Overall I was frustrated about the lack of information on companies websites about where their products ingredients come from. How am I supposed to make sustainable choices if I don’t have access to the information. Perhaps that leaves me with the option of just forgetting about companies that don’t give me this and select products based on companies that allow for the consumer to be informed. Not only be informed but to contain ingredients that are derived locally. I mean before globalization, the only option was to eat local so I don’t see why we can’t revert to similar practices.

For instance, at my house we have a garden and in it we grow tomatoes, onions, lettuce, herbs and a few other things. This is a way to eat local, I mean really, how much energy does it really take for me to grow my own lettuce anyways? At least when comparing it to buying lettuce that has been grown in a greenhouse, picked, taken to a facility to be washed and packaged, delivered to the grocery store, and then purchased. It’s so easy for me to just plant some lettuce seeds. Although this brings us to a whole new issue of the seed market. I won’t get into that now but if you’re interested just look for anti-media coverage surrounding Monzano’s (FoodInk is a good place to look).

Apparently in this modern age there is no such thing as a simple diet. For instance, most products contain salt and it was most likely imported from somewhere else. This gives whatever product or recipe it was put in an automatic negative environmental impact.

There is so much more to a product than just the outcome, each component and ingredient has its own journey to travel to get there. If I was super nifty with graphics I would make a web for just one product.

* Where did the plastic come from that it was contained in? Where are the machines that made the plastic from? What does the infrastructure of the facility that produces the plastic contain? Who originally had rights to the land that the plastic manufacturing facility is built on? etc. etc.

It’s almost overwhelming, so what are the most important things to consider when choosing what food you consume?

From the sea to my chip.
Brunswick: Boneless Herring Fillets

Location: I’m just going to take a shot in the dark here and say the herring is farmed off the coast of New Brunswick and probably canned and packaged in New Brunswick as well. After being packaged I’m going to guess it was shipped to Ontario and from there it found it’s way to the store where it was then purchased.

Sustainability:”Clover Leaf’s primary business is in seafood. We support global policies and management initiatives that ensure the long-term sustainability of these resources.”(1)

Packaging: “As a consumer goods company, we realize that packaging comprises a component of our product’s footprint, a component that is visible to the consumer after they have enjoyed our products. To that end, our objective is to design and source primary and secondary packaging which minimizes environmental impact throughout the life cycle while ensuring the safety and quality of our products, durability in our customer supply chains, effective shelf presence, and convenience of use to our consumers.”(1)

Diet: Herring feed off of the primary producers plankton.(2)

Relation to Manning: Manning presented the argument that eating green may not actually be that friendly to animals as land needs to be cultivated to grow vegetables. The cultivation of land can involve controlling and potentially killing animals that invade the land. Well my entire diet for the day was mostly vegetarian and the only “living” product I consumed was the seafood snack. So I think in relation to this I ate a fairly sustainable diet that wasn’t too environmentally heavy. I mean this in relation to other choices I could have made, perhaps if I ate beef it would be a different story because of the methane cows produce, which then enhance the greenhouse gas effect. I think I made the best possible choice to consume a product that is from the Maritimes and is a bottom feeder. Feel free to correct me if you think otherwise.

(1)”Sustainability.”<http://www.cloverleaf.ca/en/company/sustainability/>

(2) “What do Herring Eat?” Gulf of Maine Research Institute. 7 July 2013. Web. 12 July 2013.<http://www.gma.org/herring/biology/ecology/>

Veggie Patch Falafel Chickpea Balls – The website has no available information on where they were produced… http://www.veggiepatch.com/products/canadian

I’m going to presume they were manufactured in Canada since the website had a Canadian products section. I imagine the chickpeas came from either the Mediterranean, western Asian, the Indian subcontinent, Australia, and the Great Plains (1). Considering we are in Canada it makes the most sense that they came from the American Great Plains. As this is the main ingredient I imagine a majority of what I pay goes towards the processing of chickpeas and the baking of the falafel.

Thanks to Wikipedia here are the top chickpea producers of 2005.

*Perhaps the chickpeas in my falafel traveled all the way from India. It’s hard to know when there isn’t much information provided on the website. Way to let me be engaged with the product and know what I’m consuming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jD0A4qnvRQ

When it comes to my choice to eat pre-made falafel for lunch, I think it is hard to ignore how wasteful it seems. The package is quite large and comes with about 10 balls in it (normally lasting me a week for a package). The package here in Toronto is recyclable but it still seems unnecessary.

(1) “Chickpea.” Wikipedia. n.d. Web. 12 July 2013. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickpea>

I make a conscious decision about the food I eat, in order to ensure I am going to have the energy I need. Although this keeps me from always making the most environmentally conscious choices. As Manning mentioned, food dictates how we live our life. Individuals who eat a bad diet are more susceptible to illness and premature death. Like he said, this has been proven time over time. So is it picking the lesser of two evils to chose foods that are good for you but bad for the environment? Or is this where our multitude of class discussions come into play and individualistic ideals are demonstrated?

“Compass Foods is an importer, a processor and a packager of the best dried fruits and nuts from around the world.” Instantly this strikes me as being a company that has a high carbon footprint. Regardless, I ate their prunes for a snack. In actuality, Compass Foods is based in Ontario so they receive plums from outside of the country and then go through the process of turning them into prunes and packaging them in a bag before shipping them.

Plums are grown in an orchard setting and require an irrigation system. They also require pruning through out the year. Since the flowers of a plum tree need to be pollinated it is also necessary for other flowering plants to be removed. After the plums are ready to be pick they must be prepared to be shipped to the processing plant.(1) In this case the plums are shipped from an unknown location to Ontario where they are then processed and packaged.

Here is a nice video showing the process plums go into to be turned into prunes:

It is hard to know the exact method that was utilized by Compass Foods but this process in the video demonstrates sun drying, it is also possible to be done through oven drying. Each method utilizes a different amount of fossil fuel energy and I am more inclined to suggest that sun drying is a more efficient way.

Sources:
(1)Uva, R. “How to grow beach plums.” Cornell. n.d. Web. 12 July 2013.

I have no way of telling you what is in this almond butter as it is unlabelled and I did not purchase it.

Locations:
– Peru
– United States
– Japan
– Canada
– Mediterranean

One simple breakfast wrap contains items from five countries. It takes a substantial amount of fuel to get the ingredients together in one location to be made into the product. It then takes more fuel to get the different items sent to the store and then brought back to my house for me to put together into my breakfast.

I’m still trying to grasp my head around Mannings idea that food is oil. I am confused as to why food is so cheap if it uses so much oil and releases so much CO2 into the atmosphere. Why can I buy three packages of raspberries from California on sale for $5? To me I feel like the amount I pay does not equal the strain it has put onto various Earth systems. Am I supposed to feel good about the fact I can recycle all of the packaging it came in? Does this outweigh everything else?

The packaging my breakfast came in was a recyclable bag for the wrap, a recyclable container for the strawberries, a recyclable container for the almond butter and a compostable banana peel for the banana. The packaging doesn’t make me feel better because the recycling of plastics involves a plastic being transformed into a plastic of lesser quality, so it actually degrades over time and cannot replace itself.(1)

(1) “The Truth About Recycling Plastic.” Green Rock. n.d. Web. 12 July 2013.

Original Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE

(I’d check it out, it is super fun!)

How a banana came to be in my hand thanks to Chiquita:
– A banana bulb was planted in Peru.
– The bulb takes 9 months to mature and develop fruit ready to be picked.
– The fruit is picked and brought to a production plant.
– During the processing of the selected bananas about 10 liters of water is used for one kilogram of banana.
– A worker places a blue sticker on each banana.
– The banana is shipped around 6,195 km to Toronto from Peru.
– The banana is purchased at a local food store and brought home.
*The banana is not presented with any packaging aside from the sticker*
– I chose to use the banana in my breakfast wrap.

Sustainable Agriculture?
According to the website, Chiquita seems to be very interested in sustainable practices and have developed efficient was of producing their product. To protect the banana plant as it matures they utilize recycled plastic to cover and support the plant. Many tools on their farms are also created from recycled plastic. Banana leaves and stems are composted and local animals can use them as a source of food. They also try to keep all run off from their farms from entering the surrounding ecosystems and even hire other companies to test the water quality of surrounding rivers. Basically, they are trying their utmost to develop a practice that will be able to continue for decades. I think this is a really awesome start and I like that the product is coming from a company that cares. Of course not everyone appreciates there attempts and there has been a recent controversy regarding their ethical practices.

Ethical Fuel?
A recent news article published by CBC explains that Chiquita boy-cotted Canadian oil in favor of oil not produced from tar-sands. It seems that they chose a form of oil they found to fit their sustainable practices better. Of course this caused some outrage so it is kind of fun to see how that developed: http://chiquitaconflict.com/

Tying it all together:
“The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food…Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil.” (Manning, 2004). So what about choosing the oil that is the food? Chiquita choosing not to support Canada’s oil industry demonstrated that this goes much deeper and further into economy. For a company that imports to us but won’t take our exports, what does that say? Is it possible for that to work? Or are we too centered around economy to see what they are seeing? Perhaps food is oil and if its not our oil that is another reason to go to war. I mean historically we’ve gone to war for a lot less…

Source:

“The Chiquita Difference.” Chiquita. n.p. 11 July 2013.

“Will you boycott Chiquita bananas over its oilsands stance?” Your Community Blog. CBC News

Richard Manning, “The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq,” Harper’s Magazine, February 2004, 37-45.

My previous posts indicate that my raspberries traveled from California all the way to me in Toronto. If I was in Vancouver I don’t think I would consider this to be a little far for raspberries to travel. Then again, maybe I should consider the fact that I myself traveled almost as far by coming from Vancouver to Toronto. So I traveled 4,372 km to get to Toronto to eat raspberries that traveled 3,218 km. All together it took 7,590 km for me to sit at my kitchen table to eat just the raspberries in my breakfast wrap. I think its important to consider the energy and distance traveled for the product and myself to arrive in the same location as it reflects what Manning is trying to say about fossil fuels, which is when we are analyzing fossil fuels; we don’t remember to include the fuel used to protect the source (2004). I can relate this to consumption because I myself had to play a role in getting to my food source. Essentially, I feel that the consumer plays a huge role. In this instance I did not make the choice to buy the product as I’m sharing groceries with my cousin but I did decide to open the plastic container (I believe it to be reasonably sized and appreciate that it is recyclable) and then put some of the product into my breakfast. I was motivated by my hunger and it was something that could satiate that.

The Ingredients:

Breakfast Wrap: Raspberry, banana, wrap (spinach, zucchini, golden flax, kale, parsley, basil, coconut nectar, olive oil, lemon juice, chlorella and salt), almond butter (dry roasted almonds, organic evaporated cane sugar, palm oil, sea salt)

Smoothie: Flax (certified organic, cold milled flax) blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, banana, and almond milk (all natural almondmilk (filtered water, almonds), all natural evaporated cane juice, calcium carbonate, sea salt, locust bean gum, sunflower lecithin, gellan gum, zinc glutonate, vitamin A palmitate, riboflavin, vitamin D2, vitamin B12)

Snack 1: Prunes (pitted prunes, potassium sobate)

Snack 2: Rice chips (whole grain brown rice, rice flour, masa corn flour, high oleic, expeller pressed safflower and/or sunflower and/or canola oil, sesame seeds, rice starch, sugar, spices, salt, dehydrated vegetables (onion, garlic and tomato), sodium diacetate, hydrolyzed soy and/or corn protein, sodium acetate, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, natural flavors, extractives of paprika, natural caramel color)

Lunch: Falafel (garbanzo beans, zucchini, vegetable oil (sunflower and/or canola), celery, carrots, cilantro, toasted wheat crumbs, parsley, spices, water, salt, potassium chloride, methylcellulose, sodium bicarbonate, cultured dextrose (dextrose, bacterial culture), onion powder), hummus (chickpeas, water, tahini (sesame butter), canola oil, onions, lemon juice concentrate, sea salt, vinegar, garlic juice (garlic juice, salt), spices), wrap (same as before), organic baby-cut carrots, rice chips (same as before).

Snack 3: Rye bread (organic rye flour, natural spring water, sour dough (organic rye flour, natural spring water, bacterial culture, organic sunflower seeds, sea salt), and honey (raw honey)

Snack 4: Sea snack (herring fillet, water, salt, natural smoke flavouring, sodium phosphate), rice chips (same as before).

a) The human species consumes 40% of all primary producers. This includes what is lost from activities such as deforestation.
– This is astounding considering that there are about 8.7 million species on the planet and at the bottom of each food chain are primary producers. Clearly we are using up more than our share. (1)

b) Human’s use two thirds of this primary productivity to fuel agriculture.

b) Two thirds of the plants used in agriculture are:
– Wheat
– Rice
– Corn

c) Agriculture is not natural. Plants are meant to be grown in fresh soil with other plants surrounding them.

d) The land food is grown on is oil because we have destroyed the natural habitat in which they would grow on. It takes oil to create and run the machinery that works the land.

e) This is also why our agricultural practices are reliant on nitrogen based fertilizers.

f) Food = oil
– 2 pounds of breakfast cereal = half a gallon of gasoline
– 1 calorie of beef = 35 calories of fossil fuel
– 1 calorie of pork = 68 calories of fossil fuel

g) Why?
– grinding
– milling
– wetting
– drying
– baking
– feeding
– etc.

Source for the points:
Richard Manning, “The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq,” Harper’s Magazine, February 2004, 37-45.

(1) Census of Marine Life. “How many species on Earth? About 8.7 million, new estimate says.”ScienceDaily, 24 Aug. 2011. Web. 11 Jul. 2013.