, Richard. The Oil We Eat, Harper’s Magazine, (Feb 2004): 37-45
[3] Tutor Vista, “Ten Percent Law.” http://www.tutorvista.com/content/biology/biology-iv/ecosystem/ten-percent-law.php#
Great piece of information. Never knew that fossils fuels are this much linked with our daily life and that too connected to us through our regular meals. Thanks for sharing and keep on updating such amazing things!