Global Food Spending

In my experience, when the topic of so-called "health food" (which we used to just call food) arises, one of the most common objections relates to price. People say, "But it is soooo much more expensive!" Compared to a 99 cent cheeseburger at a drive through, I suppose paying a few extra cents for a locally grown strawberry and without much knowledge of the externalized costs of that cheeseburger could be a turn off. So I like to re-frame spending and remind folks of what the graph above points out: It only seems expensive because we have had the option and become accustomed to spending a very small percentage of our incomes on food. How many televisions (aka non-essential items) do you have in your house and how much do you spend a month on cable? The tiny additional cost of that local strawberry seems much more reasonable, right? Not to mention you are supporting local and reducing your own footprint.

The global food map, available with interactive features and a great accompanying article on the Civil Eats website, was designed by Natalie Jones, a graduate student at UC Berkeley. It reveals that we Americans spend less of our income on food than any other country that keeps such data. Wowzers.

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

Before we dive into our suggestions for your holiday menu, we thought we'd post a few factoids about the belly-swelling feast we Americans will be celebrating this Thursday. Special thanks to Discovery (for the video above) and the U.S. Census Bureau for their "Facts for Features" Thanksgiving data.

•  242 million turkeys were expected to be raised in the United States in 2010. This number is actually down two percent from the number raised during 2009 (which together weighed 7.1 billion pounds and were valued at $3.6 billion).
• Where do all these turkeys come from? 47 million from Minnesota, 31 million from North Carolina, 28 million from Arkansas, 17.5 million from Missouri, 16 million from Indiana, and 15.5 million from Virginia. And that only accounts for about two-thirds of this years U.S. turkey production.
• Last year (2009). 1.9 billion pounds of sweet potatoes were produced in the U.S.
• 2.2 billion bushels of wheat were produced in the U.S. in 2010, mostly from North Dakota and Kansas.
• We trade turkeys. $7.3 million big ones worth of U.S. imports of live turkeys from January through July of 2010 — 99.1 percent from Canada.
• In 2007, the average American consumed 13.8 pounds of turkey.

Using More Than Our Share

Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff Project is getting lots of attention lately and we here at JustSaying LOVE IT. Sure, they're a little reminiscent of a UPS commercial and Annie works hard to speak in a language and tone understandable by all ages (AKA kids) but considering this blogger learned that plastic comes from oil via a children's book, we're tipping our hats to Annie and recommending her videos to our readers young and old. Even if you have read every book on our recommended list and every post to date, you will learn something from these videos and be moved to consume less (or feel like a total sucker). Check it out:

Green Ratings

Yesterday, Wal-Mart unveiled their new environmental labeling program requiring suppliers to calculate and disclose the full environmental cost of their products. The ratings will be displayed alongside prices. Hopefully these green ratings will become another point for shoppers to consider while comparing items, forcing suppliers to reassess their production. The New York Times reports:

The idea is to create a universal rating system that scores products based on how environmentally and socially sustainable they are over the course of their lives. Consider it the green equivalent to nutrition labels.

Rather than a retailer or a product supplier’s focusing on only a few sustainability goals — lower emissions or water conservation or waste reduction — the index would help them take a broader view of sustainability by scrutinizing and rating all sorts of environmental and social implications.

Did this T-shirt come from a cotton crop that was sprayed with pesticide? Was excessive packaging used to ship these diapers?

Wal-Mart’s goal is to have other retailers eventually adopt the indexing system, which will be created over the next five years.

I suppose I owe Wal-Mart a "tip o' the hat," huh? Is there such a thing as "sustainable consumption" with a retailer of this magnitude?

Click here for Wal-Mart's press release or here for the web cast from their Sustainability Milestone Meeting.

Playin' cards and makin' love

Writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker Douglas Rushkoff talks about his book, Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take it Back, with Stephen Colbert and it sounds wonderful. Check it out. I mean that literally. Check out the clip then check out the book from the library. And then check out activities that aren't just economic stimulus. Oh and of course check out Life Inc The Movie on Rushkoff's website.

It's an environment thing...

When folks at dinner parties or new acquaintances notice there is no meat on my plate, they often ask me if I am a member of PETA, a vegetarian, and how I get my protein. The latter is quite possibly the most annoying question ever - but not the focus of this post. I typically respond with something like, "It is more of an environmental decision than anything else. Not to mention, the perfectly cut, seasoned, and cooked piece of meat the waiter just dropped off to you is a fine example of how disconnected we Americans are from the origin of our food..." Before I can finish sharing my pro-Pollan agenda someone almost always says, "How is my eating this steak bad for the environment?" My answer: It's complicated.

Which brings me to... you guessed it... a great article about How Meat Contributes to Global Warming. It focuses on beef in particular. Please read it. Otherwise I will be forced to carry a cheat sheet (right next to my EPA Seafood Selector) with, at the very least, the following factoids from the article:

Depending on the production method, cows emit between 2.5 and 4.7 ounces of methane for each pound of beef they produce. Because methane has roughly 23 times the global-warming potential of CO2, those emissions are the equivalent of releasing between 3.6 and 6.8 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere for each pound of beef produced.

Producing a pound of beef protein for the table requires more than 10 pounds of plant protein with all the emissions of greenhouse gases that grain farming entails.

Current production levels of meat contribute between 14 and 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of "CO2-equivalent" greenhouse gases the world produces every year. It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for some one's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.

Pound for pound, beef production generates greenhouse gases that contribute more than 13 times as much to global warming as do the gases emitted from producing chicken. For potatoes, the multiplier is 57.

Producing a pound of beef in a feedlot, or concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) system, generates the equivalent of 14.8 pounds of CO2 pound for pound, more than 36 times the CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emitted by producing asparagus.

Meat Consumption and CO2 Emissions

You can thank the NY Times for this one:



Check out the article that accompanies this graph here and remember, if everyone treated meat like a side of feed lot remorse, I mean, a side dish - like a side dish, and cut back just a little therefore decreasing demand then maybe, just maybe, the supply would start to decrease... and the manure... and the methane gas...

greensumption

A loyal blog reader linked me up to this Unsuitablog post, reminding me of a recent conversation regarding the growing consumption of eco-friendly or green goods. Is it better to purchase a piece of furniture that was made sustainable bamboo than one from Ethan Allen? I guess so, but buying a used set from a yard sale or local consignment shop is much better. Or even better, not buying it at all. Keith Farnish said it best in his post The New Shopping Order:

...there is a colossal battle to be won, against virtually every commercial interest on Earth, that relies almost entirely on people choosing to buy new and replace existing items that they have at a rate that is increasing at currently 5 times the speed of global population growth. In short, we need to have a completely new attitude to shopping, where reality and conscience takes precedence over the open mouthed acceptance by the public of new goods, and where the people of Earth are prepared to stop for a moment and think about the effect that every single new item that they purchase is having on this planet. There needs to be a New Shopping Order. Being part of it is simple: next time you want to buy some new trainers, a new lawnmower, computer, digital decoder, anything at all, ask yourself the following questions, in this order:

1) Do I need to buy this thing at all?
2) Can I repair or refurbish this thing, or have somebody do it for me?
3) Can I buy or obtain this thing, or something similar, pre-owned?
4) Can I buy this thing in a more ethical way?

This video, that I've gotten from the Unsuitablog post but don't know the actual origin of, is a great illustration of the issue:




(thnx Lisa)