Conclusion
At the end of the 24 hours plus lots of time spent investigating I can now conclude that we eat way too much oil. WAAAY too much.
After writing this blog, I’m a little bit horrified by what I now know. Without oil we would have to completely change the way we eat. Go to the home page of this blog, and press Control + F. Type in Machine and highlight all of them. Then scroll up and down and look at how many times the word pops up. It’s shocking. Our whole food and agricultural industry is basically controlled and sustained by machines at this current time which also means that it is being fueled by oil. Just simply the amount of oil it takes to transport our foods is outstanding.
The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food. There’s a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil.
– Manning
Without oil, we would not have enough food to feed the world, and unfortunately for us, oil is not an unlimited resource. We will run out, and it will be sooner than later. I am a little scared about what will happen to us when we do run out of oil.
Agriculture isn’t about food; it’s about commodities that require the outlay of still more energy to become food.
– Manning
But there are ways to slow things down and I know that I will be starting to take these steps. The key to using less oil is buying local. Transporting foods back and forth uses up immense amounts of oil especially since there is only a small amount of gasoline in a large amount of crude oil. By lowering the space needed to travel then we lower the amount of oil we need to use. So next time I go to the super market I will try to select local meats, produce, eggs, and other groceries.
A second idea is to buy organic and free range products as they often use less machinery, pesticide like products, etc. Which means also reducing the amount of oil. If you can grow your own produce, and use compost instead of store bought fertilizers as it uses less oil and is much better for the environment.
If you can try and cut down on the amount of wheat that you consume as wheat is a crop that needs to be heavily processed and is extremely destructive to soil meaning it leads to more chemicals and fertilizers being infused into the earth.
Of course these are just a couple solutions, many of which Manning has already hinted towards in his article but they will help. We’ve made food and farming a business when it should mean so much more than just profit. We should take every aspect of food and farming into consideration.. the animals, the land, the soil, the crops, the farmers… it shouldn’t just be about the money.
But it is only after doing this project and taking this course that I have become truly aware of that.
Calorie Intake
Breakfast
Total: 379
Lunch
Total: 430
Dinner
Total : 520
Total intake: 1,329
Total Oil Usage: Way Over 10,000 gallons
Does this look appealing to you?