Newspaperguy

I've been thinking a lot about the foods I'm eating.

The transportation distance for some items is simply staggering. Bananas from Ecuador or avocados from Mexico are traveling thousands of kilometres to arrive here. The coffee I drink, while roasted locally, was grown in Brazil or Peru or Guatemala. And I'm not sure how far the tea has had to travel.

There are also issues about how agricultural workers are treated in those parts of the world, which means there's a dimension of human rights, justice and mercy at play as well. There are some Fair Trade companies working to ensure the workers who produced the crops are being treated decently. But I also wonder how well that is working when tropical fruit, shipped thousands of kilometres, is still a lot cheaper than the apples and peaches we grow where I live.

We hear a lot about the 100-mile diet, and there is much to be said in its favour. But there are some foods which cannot be produced within 100 miles of here.

Is there an ethical way to eat a banana or drink a cup of coffee or tea? And if not, are there workable alternatives?

mr geeker

ethical way to look at this: i know the world is better off with me drinking coffee than it is with out.

of course, some could argue that ethics is something we use to guilt-trip ourselve out of doing something that society views poorly, or wrong in some way. personaly i say eat the banana and drink your coffee or tea. regardless of impact.

electrik

Bananas have a long history... no need to think about it here.

Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped
Banana-Wars-Production-Encounters-Interactions
Banana-Fate-Fruit-Changed-World

khanom

I just bought a big bag of over-ripe bananas at the grocery store for 99 cents. This is the only way I'll buy bananas -- if they are going to get chucked out anyway. Or -are- already chucked out.

Coffee and tea? Well, that's a tough one. As I see it such things are not the same. They don't have to be refrigerated and the transportation impact is much much lower than something like fruit and veggies.

Of course it's pretty easy to have a "100-mile" diet when you live in California, as I do.

Newspaperguy

I don't follow the 100-mile diet, but I try to eat foods grown in the same country and preferably in the same province.

There's a good selection of fruit grown where I live, although by late spring, I'm starting to get tired of apples. There's also a good selection of vegetables, especially in season. I can often get hothouse tomatoes in winter and there are other fresh vegetables, most notably mushrooms, grown in the province and available year-round.

Lentils and other pulse crops are grown in Saskatchewan. (Canada is the world's second largest producer of lentils, next to India, and the largest exporter.)

Joe_Mo

I only buy organic

Doohickie

Think about it in miles, the number is smaller so you won't worry as much.

chokeslam512

As far as coffee and tea goes, I always look for the Fair Trade certified stuff. I at least feel better knowing that the workers harvesting these items are payed a fair wage.

electrik

It may seem common sense that buying local is helping the environment, but that is very often not the case when you dig deeper. Consider the economies of scale which can bring you bananas for 99cents a pound. Maybe the emissions per banana and such aren't so comparatively outrageous - has anybody checked? Many organic vegetables are "exotic" in terms of labour and energy required to raise one up. Food for thought!

Smallwheels

Buying food is different from buying cars or other toys. We can all do without many manufactured goods. The economics and morality of buying such items is different from food.

Humanity can't all be packed into the tropical regions in order to get enough variety in the diet. It isn't possible for everybody in northern climates to go out and gather their own food. Even if everybody decided to do it there wouldn't be enough of it. The world has great agricultural regions that produce the most food. It is good that humanity can utilize such areas. Doing that is much more efficient no matter where it gets shipped in bulk.

Surely if you ordered a single package of coffee beans from Brazil or Colombia via UPS that would be very inefficient and wasteful. Having tons of products packaged closely together and shipped at one time is really a great way to conserve energy and resources.

At some point quality of life comes into this conversation. At what point are you willing to give up something that makes you happy, just for the idea that it is better for the planet. In the case of food perhaps we could give up exotic things that aren't mass produced.

Anything that is mass produced is probably more efficiently brought to market than something we could produce on our own, even if you counted shipping costs.

One day there will be factory farms that only produce organic produce. Then what will we have to argue about or consider? Once genetically modified foods and pesticides are gone from the market, the whole food production thing will be left alone. There won't be anything left to complain about. Any farm bothering to create organic foods will most likely pay their workers a fair wage too.

I'm not giving up my normal foods just because they come from far away.

Ekdog

Apparently, eating bananas doesn't add all that much to your carbon footprint because, for one thing, they're transported by ship rather than by air.

According to this article, the carbon footprint of cycling a mile:

65g CO2e: powered by bananas
90g CO2e: powered by cereals with milk
200g CO2e: powered by bacon
260g CO2e: powered by cheeseburgers
2800g CO2e: powered by air-freighted asparagus

Ekdog

Shade-grown coffee is said to be the best for the environment. I haven't been able to find it in my area, though.

Ekdog

Another classic: https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Fruit-S...6289124&sr=1-1

Newspaperguy

Look back 100 years to a time when it was much harder to bring in such foods. People lived and thrived in northern climates then and they continue to live and thrive in northern climates now. It is possible to get the variety in one's diet from foods grown locally in northern climates, but that means realizing the foods on a plate in one area are not and should not be the same as the foods in another area.

Bananas are a great fruit of choice in the tropics, but it does not make much sense looking for apples there. Likewise, potatoes are good in cooler northern climates while rice is good in warmer and wetter southern climates.

However, I agree with your point about quality of life. There are some things a person will not give up and I understand that. What I don't understand is an attempt to bring a Latin American diet into Canada without making some adjustments or substitutions. What works in Brazil is not necessarily what works in Canada, and vice-versa. Likewise, a seafood-based Japanese diet does not make a lot of sense in areas that are far from the sea.

SunnyFlorida

I remember seeing a recent program in which some town folk vowed to eat food produce within a 100 mile radius from where they lived. If I recall most dropped out after the first week.

The ones that remain literally had to start growing their own veggies, make their own bread with locally milled flour and start raising their own chickens for eggs. One family literally biked over 35 miles to get locally harvested honey.

Sorry, but biking long distances for the basics is not practical for me.

What I do though is try to eat ethically (as it refers to animals). I buy eggs that were produce by cage free chickens. Eat more fruits/veggies/other non-meat protein alternatives.

Now how does this relate to biking? Well, I bike to the farmer's market to get my fruit and veggies.

But, if I want a banana and the farmer's market day has past, I have no qualms getting it at my local supermarket, which is a quick 2 minute walk for me.

gerv 

Miscellaneous thoughts on the mighty banana:
1) It is a little bit funny that we import bananas from Central America, while mulberries grow everywhere and no one eats them.

2) I remember seeing someone eat a banana for the first time (this was probably in the late 1950s... in Newfoundland). Aren't bananas a relatively recent addition to the North American diet?

3) My concern that if I stop eating bananas it will cause the economy of Guatemala to collapse. (Perhaps a diet is in order...)

4) The bananas I eat are trucked in from somewhere; boats being out of the question... unless they are river boats.

5) There is a strong link between bananas and cycling. I think it is the preferred fuel. At least in my case (although, as I say, a trip to Weight Watchers wouldn't kill me :grimace: )

Roody

Food that comes on boats (like bananas and coffee) might use less fuel than foods from much closer that come on trucks. I have read that in NYC, French wine has a smaller carbon footprint than wine from upstate New York state, for example.

Also, like gerv said, bananas are traditional bicycle food, like pasta and pie. In fact, bananas are better than pasta and pie because you can put them in your jersey pocket. Forget about phony tasting energy bars and goo, eat real food on your bike!

HoustonB

If food of any type is being trucked a few hundred miles, then that is much worse than food that is shipped or moved by rail, even if the shipping is thousands of miles (dependent of course on economies of scale).

I say keep on buying bananas - ultra easy to digest and a great source of magnesium (good for reducing the likelihood of cramps and stitches) also good for the economies of South America.

It is not the distance that matters, it is the mode of transport, or more specifically the underlying source of energy.

So many people whining and moaning about the Gulf of Mexico - why is 100 million gallons of pollution soaking the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, so much worse than 100 million gallons of pollution burnt in cars, trucks and oil fired power stations?

Want to know the true cost of driving a car - then try to remove 100% of the pollution from the exhaust gases and feed the remainder into the car. If people get ill and / or start to die - then we can call that natural selection.

Roody

Maybe for the same reason that it seems much worse when one friend dies in a car crash than when I read that 40,000 people a year (who I don't know) die in car crashes.

Foofy

Really?

For any given amount of crude oil that's refined and then burned in gas engines, while it's definitely not good for living things or our environment, is no where near as bad as the problems created by that same amount of crude oil being spilled. People are "whining and moaning" about the oil spill for damn good reason.

Spoken like a true fanatic. "Let's show people how terrible what they do is by killing them". Nevermind the comparison is unrealistic.

HoustonB

From Reuters "Every 21 days, the BP well spews one hour's worth of U.S consumption." Multiply what you see in the Gulf of Mexico by 8,766 and you can see what the USA pumps into the atmosphere every year. But lets use your logic - if we cannot see it then the harm it does must be insignificant, or to use your actual words "nowhere near as bad".

Somehow I think the 16.4 million people in the USA with asthma might disagree with you. And what is the external cost to all of us - it is (according to the CDC at this source) :

Number of visits (to physician offices, hospital outpatient and emergency departments) with asthma as primary diagnosis: 13.3 million. (This does not include deaths).

The tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico is the utter ruination of the environment - not the devalued houses, or loss of tourism, or loss of business.

But of course, you care not for the externalized costs of the "non negotiable American way of life" or any burden it places on the rest of the entire planet. Not to worry now, even if the USA by some miracle, was to find a way to make amends, the Chinese followed closely by India are striving hard to follow the American example.

If people want to drive cars and as a consequence it kills them, then that is their business - just like people that choose to smoke. But I see no just reason that collectively a few hundred million people have somehow acquired the right to pollute the air that I breath.

The irony of you thinking that I am the "true fanatic" is amazing.

Roody

You might be glad to know that BP has already burned thousands of gallons of oil on the Gulf's surface. (By what magical thinking they believe it's better to put it into the air than on the shore, I'm not sure.)

Of course BP's true goal is not to stop the the oil spill, but to profit from it by diverting the oil into tankers and selling it. They are doing that now with the containment system, until they finish drilling he so called relief wells. At that time (August) they will have two unlicensed and unregulated wells gathering oil at the site, and BP will be even wealthier after the spill than they were before it. Their only attempt to actually stop the spill was the ridiculous and laughable "junk shot".

chasm54

Food miles is a difficult and sometimes counter-intuitive subject. Yes, flying green beans from Kenya is probably unnecessary, but their CO2 footprint is smaller than that of beans grown out of season in Northern Europe because the latter have to be grown in artificially heated environments. If anyone really wants to cut the environmental impact of their diets, they should first cut down on the amount of red meat they eat. The meat industry is an environmental disaster area.

Newspaperguy

Good points. But this is also where I start asking another related question.

When my parents were growing up, food was not brought in as far. Grocery stores did not stock fresh beans or lettuce in winter. Much of the food, although not all, was grown locally and preserved or stored for the cold months.

The diet, as a result, was quite different than it is today. Potatoes and later pasta were staples; rice was a rare treat. Peas, beans and corn were common vegetables; peppers were not. Vegetables were chosen partly based on how well they would store in the winter, so carrots were eaten quite frequently. Fruit was canned for the winter. Even the animals for meat were raised and butchered locally.

Some things, such as coffee, tea, peanuts and oranges cannot be grown in Canada and those things were imported. But the imported foods were a smaller part of the diet than they are today.

These days, when I go to the grocery store, I'm amazed and saddened by how much of the food is brought in from far away, particularly since I'm living in an area with a great climate for growing food. Somehow, we've convinced ourselves that since it's possible to bring in a few items from distance places, it also makes sense to haul in much more. And somehow, we've managed to make this significant change in less than a century.

Newspaperguy

Adding one car to the mix does not result in any significant increase to air pollution. Removing one car does not significantly reduce air pollution. Collectively, cars and internal combustion engines will have a noticeable effect, but no one vehicle makes much difference on its own.