On 29 May 2007 05:13:56 -0700, pearl > wrote:

>On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza > wrote:
>> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
>> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
>
>'Bullies project their inadequacies, shortcomings, behaviours
>etc on to other people to avoid facing up to their inadequacy
>and doing something about it (learning about oneself can be
>painful), and to distract and divert attention away from
>themselves and their inadequacies.

White bread is green

By Fred Pearce
vegetarians may be healthier, but meat eaters do more for the environment. A
survey of the energy used to produce and distribute various foods has found
that meat and processed food such as sweets, ice cream, potato chips and white
bread are among the most energy-efficient--and so least polluting--foods in our
diet. Tea, coffee, tomatoes, salad vegetables and white fish, on the other
hand, are distinctly environmentally unfriendly.

David Coley and colleagues of the Centre for Energy and the Environment at the
University of Exeter have analysed how much energy from fuel is used in the
complete production cycle of food in a typical shopping basket.

The analysis includes the manufacture and application of fertilisers and other
chemicals, harvesting, processing, packaging, transport and waste disposal.
Geographical differences have been averaged out.

In a study of the diets of more than 2000 people, they found that it takes
around 18 000 mega-joules of energy each year to get a typical Briton's food to
the table. This is almost six times the energy contained in the food itself. In
all, the process consumes almost a tenth of the national energy budget, adding
15 million tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

But people's diets vary hugely. The study suggests that a sixth of Britons
consume food over a year that requires less than 10 000 MJ to produce, while
the annual diets of another sixth require more than 25 000 MJ.

The study will trouble those trying to be both healthy and green. The most
energy-intensive item is coffee, which requires 177 MJ of energy to produce 1
MJ of food intake. But typical salad vegetables require 45 MJ and white fish
36, compared to 8 MJ for beef and burgers, 7 for chicken and 6 for lamb.

Worse still for the environmental consciences of healthy eaters, while fresh
fruit consumes between 10 and 22 MJ, sugary confectionery, crisps, white bread
and ice cream are all right at the bottom of the table, consuming less than 1
MJ each.

"Meat does well because it is not highly processed, provides a lot of calories
and is often grown locally," says Coley. "But obviously it makes a lot of
difference whether the meat comes from the local farm or Brazil. I live close
to Dartmoor, where local cabbages and lamb would produce a very different score
from New Zealand lamb and Kenyan green beans."

In a sense, says Coley, we all "eat oil". The modern food industry is "in many
ways a means of converting fossil fuels into edible forms. Food is a large part
of an individual's impact on the greenhouse effect. Many of us could change our
diets to have a lot less impact."

From New Scientist, 6 December 1997

http://www.ex.ac.uk/EAD/Extrel/Annrep/a98-phy.htm#top
D A Coley, E Goodliffe and J Macdiarmid
'The embodied energy of food: the role of diet', Energy Policy, 26 1998: 455-9.