Eating Green

It's interesting that this question came up for this week because on our weekly grocery shopping trip to Super Fresh last Tuesday, my roommate and I had a discussion about what factors go into what we buy. Since I've already mentioned that we usually shop at Super Fresh, rather than the far superior Whole Foods, it should be clear that price is a dominating factor for us, as it is for most college students. While I would love to do all my shopping at the weekly farmer's market and at Whole Foods, that kind of lifestyle would break the bank for me. Unfortunately, in buying cheaper foods with generic or "America's Choice" brands, we usually sacrifice environmentally friendly foods. I assume that a lot of the food I purchase has to be shipped quite a distance though I do go to the farmer's market if I have some extra cash lying around. It's a shame that eating healthy and green is so expensive.

However, I have found that there are ways to buy more environmentally friendly foods at Super Fresh for the same cheap prices. My roommate and I were coming up to the dairy section to buy a dozen eggs and there were so many choices of eggs that we stood there for about five minutes discussing which to get. The Grade A eggs in styrofoam containers probably come from the chickens you see in photographs of industrial farms where thousands of baby chickens grow up in one tiny pen without enough room to stand or anything. I'm not sure how much better "free-range" chickens are treated but the eggs are a bit smaller and in a cardboard container. The price difference was only about 10 cents so my roommate and I decided we'd pay the extra to get the cardboard encased free-range eggs. We also usually get the pricier Kosher meat because it just tastes better and we always get fruits and vegetables that are in season because they're cheaper and more environmentally friendly. So even though I can't be a perfectly "green" eater, I do my best to think of the environment when I'm shopping in addition to being financially conscious.

When I think about everything I've eaten in the last two days a few things come to mind. First of all, I need to go shopping soon because I realized I've been on a Kraft mac and cheese diet lately. But in regards to the question, I think that the food that has had the biggest environmental impact is probably the lasagna I made for last night's dinner. The lasagna noodles were America's Choice brand so they were probably processed and shipped from Montvale, New Jersey from where most of their noodle products are distributed. Next, the ground hamburger meat came from a cow probably somewhere in the midwest and that cow was almost certainly eating lots of meal and producing lots of methane. Then of course the cow had to be slaughtered, the meat processed, packaged, and shipped to DC, which all takes a bunch of energy. The sauce I made from diced tomatoes (again America's Choice brand) and some locally grown onions. The spices (basil, oregano, and thyme) I had already but they were probably shipped from far away as well seeing as thyme and oregano don't grow well around here. And last the ricotta cheese came from another cow somewhere in the midwest again and that cheese took a lot of processing and packaging and shipping as well. So just in the ingredients, the lasagna took quite a bit of energy. Too add to it, there's the pan I cooked it in, made from glass which used silicon and sand and whatever else goes into glass and which probably took some energy to produce. There's also the aluminum foil I covered the pan in and I'm not quite sure where aluminum is mined from but I suppose that too is using up a natural resource. And finally, there's the energy I used to cook the lasagna in a 350 degree oven for an hour and 10 minutes. When you add in the gas used to drive to the store, the paper used to make the cookbook and the water used to wash the dishes afterwards, I probably made a larger environmental impact by cooking that one meal than many people in developing nations make in months (or more). Good thing I have leftovers so I can split that environmental impact into a few meals rather than just one.

When writing it all out like this I do realize that everything I do here in the United States, from driving, to cooking, to sleeping in an air conditioned room, has an unimaginable impact on the environment. And what's more, I'm not the only person doing it and I'm certainly not the person making the biggest impact in the US. Over 300 million people live in the United States and drive cars, use computers, buy groceries, and cook meals every day. If all 6.8 billion people on Earth tried to cook the same dish that I made last night, the planet would certainly feel the consequences. It brings up an interesting question about equality. Lasagna was considered the poor man's meal back in Italy when my grandmother was a child. Only the wealthiest 20% of the world could afford to make it now.