Abolish Kitchens

On Mitra; Why We Should Abolish Kitchens; Warning Label for Chips

By John Taylor; 20 August, 2005

Friends, we are back from our vacation in Leamington. I put off
contributing to this mailing list until I had switched computers, a
process that took longer than expected, three days. I have three
things for you today.

First, on returning home I came across on the Net the following
article about a Toronto Baha'i, Mitra Gopaul, who happened to be in
the Air France crash at Pearson International earlier this month. Ever
on his toes, he got a mention of the Faith into the article, that was
mostly concerned about victims suing for compensation.

I met Mitra on a French teaching program in Quebec City; I mostly
remember the mock resentment of a beautiful Persian chick from
Montreal, Mitra Javanmardi, that this guy of East Indian background
had "stolen" her name, which in her culture is restricted to girls'
names. Since that time in the 1970's Mitra Gopaul has written several
books, including one on how to raise spiritual kids and a couple on
how to computerize Local Assembly work. Google his name if you are
interested in them.

If anybody receiving this knows about how Mitra Gopaul is getting
along, please let me know and I will share it on the Badi' list.

Aug 12, "Air France Crash Victims Seek Compensation," By BETH DUFF-BROWN,
TORONTO (AP) -- Mitra Gopaul has trouble sleeping. Eddie Ho has
repeated flashbacks. And some children are still clinging to their
parents more than a week after surviving the Air France crash on the
runway of Canada's busiest airport.
…The spokesman said more compensation would be coming and declined to
comment on the allegations of negligence on the part of the French
airliner. Gopaul was returning from Israel, where he was volunteering
for the Baha'i World Center as a database administrator. "I'm still
wondering why I had to go through this, if there is a godly reason,"
said Gopaul, who said his 20-year-old daughter was riding a bus along
nearby Highway 401 and witnessed the crash. "I have to figure out in
my personal life why I had to go through that.

The following article from Science News on how comparatively "green"
factory and home cooking are, I consider of the utmost importance and
am including it in its entirety. It backs me up in my growing
conviction that kitchens are dangerous, polluting, wasteful and that
home cooking is a total waste of time and thought, especially for
women, whose lives are being wasted doing something better automated.

How 'Green' Is Home Cooking?

<http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050730/food.asp>

by Janet Raloff

Which is better for the environment: a meal cooked from scratch at
home or a packaged frozen or freeze-dried meal cooked up in distant
industrial kitchens and trucked to supermarkets? Most consumers would
guess the former, notes environmental engineer Ulf Sonesson. Even many
food scientists would vote for home cooking as the greener option, he
says.
However, those guesses probably wouldn't be taking into account
economies of scale in food companies' mass preparation of meals, says
Sonesson.

How this meal was prepared—at home versus in a factory—makes little
difference, in terms of energy use and environmental impact, a new
study finds. Indeed, when he and his team at the Swedish Institute for
Food and Biotechnology made calculations including such efficiencies,
they found no big difference between the environmental footprints of
home-cooked versus ready-to-eat fare. Each means of putting food on
the table has environmental advantages and disadvantages that, in the
end, "even each other out," the researchers concluded.
A major reason the resource costs of the two different types of meals
are so similar, overall, is that cooking itself contributes
comparatively little to environmental costs of a meal. Most impacts
instead occur around the farm or in the marketplace—upstream of food
preparation—and contribute comparably to meals, regardless of where
they're cooked.

That's potentially good news for the environment, Sonesson says, since
in Sweden, as in the United States, there is growing reliance on meals
that are partially cooked or ready-to-eat, needing little more than
last-minute heating.

Cooking's hidden costs

The Swedish scientists focused their analyses on the farm-to-fork, or
life-cycle, costs of preparing a meal of meatballs, potatoes, bread,
carrots, and milk. They chose this combo because it's popular in their
country and because it can be purchased as a frozen, ready-to-eat meal
(minus the bread and milk) or as separate, semi-prepared foods (such
as dried mashed potatoes and refrigerated meatballs). The former meal
needs only to be microwaved prior to eating. The latter requires
frying the meatballs on a stovetop and adding water to reconstitute
the potatoes before heating. To complete both of these meals,
store-bought milk and bread were added.

The researchers compared the life-cycle costs of the prepared and
semi-prepared meals with the cost of a homemade alternative. For this
version of the meal, all foods—including the bread—were made from
scratch. Carrots were peeled and eaten raw, meatballs were rolled from
ground meat, and the milk came from the supermarket. In each
food-preparation scenario, the researchers assumed that all portions
or ingredients of the meal would be purchased on the day it would be
eaten.

Roughly half of the energy consumption and environmental impact
associated with any food occurs on the farm, say researchers in
Sweden. In the June Ambio, Sonesson's group reports that agriculture
accounted for roughly half of the resource costs associated with any
of the meals, owing mostly to the energy associated with producing and
applying fertilizer and with the use of diesel-powered gear, such as
tractors. For the two meals produced commercially, packaging made up
another 10 percent of the environmental costs. Energy costs at food
retailers—refrigeration of individual ingredients, for instance—proved
highest for the home-cooked meal, accounting for about 20 percent of
the energy associated with it. The retailer-energy cost of
semi-prepared and ready-to-eat meals was slightly smaller—although the
amounts of energy used outside the home to prepare these meals were
slightly higher—than that for the homemade meal.
That said, the energy expended to bring each meal to the table varied
only slightly—from about 9 megajoules per meal for the home-cooked
food, to a little over 10 Mj for the full complement of foods served
in the largely ready-to-eat meal. Each megajoule is equivalent to
about the energy needed to keep three 100-watt light bulbs burning for
1 hour.

Emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane, were
somewhat higher for the home-cooked meal. One reason, Sonesson
explains, is because much potentially wasted energy in commercial
preparation of foods was recaptured—such as by the incineration of
food scraps. Production of smog-inducing gases proved highest for the
semi-prepared meal, largely because it required the most plastic for
packaging the various components.

Emissions of nitrogen oxides, a component of smog and acid rain, were
highest overall for home-cooked meals, Sonesson's group found. One
major reason: potato peels. Industrial processing discards about
one-third less potato as scrap during peeling. Not only does this mean
that fewer spuds need to be grown to supply an equivalent amount of
potato for an industrially produced meal, but also that less peel will
be discarded in a landfill, where it decomposes into the polluting
gases. The extra spuds needed to make up for higher peeling losses in
home kitchens also led to proportionately more fertilizer use and thus
farm runoff of fertilizers into waterways.

The cost of waste

In a second paper published in Ambio, Sonesson's team investigated
additional environmental costs associated with food production.
Through surveys of some 270 households, the researchers learned that
most grocery shopping is done by car. Only one-quarter of household
trips to stores were on foot, usually to a local or convenience store,
not the supermarket. Most of the Swedes surveyed said that they shop
for food every 1 to 3 days, typically coming home with only a bag or
two of groceries.

Frequent shopping by car aggravates air pollution and elevates
fossil-fuel consumption. On the other hand, it suggests that people
are buying only as much food as they need. Buying in bulk, in
contrast, could cause people to waste food. To probe that idea, the
researchers scoured data from 35 households to evaluate how much of a
family's food typically went to waste.
The families reported discarding roughly twice as much dairy food as
they ate. Of that wastage, about 80 percent was never used in a meal
and 20 percent was prepared but eventually discarded as leftovers.
Produce losses also proved high. An amount equivalent to nearly 50
percent of the fruits and vegetables eaten was thrown away, apparently
because it went bad prior to being incorporated into a meal. On the
other extreme, pasta, rice, potatoes, and other staples with a long
shelf life were seldom pitched out uneaten, according to food diaries
kept by the participating families.

Sonesson and his colleagues observe that few studies have addressed
why people discard food. Is it spoiled? Has it merely exceeded its
"sell by" date? Or do people get bored with certain items?
Understanding the factors prompting food waste is important, Sonesson
argues, because substantial energy and environmental resources go into
food production. In Sweden, for instance, agriculture consumes some 20
percent of the nation's energy. With on-farm costs of this industry so
large, Sonesson says, finding ways to limit demand for excess
production—food that will never be consumed—could provide substantial
benefits for both the nation's economy and environment.

In the warning label department, here is an article on the latest
potential target, chips.

Warning label on French fries? By Capital News 9 web staff

You know they're full of fat, carbohydrates and sodium. But three
years ago a shocking study came out of Europe claiming foods like
french fries could cause cancer -- because the cooking process
produces a carcinogen called Acrylamide. Frank Muir of the Idaho
Potato Commission said, "There is no research that confirms this Swiss
study. In fact, since that time, that study came out other studies
have come out disputing those findings." But so far that hasn't
convinced the state of California. Allan Hirsch of the California EPA
said, "The last thing we want to do is scare people or to alarm them."

But they are considering warning labels for French fries! According to
the California Environmental Protection Agency, it falls under the
state's so-called right-to-know law -- a law designed to protect
people against chemicals known to cause cancer. It's a battle between
cancer concerns and potato profits. The state of California wants to
put warning labels on french fries - but according to the state of
Idaho -- the reason is ridiculous.

Muir said, "We've been eating acrylamide since man invented fire. Ever
since we started cooking foods, there's been acrylamides that we've
been consuming." He went on to say, "If you put a warning label on
french fries or potato chips because of acrylamides, then to be fair,
you're going to have to put it on bread, you're going to have to put
it on all the ready to eat cereals. Those high bran cereals have
acrylamide."

But California hasn't decided what is the best way to educate the
public about perceived cancer concerns. And warning labels are still
under consideration. Something Idaho leaders are strongly
discouraging. "Our governor, Governor Kempthorne went down there and
met with Governor Schwartznegger personally. We have laid out the
issue, and we hope that it will be resolved," said Muir.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com