I’m the Program Coordinator for an Environmental Center in Miami, FL. We’re having a “You Are What You Eat,” theme at our Center to teach families around the community about eating sustainably. I am creating an exhibit using a large globe that will show families where the ingredients from popular foods that they consume come from. Families will find where the ingredients from their pizza, for instance, come from and how far those foods travel to make it to Miami, FL. This information will translate into energy consumption and how many homes, schools, TVs (or whatever) could be powered if those ingredients were purchased locally. Problem is, I can’t find these statics anywhere! Can anyone point me in the right direction? I really think concrete numbers will drive this point home, and I’m hoping an organization such as yours has the answers. Please help! Thanks so much!

Nate and Mary got around to scouring the internet this afternoon to try and find some answers about how to go about measuring their carbon footprint in the food they eat. Here is what they found:

Mary says:
I decided to profile Brighter Planet.com’s Footprint calculator. There’s a ton of information on their methodology page, and their calculator is really nice and makes a great stab at being comprehensive about your residence, travel and food. Since Valerie asks about food, I’ll just say that this section is made to create a profile for a person’s overall footprint. Instead of asking questions about the specific food you eat, (pizza) instead it asks you to average how much of what types of food (beef, poultry, vegetable, etc.) you eat in a diet profile. It creates calculations that are further outlined here. There’s a lot of concentration on American habits, but rating my consumption based on averaging a population made it hard to feel accurate. Am I eating more than an average amount of fish per day? Less than the average sugar/fats? Hard to know without breaking down an actual profile of the meals I eat regularly. There is another metric which gets closer to getting a more accurate foodprint: what is the percentage of food that you consume that is organic versus standard. Organic generally have a smaller footprint as they are produced without harmful pesticides, and other nasty-to-the-environment practices. There isn’t a metric within the calculator to measure how much locally produced food you consume, but there is an “action” that can help improve your overall score.

Benefits include that you can have multiple diet profiles and apply them to different times during the year. This means that you can potentially watch your footprint change over time. There is a place to checkout and pay money to offset your footprint, although we prefer making lifestyle changes to writing checks. You can also add actions to your footprint which in some cases, reduced the overall carbon profile. I tried adding using sustainable ornaments and set my schedule to repeat once a year. I like this way to affect your numbers by taking actions.

What I’d like to see is a calculator that asks me what I had for lunch today. I could then say “potato” and detail that I added butter or salt or vegetables. This would help me know about each component of the food I’m eating which helps in the overall examination. Which leads me to say: The calculator IS really good at being comprehensive about your life- I’ve never had a calculator ask me how much kerosene I use, or how many miles I fly on what aircraft. I think overall, Brighter Planet makes great leaps towards making a great calculator, but lacks the right metrics to help find out how far our food is traveling/how much of a carbon footprint is on our plates. We need something more precise to us.

Nate says:
Unfortunately, getting accurate information on where your food comes from can be a little tough. Most of the bigger companies are a little reluctant to share that kind of information with their customers. I remember calling one company and asking where my milk came from, and they said the cows were “local to my area.” I asked how they knew where I was calling from, and they put me on hold. It isn’t always that the company is trying to hide something from you, more like most companies aren’t used to the idea that people would want to know where their food comes from, so finding things out requires some patience. Strategies range from endless call-transfer loops, to indecipherable laboratory chemist/tax attorney jargon pdf’s, to simply claiming “proprietary information.” I’d suggest doing things the most straightforward and simple way: go to the grocery stores and restaurants and ask where they get their food, then follow the trail right back to the farm. You can do this on the phone, but actually showing up really shows people you’re serious. If you want generalized-type statistics about, say, where the average pizza ingredients come from, I’d actually try googling each ingredient and finding out where they tend to come from.

Wikipedia tells me that most of the world’s tomatoes come from China. Wikipedia isn’t exactly unimpeachable, but it’s a start. If you’re feeling very adventurous, try wading through the corporate websites of some of the major food distributors (I’ve been trying Cargill for the past 20 minutes: nothing so far), though they may not be forthcoming. The thing to remember is that information about where food comes from is most often highly politicized. The big point is that to find out how far your food travels, and how much energy it uses, you’ll need to do some pretty heavy research, and you may run up against some dead ends. But it is completely worth it to try and find out. The more we know about how our food connects us (and disconnects us) with the world, the better perspective we gain on the world around us.

After scratching around today, we’d like to open up to our readers. If there are any great ideas out there internet, we’d like to hear about them in the comments. Let’s brainstorm down in the feedback!

Big Green TV — The Environmental News Site & Video Program For All Ages.

From his profile:

Hi, I’m Oliver Taylor. I live in Lafayette and am a 7th grader at Stanley Middle School. I am also the Youth Spokesperson for The Urban Farmers, a pilot program in Lafayette that is striving to plant 1,000 fruit trees in 5 years. My family is planting 20 trees in our backyard this month.

My current mission is to be awarded a 2010 “Disney Friends for Change” grant of $500. I plan to organize a community wide screening of “What’s On Your Plate” at my school or the new Lafayette Library. I hope to have 500 fans before January 29th, the deadline for the grant proposal.

*PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!*

Here it is for all of those looking for something fun to do that Sunday with your friends and family!

We’re looking forward to making big waves in 2010 with our national broadcast on Discovery’s Planet Green on February 6th which will re-air through the weekend and into the next week. This will coincide with the national push to fund and improve the Child Nutrition Act as this may come up for congressional vote as early as February!

We’ve made a few resolutions for 2010: we’d love to screen for and collaborate with Michelle Obama, she’s right on board with child nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and reforming our national food system. We’ve been working on that stuff too! We’d also like to see schools adopt our film and beautiful curriculum (developed with Solar One) in their standard health/science curriculae. We want children across the nation to hear the news: food is delicious when fresh and local! Having a relationship with your farmer is fun and sustaining! Helping all neighborhoods get access to fresher foods means that we all can live healthier lives, with fewer visits to the doctor for diseases related to our food system- this can have a real impact on the health care debate! As the girls say, “Food that’s bad for you is never cheap.”

It costs when you have to pay a doctor. It costs when you have to take medicine. And if you have to take medicine every day you’re paying again… And again… And again. And think of all those millions… And billions… And trillions…Of wrappers… And boxes and packages… And drinking cups… And straws. When the planet has to be cleaned up, we all pay.

We have big plans to get every family thinking about What’s On Your Plate? and making fun healthy choices in their homes, their schools, and in their neighborhoods. Here’s to a happy healthy 2010!

“This is the first evidence we have that fructose increases diabetes and heart disease independently from causing simple weight gain,” said Kimber Stanhope, a molecular biologist who led the study. “We didn’t see any of these changes in the people eating glucose.”

Fortunately for us, we have partners that are working diligently to provide answers, including the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Check out Debra’s fun solutions for getting healthier vegetables to her nieces and hear them talk about how they have improved since changing their diet! (More focus for playtime and school!)

Think you’re up to the task? We’re teaming up with the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, the NYC Office of SchoolFood, and Candle Café/79 to develop healthy, plant-based, and meatless entrées to be served at NYC public school lunches. If you’re a restaurant chef and would like to participate, send a recipe to info@healthyschoolfood.org by November 30 .

Delights and Prejudices » Recipe Contest for NYC Public Schools.

We are so very pleased to announce that What’s On Your Plate? will be broadcast on Discovery Planet Green! The premier night will be on February 6th, 2010 at 10pm!
We have additional dates and times below:
Sunday, February 7th at 6am
Sunday, February 7th at 2pm SPECIAL FAMILY COOK-IN! (see below for more details!)
Thursday, February 11th at 11pm
Friday, February 12th at 7am
Friday, February 12th at 3pm

We hope you tune in to one or all of these times to hear from Sadie and Safiyah directly!

We’ve created a toolkit for the Sunday February 7th re-airing at 2pm. This .pdf includes recipes to prepare with your kids, activities to do together, and action steps for how to become more involved in knowing what’s on your plate! Click here for the Cook In Toolkit.

See: Yahoo! News.

We meant to post this earlier last week when we saw it, but since Michael Pollan’s article reminded us, we wanted to say hurrah to the Obama’s on such great leadership in practice on the White House grounds.

The White House – Video – Inside the White House: The Garden.