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.