Sustainability in Food Production and Distribution Project

Food Journal

Monday

·         PB & J on Italian bread (Smucker’s Goober, Maier’s Italian bread)

·         Arnold Palmer (Arizona Iced Tea)

Tuesday

·         Two pieces of peanut butter toast (Jiffy Peanut Butter, Maier’s bread)

·         Sunny D

·         Capri sun Pacific Cooler

·         Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream

·         Subway $5footlong w/ lettuce, turkey, American cheese, honey mustard

·         Sierra Mist (Pepsi)

Wednesday

·         Two pieces of peanut butter toast (Jiffy Peanut Butter, Maier’s bread)

·         Turkey (Deli counter) on Maier’s bread

·         Little bits brownies (Entemenn’s)

·         Gatorade (strawberry)

·         Smarties candy

·         Kraft macaroni and cheese

·         Barilla spaghetti and meatballs (80/20groundbeef)

·         Maier’s bread with Country crock butter

·         strawberry Gatorade

Thursday

·         Aunt Jemima pancakes

·         Country crock butter

·         syrup (Aunt Jemima)

·         Deli turkey (North Carolina)with Maier’s bread

·         Capri Sun

·         Pringles sour cream and onion chips

·         Nabisco chocolate covered pretzels

·         Sirloin from Outback Steakhouse

·         Pumpernickel bread from Outback Steakhouse

·         Broccoli (California)

·         Gatorade

·         UTZ sour cream and onion chips

·         Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream

Google Map
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Everything I ate between a Monday night and Thursday night totaled up to all travelling a total of 4,645 miles.
The tractor trailers used to transport these products used about 55,740 galloons of gas

Essay

            After doing this project on where our food comes from and how much work goes into getting our food, it really has changed my outlook of things. For one thing, I am really going to think about what is in my food after I learned about how all of the farms are changing and being turned into factories. Whenever we used to think of what we believed to be “farm fresh meat”, is now just meat from cows shot up with steroids and only fed corn to strengthen their meat so that they will get bigger. It is no longer cows just grazing in a wide open grass field. Now it is a bunch of cows put onto a land of just dirt, manure, and corn. This is not so farm fresh anymore, now is it?

            Another thing about this new and so-called better way of getting food is that this food is not actually fresh. The tomatoes we eat could actually be two weeks old if they were not grown right in your backyard. We get tomatoes from all over the world so how are these tomatoes we are getting truly fresh if it takes a day or two to travel to South America? Exactly, they are not fresh. We are technically eating tomatoes that are possibly a couple weeks old or not even fully grown to the correct size.

            This project really changed the way I think about things. I do not normally think about what I am eating or where it comes from. It usually slips all of our minds the details of our food. If we go into the details of our food though, there are many things involved with the making and processing of food. There are usually several farms involved but these farms aren’t the ones we usually think about. They are the ones with only cows, dirt, and corn. I do not even know if that could be considered as a farm. Farms are supposed to have grass but these do not have any grass at all. Then whatever food is being made goes to a factory probably. It is most likely processed with a lot of chemicals and by the time it comes out, it is completely and totally different.

            To say the truth, I am not sure if I am going to change my diet because some of the things I eat are already organic. I may not eat them all of the time; I still eat things that are organic. I hope that more people can realize though what they are truly eating. Not everything is “organic” just because it says it on the label. Things must be officially proved to be organic. There is a long and heavy process foods must go through in order to have the official USDA label on it to symbolize it being organic food product. The food product must follow many rules of becoming an official organic food. It goes through a thorough evaluation to determine whether or not it is completely organic. It must meet many distinctive requirements or it isn’t truly considered to be organic.

            I already buy some organic products but I am thinking about switching over to even more organic products. Since I really saw how much is going into my food just for me to eat it, my family and I are thinking deeply about buying more organic and healthy foods to not only help us, but help our environment also. I don’t understand why our generation has to make food fake just for it to be the most popular brand on the market. If food is really good natural, why must we add all of these different flavors and chemicals to it? These big name brands really need to step back and take a look at what is going on with this food business. If our world keeps it up like this, our food will never be fresh because we will always be adding different flavors and colors and all of that kind of things.

            This entire unit really surprised me. I would have never thought of writing down what food I ate for a week, mapping out where it came from and even totaling up the mileage of how much gas is used to transport everything just to one little grocery store. I never thought about how my food was made or what was used in the process of making it. I would have never even imagined what the actual “farms” were really like if I did not learn about this unit. I was truly surprised by what some people’s definition of “farm fresh”. My definition was that it was made at a nice quiet farm where the cows were just fed grass and the farm was, imagine this, natural. Now though, you are lucky if your food is in the next state from you. So much of our normal food comes from far away places and takes much more time. It takes a lot for companies to get food across the country from state to state.  If everyone mapped out what they ate and where it came from, there would be a lot of the same places though. Since there are such large companies, a lot of them have taken over the smaller companies so the little companies would be bigger and better.  Some companies such as Pepsi own a lot of companies that no one would ever even think of them being owned by Pepsi. Gatorade is a good example of that. Our food can surprise us in many different ways.

            If people truly put the effort into learning about their food and everything that they eat, it could really actually make a difference in this world. More people would be aware of how much money it costs to transport the food. People would actually find out what they are really eating instead of something just saying “organic”. We could really change the world and the way we live if we all made the effort to be truly organic.