Eat at Least 75% Minimally Processed Food. Why? In primitive cultures, 5 to 50 food calories were obtained for each calorie of energy invested. Industrialized food systems require 5 to 10 calories to obtain 1 food calorie (‘Energy use in the U.S. Food System, Steinhart, 1974). This is due, in large part, to the energy put into heavily processing foods for longer shelf life, and packaging options.
Processing and packaging account for 23% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States food system annually, compared to only 14% attributed to transport and distribution. Daily per capita energy input to the US food system (Adapted from Bomfod, 2011). While eating less processed food is a mantra related most prevalently to eating a healthier diet, eating less processed food also has the potential to create significant change in living a more sustainable lifestyle.
"Businesses are faced with increasing labor costs, and while energy costs are low it is more economical to put machines to work. How to do this action: 1. Resources. Additives. Americans spend about ninety percent of their food budget on processed foods, which, unlike whole foods, have been treated, stripped, altered, or refined in some way after being harvested or butchered.
Almost all of these processed foods contain additives, substances intended to change the food in some way before it is sold to consumers. Additives include flavorings that change a food’s taste, preservatives that extend its shelf life, colorings that change the way it looks, and dietary additives, such as vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and other supplements. Packaging is considered an indirect food additive and, in fact, many kinds of packaging actually add substances to the food they enclose. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently lists 3,000 food additives approved for food use in the United States. It is also important to note that while the FDA lists some additives that are approved for food use, many more additives are never approved by the FDA. Preservatives Flavorings. LifeCycles Project Society. A major task in calculating food miles was identifying information sources and pulling data from them. Import Sources There are various sources of import statistics, and it took us some effort to find the best.
Statistics are available from Statistics Canada, but you have to pay. Our provincial Ministry of Agriculture produced some statistics on food imports to Vancouver Island, but they were so aggregated as to be unusable. (All vegetables, for instance, were reduced to a single line item.) In the end, though, we found a very valuable (and free) source: the Government of Canada's Strategis website. The import/export data system takes a bit of getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it's highly configurable. After selecting "Total Imports" into "British Columbia" over the "Latest 5 Years" from "ALL COUNTRIES (Detailed)", we generated reports by individual commodity types matching our list of locally produced products.
Import Distances GHG Emissions Continue Tutorial -> The Software. How Many Miles Per Gallon does a Semi Truck Get | Bloglines Answers. Data Products. Judge Tosses Cabot Greek Yogurt Class Action Lawsuit. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest Class Action Lawsuit Settlement News! Judge Tosses Cabot Greek Yogurt Class Action Lawsuit By Mike Holter A federal judge yesterday dismissed a class action lawsuit claiming that Cabot Creamery Cooperative and parent company Agri-Mark Inc. falsely labeled their Greek yogurt products because they aren’t made in the authentic Greek way and are “not yogurt at all” under federal guidelines, ruling that the additives Cabot uses have been approved by the FDA.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti rejected plaintiff Timothy Smith’s claim that Cabot Greek yogurt isn’t actually yogurt because it contains the additives Whey Protein Concentrate (WPC) and Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC), which are not among the permissible ingredients set forth under a 1981 “standard of identity for yogurt” published by the FDA. “The increasing volume of this litigation creates the potential for inconsistent judicial rulings,” Judge Nelson said. Updated February 26th, 2013. Food Miles. It's a long way to the shop... Next time you sit down to a meal take a scrap of paper and a pencil with you. Write down all the items on the plate, then do a little homework.
Take this list to the supermarket or your pantry and look at where the items came from. For example oranges from California, coffee from Brazil. You may be shocked when you use one of the many calculators that are available on the web to find out how far the food has travelled and how much carbon was produced moving it. The Australian Conservation Foundation released a report entitled Food Mile Facts, in it they state"Measuring the full environmental impacts of food production, transportation, sale and consumption can be a complex task. The energy consumed in food freight often outweighs the nutritional energy in the food itself.
“The study revealed that food items like oranges, sausages, tea, baked beans etc with ingredients sourced from overseas have seen more of the world than most people. The Solution. Calculating food miles for a multiple ingredient food product - foodmiles_Leopold_IA.pdf. Food Miles and Food Miles Calculator - For all things Organic, Eco and Environmentally Friendly - Organiclinker.com.
LCA food. Food Additives And Preservatives. Food Additives And Preservatives Preservatives: Preservative food additives can be used alone or in conjunction with other methods of food preservation. Preservatives may be anti-microbial preservatives, which inhibit the growth of bacteria and fungi, or antioxidants such as oxygen absorbers, which inhibit the oxidation of food constituents. Common anti-microbial preservatives include calcium propionate, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, sulfites (sulfur dioxide, sodium bisulfite, potassium hydrogen sulfite, etc.) and disodium EDTA. Antioxidants include BHA and BHT. Other preservatives include formaldehyde (usually in solution), glutaraldehyde (kills insects), ethanol and methylchloroisothiazolinone. Food Additive: Food additives are substances added to food to preserve flavour or improve its taste and appearance. A substance added to a food for a specific purpose in that food is referred to as a direct additive. Amino acids Compounds - needed by the human body in a certain combination.