Let do some imagination, shall we? Think about the time when you were at grade school. It is early in the morning, and you are already up, teeth brushed, and you are all dressed up. You are in the kitchen preparing what you are going to eat for lunch that day. You decided to make the best BLT, history has ever seen and tasted. You go to the fridge and grab the bacon to just throw on the pan to cook. While that is cooking you grab the lettuce, tomato, and the bread. When the bacon is done you assemble your sandwich. That sandwich looks good, right? Mine does, but did you notice how we made our sandwich. We did it without thought, just like most of the world population. We did not think about how big the carbon footprint of each of our ingredients. A carbon footprint size is dependent on how much greenhouse gas is being emitted into the atmosphere. The more gasses emitted, the bigger the carbon footprint gets. You can probably guess that meats generate more gas than most foods, and your guess would be precise, accurate and correct. As someone who is learning to become a chef in the Hospitality industry, I hope to learn how the carbon footprint of food impacts the atmosphere and the food we eat. I love food and it would be interesting to take a deeper dive on how food impacts the environment. This goes to show that food is not just food. It is something that goes through so many processes that takes weeks, months even years to get out of those series of processes, only to get consumed.
Entry 1 (NPR) Chatterjee, R. (2017, February 27). What’s the environmental footprint of a loaf of bread? now we know. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/27/517531611/whats-the-environmental-footprint-of-a-loaf-of-bread-now-we-know
This article goes into the environmental impacts of a loaf of bread. The study was performed by researchers at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. The researchers focused on one specific farm, as well as a specific bakery, and mill. It was determined that more than 66% of did not come from machinery, in which every step was extensive when it came to emissions. That percentage came from growing wheat. Fertilizers contribute to 40% of environmental impacts, including runoff to streams and lakes. The process also includes nitrogen, a harmful gas that is not taken up entirely by plants. What is not used by the plants is sent back into the atmosphere and comes back as a potent greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide. This study is hopeful to generate some ideas on how to produce the same foods, without tainting the environment.
I believe the intended audience for this article is for the people who are interested about learning more about our environment and how it is impacted by food. Food is something that is not only produced every single day, but is consumed every single day. Our environment is constantly taking blows because of the emissions and greenhouse gases being released in to the atmosphere, because of the machinery and the fertilizer being used on the plants. I like how unbiased and informative this article was. This article provided the results of a study that was performed in the United Kingdom and we were also given statistics of those results. Finally, we were given the authors take on the situation, providing us on what they believe in at the end.
Entry 2 (Energy Matters to Climate Change) Garvey, A. (2021, September 19). The carbon footprint of a full English breakfast – and how to reduce it. Energy Matters To Climate Change. Retrieved from https://e-mc2.gr/el/news/carbon-footprint-full-english-breakfast-and-how-reduce-it
This article goes over the carbon footprint of an English breakfast, and how we can reduce the footprint. An English breakfast is a full morning meal traditionally in the U.K that consists of bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, and buttered toast. The studies show that beef has environmental impacts that are multiple times bigger than pork. The bacon and the sausage portions of the English Breakfast make up for 63% of it’s footprint. (34% for sausage, 29% for bacon). This does seem hefty, and it is. However, this does not compare to the traditional roast dinner, which does involve very emission intensive red meat. There are many ways of deceasing emission distribution. The most effective is to either have your meal plant based or have it local. If you eat that English Breakfast every weekend for a year, you would have saved up a carbon footprint equivalent to a return flight from London to Amsterdam. You could also switch your breakfast entirely and go for a bowl of cereal or porridge.
The intent of the authors of the article is to not only inform the readers about how an English breakfast is impacting the environment, but also persuading to look at other options for a breakfast meal. The information presented was from a research study taken in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the research itself is to give insight of the total carbon footprint of an English breakfast and what percentage is being released by what portion of the breakfast. When you see that the meatier portion of the breakfast is responsible for the majority of the emissions, the author gives us some solutions on what can be done to reduce the emissions.
Entry 3 (HEALabel) Marie, A. (2021, October 29). Is lettuce good or bad?: 2022 ingredient guide for health, environment, animals, laborers. HEALabel.
This article is talking about how is lettuce good, and bad it is not only for the environment, but for your body as well. When it comes to your health, lettuce is optimal for anemia treatment/prevention, as well as brain function and prevention of many long term illnesses, including Alzheimer’s, and anything involving the nervous system while strengthening the system itself. Environmentally, not only the carbon footprint is low, but the water footprint and destruction to the Earth are also low. When it comes to carbon it takes the same amount of emissions to make more than 2 pounds of romaine lettuce as it does to drive a car for 2.5 miles. Animals are not used to make lettuce, but it can still be harmful to wildlife, due to pesticides used on crops. Since more people are becoming vegetarian/vegan, this is the only thing on this list that is shows little to zero harm in the environment. Lettuce uses little emissions, and very little carbon in it’s production.
Entry 4 (Springer) Theurl, M. C., Haberl, H., Erb, K.-H., & Lindenthal, T. (2013, August 16). Contrasted greenhouse gas emissions from local versus long-range tomato production. Agronomy for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8
In this article, the authors compare the amount of emissions released between tomatoes that are produced locally, and tomatoes that are produced from long range. The 2 cities used for this study were Italy and Austria, with Italy being the local producer. The results were that Italy released 2 times less greenhouse emissions than Austria, due to Austria “capital intensive heating systems”. However, Italy released 4 times higher greenhouse gas emissions than Austria. These results are very important given the fact that tomato consumption has increased by more than 20%. The article also goes into the global warming and agriculture factors.
The purpose of this article is to persuade the reader to contribute to making the world less polluted and inform the reader what really happens behind the scenes, when it comes to the production of tomatoes and how this affects the environment. The article provides many tables and statistics as evidence to back up the results. This is a very reliable source, because this credits who did the study and it does go through the information thoroughly, and the information is detailed but not to a point where it is impossible to understand.
In conclusion, I have learned a lot about the carbon footprint and the environmental impacts of a BLT sandwich. Is does not surprise me the range of the footprint of between the lettuce and bacon is large. I do believe that there are many ways of lowering the emission of greenhouse gasses, and one of those ways is buying locally. Eventually, the path we are going will cause irreversible damage to our air, so why not start purifying the air now.
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