Last week, I wrote a post on a meal that I had had recently. This week, I will be writing about where some components of the meal came from. Since fish was the main part of my meal, we will start there.
Several kinds of fish were in my sushi boat. One fish was Hamachi, or Yellow Tail. This particular fish comes from Japan and is often shipped via a plane from Japan to the US and other parts of the world for use in sushi. The Hamachi from Japan is the finest grade for use in sushi. Salmon is another popular sushi fish. Most sushi restaurants use Atlantic Salmon or Scottish (smoked) Salmon. Since I prefer a fresh taste to a smokey flavor, I chose the Atlantic Salmon. This fish is caught on the coast and it is shipped as quickly as possible to preserve the quality of the fish.
Next, rice was a large part of the meal. The rice used for sushi is a short grained, sticky Japanese rice. If you search for sushi rice in the grocery store, it is becoming more easy to find. But generally, it can only be found at specialty stores.
Finally, in the Bibimbap (mixed rice) dish that I got, a fried egg and scallions were in the dish. The egg and scallions both came from a farm (hopefully in Wisconsin).
As the products mentioned above are produced, there are several effects they may have on natural resources. For example, fishing for the kinds of fish needed for sushi requires going out in deep water at times, and that involves running a boat, using gas, and polluting the water with the gas used. Fishing also depletes the natural resource of fish unless it is done carefully.
Rice is grown in a "rice paddy" which literally means that the rice is grown in water. Rice is grown in arable land that requires extensive irrigation, causing the water of nearby rivers or streams to often be diverted. If this is overdone, the water source will be depleted over a relatively short period of time.
Since the vegetables were grown on a farm, often the fields are sprayed with pesticides. This is a double edged sword because, although the pesticides allow a larger crop to be produced because bugs are not a problem, the chemicals of the pesticides often get into the soil and into the vegetables themselves. Sometimes, the chemicals stay in the soil for a long time and can run off with groundwater to streams and other water sources. Also, on a farm, equipment which runs on gas and electricity are used. The gas-powered equipment gives off emissions and can potentially affect air quality.
The egg used in my meal is the only part that I can think of that was entirely naturally produced. Although the chicken feed could have had chemicals in it or antibiotics, which could have gotten into the egg.
While the impacts of most of these effects begin locally, eventually many of them will become global. The farmland used to produce the vegetables can be full of pesticides, which, as I mentioned above, can run into groundwater and eventually end up hundreds of miles away as the water carries the chemicals. Also, the pesticides which can be present in the vegetable can cause a global effect as humans around the world will eat those vegetables.
If the rice fields were to dry up the water sources, the weather and climate would be affected. This is a local effect that could translate to a global effect if the climate were to effect other layers of the atmosphere.
As mentioned above, the products in my meal arrived at the restaurant in different ways. Some of it arrived by plane, some by truck, and some were purchased locally at a supermarket. The ingredients that traveled the furthest to get to me were the sushi rice and the Hamachi, since they came from Japan (halfway around the world). The ingredients that I would consider "local" are the vegetables and eggs, since they do not have a long shelf life and should be transported nearby.
Some parts of my meal did produce waste. The vegetables and fish were wrapped in plastic and in wooden and cardboard crates, and the eggs came in styrofoam packaging. Although the restaurant that I went to promotes recycling and does their best to ensure that items like packaging will end up in a recycling bin, sometimes they end up in the garbage, which results in another trip to the landfill. As far as the food waste, my table finished all of the food that we ordered, but during the prep work for the meal, some parts were disposed of (fish bones/intestines and vegetable roots/leaves for instance). Often, this restaurant disposes of this food waste in compost buckets to be sent to farms. But sometimes, it ends up in the trash, too.
Through this brief post, you can see how my food traveled from it's source to my plate. The environmental impacts of even one simple meal can be huge, and it is worth spending some time thinking about what we can do to cut down on some of this wasteful consumption.
No comments:
Post a Comment