Many of us are cutting back on our fuel consumption, to help with reversing climate changes. Mostly that involves using less energy around the house – turning down the thermostat and using CFL light bulbs -– and just driving less.
Did you know that the food we eat is almost as much of an energy guzzler as our cars or our homes? It takes about 10 times the energy to produce the food of most Americans as the energy we get from the food. About 15 percent of the energy consumption in the U.S. goes to supplying us with food.
About half of the energy required to create our food goes to growing crops or raising livestock, and the other half goes to processing and packaging. This, of course, assumes the conventional way we have grown, processed, packaged and transported our food in recent decades. Things can easily be different!
A lot of energy is used in food processing. Producing a two-pound box of cereal can take the equivalent of a half-gallon of gasoline. Eating food that is closer to its original form is the best. We call this eating lower on the food chain.
We can eat lots of plants -– in their near-to-nature form. This means eating fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, and buying or eating them in simple form, without embellishment. Carrots in a bunch, not carrot cake or carrots processed through a pig. Potatoes purchased raw, not chips or McDonald’s French fries.
Less meat is really good, if you care about Earth. Most Americans eat more protein than they need, and certainly way more than the rest of the world. Farm animals eat a lot of grain, which is a way of processing grains -– a very energy-costly way to process our food. We would benefit more from eating the grain ourselves. Free-range or grass-fed animals require much less energy than those grown in typical feed lots.
It’s probably obvious that we can cut down on energy-hungry food by getting things that come with less packaging. Sometimes that means buying in bulk, going in with friends or neighbors to share a big bag of rice. And sometimes it’s as simple as looking for the minimum packaging in the grocery store.
And, of course, we help a lot if we buy local. That’s a huge benefit in reducing the transportation costs of food. On average, food in our grocery stores travels over 1,500 miles to get to us. Grapes from Chile have come a lot farther. Ideally, we would all buy all our food from our farmer neighbors, or grow as much as we can in our own gardens. But even if shopping at the store, we can pay attention to how far each product has travelled to reach us. Besides cutting down on the energy costs, our bodies will be healthier if we eat predominantly food from our own bioregion.
So this Earth Day, do something good for Earth, for reducing your carbon footprint, and for the health of your body: check your pantry.
Naomi Maasberg is the administrative director of Stillwaters Environmental Education Center in Kingston. She can be reached at www.stillwatersenvironmentalcenter.org.
