For lunch, I dropped by for a quick meal at White Spot, a local BC restaurant that claims to purchase over 675,000 pounds of tomatoes, almost 5,000,000 pounds of potatoes and 73,000 pounds of blueberries from BC producers. I had their classic burger, coleslaw salad and fries knowing that nearly 5 million pounds of potatoes used to make White Spot’s fries each year are all supplied by BC producers. The burgers have a quarter pound of beef along with lettuce, tomato and the restaurant’s signature sauce. White Spot president Warren Erhart claims that “almost 50 per cent of White Spot’s ingredients, from tomatoes to potatoes, are locally sourced and we are proud to support the producers that grow delicious food right in our own backyard.” According to Richard Manning, when talking about energy and calories a “factor of ten applies to each level up the food chain.” Although eating animal meat may contribute to enormous wastages of energy, vegetarians eating processed foods would not be faring much better in terms of saving energy. This has been discussed in my previous post about processed ingredients in foods such as milk and cereal. It can be concluded that eating organic, unprocessed food would be the best choice. Eating at a restaurant means that once again, my plate, fork, knives were reusable and not contributing to energy wastage from packaging. I would assume that the unknown bread brand White Spot uses is also highly processed. The beef, though Canadian is also very inefficient in terms of energy uses. “Feedlots,” for raising cows for food is described by Richard Manning as wasteful because “it exhales methane, a global-warming gas. It pollutes streams. It takes thirty-five calories of fossil fuel to make a calorie of beef this way.

https://www.whitespot.ca/news/latest-news/white-spot-celebrates-bc-new-summer-menu-and-wine-list

THE OIL WE EAT Manning, Richard. Harper’s Magazine 308.1845 (Feb 2004): 37-45.