The Oil We Eat

To connect all of this energy use back to oil or fossil fuels I will leave you with a few numbers to think about.  On average, an 8 ounce steak contains approximately 450 calories; grain fed beef uses about 35 calories of energy for every 1 calorie of food.  This adds up to 15750 calories in the production alone.  Now add the transportation, packaging and preparation costs and it starts to add up.  The distance the majority of our coffee beans travel from Brazil to get to Vancouver: approximately 11000 km.  If the average commuter drives 50 km round trip to get to and from work, this would be equivalent to driving the beans in your car to and from work 220 days before they reached us here (just to give you a relatable measuring device).  One U.S. gallon of fuel oil is equivalent to 2.6*10^-8 calories, but consider the energy used to extract, refine and transport the oil, the amount of oil used to transport, grow, process and package our food, and our food begins to look much more (environmentally) expensive.

How much energy has been used in growing or producing this food?  Let’s start with the beef I consumed in my sandwich and chilli.  It was only transported from Alberta, so it seems to be using the least amount of energy so far.  However, Richard Manning’s article had forewarned me of the amount of energy used in current industrial farming practices, in particular to feed livestock.  On average it takes one to three calories of energy to create one calorie of food with today’s production processes.  In the case of grain-fed beef it is estimated to be closer to thirty-five calories to create one calorie of beef!  Having many highly processed items was also a poor choice.  In general, more raw food would have consumed less energy.  However, my yogurt, granola bar and donut have been through several refinement stages, and have probably consumed the most energy in that respect.  Manning claims that, in the United States, processing food uses up an additional ten calories for every calorie of food energy produced on average.  In addition, these foods had the most packaging.  Excessive packaging adds large amounts of energy by making the packaging, wrapping the food in it, and disposing of it.

I started my research by taking a look at where my food for the day came from.  Food normally travels to great distances and several locations before making it to the table.  It may be grown as raw materials in one location, processed in another, possibly processed into a final product at yet another location, and packaged at a separate location.  To give a better visual of the distances traveled by my meals I created this map showing where each product was either grown or processed.

These are the most common areas for each of these items to come from, not necessarily where my particular beef or carrots came from.  Very little of my meals originated in Canada, and not one item came from B.C.  The winners for furthest traveled were my chocolate from Ethiopia and my coffee from Brazil.  This became a little bit scarier when looking at the amount of coffee drunk in Canada alone.  According to the Coffee Association of Canada, 63% of Canadians drink coffee on a daily basis, and that those people drink an average of 2.6 cups per day.  I am beginning to better understand Richard Manning’s point about eating locally grown products in his article “The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq”.  He says, “If I’ve done my due diligence, I will have found out that the particular lamb I am eating was both local and grass-fed, two factors that of course greatly reduce the embedded energy in a meal.”  I never realized how much energy was wasted in the transportation process alone.

A nice home cooked meal would be really nice at some point in my life.  However, with the school crunch right now, dinner was from the campus Tim Horton’s (approximately 7:00 pm).  A bowl of chili, toasted whole wheat bun, coffee and chocolate glaze doughnut were on tonight’s menu.

Of course most of the food will have used a lot of energy being produced, refined, and transported, however, I didn’t realize how much transportation was involved.  I should have been on the alert when I noted the lack of coffee plants here in Canada.  According to Tim Horton’s website most of their coffee comes from “Helping small holder farmers in Guatemala, Colombia and Brazil …”  This could indeed be an issue when, according to the Coffee Association of Canada, 63% of Canadians drink coffee on a daily basis, and that those people drink an average of 2.6 cups per day.  All of those coffee beans must be shipped by either trucks, boats or airplanes.  That’s a lot of energy.  That’s a lot of oil.

Lunch Time!  Approximately 1:30 pm.  Here I am, excited to sit down to my delicious, healthy lunch I packed for today.  I even packed vegetables today.  I was feeling quite good about it all until I got to the end of my meal and realized how much packaging I had to throw out.  I guess much of that could have been avoided by the use of reusable containers.

So to start with, I decided to look up how much that was costing me.  The amount of energy used to package products obviously varies from one to another, but, according to Danielle Murray of Earth Policy Institute:

“Approximately twenty-three percent of the energy used in our food production system is allocated to processing and packaging food.”

Next I will look into how much energy is used to produce and transport the food I’m eating, and how this translates into oil consumption.



I began my 24 hour food consumption record at 7:00 am, today, March 15, 2011.  I am unsure if I will be able to look at food the same after today, but it is time we were aware of the effects of our everyday actions.  Anyone can preach environmental protection, but until we begin investigating the unseen effects of all of our actions, can we really feel justified?

Every morning I wake up and eat the same thing: one piece of toast with peanut butter, and a banana.  Today was no different, except that usually I just take it for granted that this should be available and waiting for me when I wake up.  Today I will be investigating how it gets from the ground to my mouth, and in particular, the contribution of oil to this process.

History 106, Assignment #2, The Oil We Eat Blog

Blog your food consumption for 24 hours—reflect on the role of oil in its production (what’s in it and how was it produced?), delivery (where is it from and how did it get to you?), and packaging (what does/did it come in, and how was that produced).