End/Beginning?

This was fascinating, scary, chaotic, time-consuming, quick, exciting, distressing, and FUN.  Most important, though, I think is the fact that though this project began as an experiment, we learned how simple it is to turn this from an experiment to a reality.

Eating locally does not have to be part of an experimental lifestyle or a once-in-a-while type of meal.  If we learned anything on this journey it was how easy (and worthwhile!) eating REAL (local) foods can be as a lifestyle.

If eating real foods is only something that the privileged elite have the opportunity to participate in, then the movement fails.  We needs moms, dads, neighbors, gas station attendants, waiters, CEO’s, COLLEGE STUDENTS, and everyone in between eating food that they can trace and feel good about.

There are many types of health, and frankly, they all matter.  For example, your health.  It’s important!  And eating healthy local foods that you can trace and trust is vital to your own health.  Then there is the health of earth.  Right now, our planet is sick and getting sicker.  Global warming, a water crisis, and an overwhelming number of pesticides and toxins threaten the health of the environment (and that includes our food) every day, and eating locally is a really easy way of doing something to combat that.  With every local (or real) meal you eat you save energy, oil, and toxins that would otherwise be in the environment.  If you know the source you can be sure of whether or not you approve of their practices.  Does the source treat their workers fairly?  Their animals?  Do they farm organically or with lots of pesticides?  All of these questions help to determine the health of the community. 

The other thing that is important to remember is that eating purely locally all the time is not really realistic.  But that’s where the Real Food Movement comes in.  The movement defines real foods as “food which truly nourishes producers, consumers, communities and the earth.  It is a food system--from seed to plate--that fundamentally respects human dignity and health, animal welfare, social justice and environmental sustainability.”  The Real Food Movement takes into account even more than just local foods, because the truth is that not everything can be grown or raised everywhere, and there are ways to eat “non-locally” that are still good for our bodies and planet.  Considerations about how the food was made, who prepared it, and where are all valid considerations in evaluating real food.

What is really cool is that though Brown Dining hall cannot truly compare or compete with a purely local diet, currently 36% of foods in dining halls here are considered real foods.  That means that Brown has already surpassed its 2014 goal for real foods (of 35%).  That’s impressive!

Our calculations showed that the approximate carbon footprint of eating in Brown Dining halls for a day was 45,847.98 lbs CO2 as compared with 618.5 lbs CO2 for our local day.  That’s a massive difference.  What I hope you and I can aim for, as college students, is perhaps something a little above 618.5 and way below 45,847.98.  We can be realistic about it—we are in college and our resources for cooking and food are unique—but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.  This project may be coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean we stop trying to live some of this project every day.  Make food something that tastes and feels good in every sense. 

Tying Up Loose Ends and a New Journey

Overall, Nora and I had an absolutely fabulous time exploring the feasibility of eating locally at Brown University with you, and I sincerely hope that through our efforts, we’ve made it easier for our average reader to locavore it up!

In this blog, we’ve outlined couple fantastic options for getting local food on campus, and given links to a few more.

We’ve shared our experiences eating purely locally, hopefully providing an example of what eating locally – even in the beginning of winter – can look like.

We also talked about something many of our readers are probably more intimately experienced with – eating food from Brown Dining Xervices. We hope that our reflections on both have been as helpful to you, our readers in critically thinking about where their food comes as they have been for us.

Then, we outlined the impacts of eating locally. We started with the impact that eating locally has on our lives as students. Happily, we found that overall, eating locally is actually cheaper than eating in the dining hall, and takes only slightly longer on average. Yay!

Then, after some intense investigative work, we were able to also determine our approximate carbon footprints from eating each day. It’s important to note that our estimates were based off Hootroot.com, which, while a great tool, doesn’t take into account issues of scale of transport into calculating the carbon footprint. Additionally, we weren’t able to obtain exact locations of where our food comes from. When reading this part of our blog, we suggest that you look at the calculations more as a starting point to start thinking about the miles your food travels, rather than as concrete data. The idea – that we should be cognizant of how far our food travels to our plates – is the important part.  

Then, taking into account our experience and research, we came up with a list of 7 food rules, that will guide our own food experiences, as well as (hopefully) our readers.

Before starting this post, I originally wanted to title it “Well, that’s all folks”, ‘cause that’s the kind of corny guy I am. But, after starting to reflect, I realized that it’s really not. The class that sparked this project is over, yes, but that doesn’t mean that the tenets that guided this project are. When approaching this project, our goal was to add to the environmentalist movement by making it easier for members of the Brown community to tap into the local food movement. In that, I think that we were very successful. But, in order to create a successful blog, we obviously had to focus on some areas over others.

Thus, there are aspects of the local food movement that definitely warrant additional exploration. One is the debate about the effectiveness of the movement. While Nora and I have done a significant amount of informal research while completing this project, we could definitely benefit from exploring more closely at some of the questions that critics bring up, including issues with scale in transportation, focusing so much on local food and ignoring the issues of environmental justice that come from more common agricultural practices in our country, and the question of expanding the local food movement to a more regional school of thought.

Additionally, another area worthy of exploration is the connection between the food and those who produce it. While we were definitely much closer with our food on our local day in comparison to eating in dining services, we still don’t know as much as we should about those who produced our food.

This ties into the idea of the world of food not being black and white. Just because a food item is local, doesn’t mean it was humanely produced, doesn’t mean it’s organic or pesticide free, doesn’t mean it has a lower carbon footprint, and doesn’t mean the workers were treated fairly.

Thus, though this blog is ending, my – our – journey isn’t. Food isn’t something that you can avoid, and its impacts on our lives and the environment are gigantic. This is a journey we must all take together, and, even though I won’t be regularly blogging about it, I really hope it's one you’ll continue to join us on. 

If you have any thoughts we'd love to hear them in the comments.

Vegetarians Exploring Meat!

Though Kyle and I are both vegetarians (and therefore didn’t include meat in our project), we recognize that the majority of the population does eat meat, and so we wanted to provide a small glimpse into the world of local (and other types) of meat.  So here it goes!

While at the Pawtucket Farmers’ Market we saw a stand for Pat’s Pastured, a local farm in Jamestown, RI that raises grass fed, free-range animals.  According to hootroot, in terms of travel, it only takes 34.1 lbs CO2 to transport that meat to Brown (although the energy that goes into the production of the meat is a different story).  This is all to say that there are good, local options for meat in Providence for those who are interested!

The meat in Brown dining halls, on the other hand, is a different story.  Completely untraceable I really can’t tell you where the meat comes from or how it’s produced, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that it involves factory farms and conditions that we probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about.  As we stated in our 7 Rules of Eating in College, if there’s one thing to avoid in the dining halls, we would say it’s the meat. 

There’s much, much more to learn and think about when it comes to meat (and it is something everyone should think about and decided for his or herself!), but this is just a little starter for your future research!

7 Rules for Eating (in college!)

Famed food writer and activist Michael Pollan wrote a book called Food Rules in which he outlines the 7 words ("Eat food. Not too much.  Mostly plants.") and accompanying rules about eating.  They’re super helpful, and you should definitely check out a summary of them here!  You should also read his New York Times article, "Unhappy Meals" that sums up a lot of his ideas.  So, as part of the conclusion for our experiment, we thought we would put together a list of our 7 rules for eating as a college student.  Here’s what we came up with—we hope you enjoy!

1.     Go off meal plan (if you can)

Dining hall food is okay. It’s reasonably nutritious if you’re conscious of what you eat, but overall, it’s pretty mediocre. By going off meal plan, you’ll develop cooking skills (the Ratty isn’t going to follow us into the real world!), have the option to choose what you’re eating, reduce your waste, save money (even eating purely locally) without taking up much more time, and have the opportunity to positively impact the environment using your dollar.  Which brings us to our next point: If you’re on meal plan, and can’t go off because you’re a first year (which we totally feel you on), or if it’s just impractical for whatever reason, keep reading, because even if you can’t follow this rule the rest still apply!

2.     Eat local

In this blog, we focused on how buying locally drastically cuts down the carbon release into the atmosphere. That’s a serious plus, but there are even more reasons!  By eating locally you also support your local economy, establish relationships with the individuals growing your food, preserve green space in your community, increase your food safety, and get to be part of a local food community. We’ve elaborated on two easy ways to access local foods around Providence (Market Shares and the Pawtucket Winter Farmer’s Market), but there’s also the Brown University Farmer’s Market that’s literally on-campus for a few months a year, and East Side Marketplace and Whole Foods that also have local options, as well as AS220 if you get a hankering for eating out. We get that it’s not necessarily realistic to eat entirely locally (especially as a college student), though it’s definitely not as hard as you’d think.  But even just shifting a portion of your purchases to local can really make a difference.  If you’re eating in a Brown-dining hall, try and gravitate towards the locally produced goods, like the milk, the in-season produce, eggs, SoCo ice cream, cheese, and Iggy’s bread. Even Shanghai uses 50% local vegetables!

3.     Eat what’s in season

If you’re eating locally, you’re already doing this. But, even if you’re not focused on eating locally, eating what’s in season is still really helpful, especially if you’re in a dining hall. Brown Dining Services (shout out to the interns who helped us with this project!) is doing a lot of great work trying to bring more local options into the dining hall. In many cases, a lot of the produce is beginning to be sourced locally, but that’s only possible for items that are in season. Check out this super handy chart and be cognizant of when it’s a good time to eat a certain food item, and when it’s not! Just because we can ship things from Mexico doesn’t mean we should.

4.     Eat less (or zero) meat

To start, meat’s expensive on a college student diet. Secondly, meat is much worse for the environment.  According to our Environmental Studies class, the production of meat emits more greenhouse gases than transportation, and it takes approximately 2-5 times more calories globally to produce meat instead of grains.  Additionally, so much of the meat produced and eaten in the United States is produced in factory farms with horrific conditions.  Animals are often forced into too small cages and never see sunlight. Additionally, employees are often paid minimum wage, subject to awful conditions, and are deported at their employer’s whim. That said, we understand that a lot of people really enjoy meat, and don’t want to remove it from their diets. To those people, we’d recommend focusing on eating less, more humanely produced meat. Look for buzzwords like “grass-fed” or “cage-free”. Think about where your meat comes from.  If there is one thing NOT to eat in Brown Dining halls it is the meat, which does come from factory farms. An easy way to cut down on some of your meat production is “meatless” Mondays, which is as simple as it sounds! Go veggie one day a week, and positively impact the environment.

5.     Eat simpler

By this, we definitely do not mean to eat “boring”. We mean to focus on procuring and eating high quality foods that are minimally processed. While tracking where our food came from, one thing that we noticed was how much harder it was to figure out where pre-processed foods come from and how many additional places they travelled before getting to our plates (leading to more CO2 leaked into the atmosphere!). Additionally, by eating more simply you also reduce how many different ingredients that need to make their way to your plate for you to enjoy a meal.  It’s a win-win: you can better know what you are putting in your body AND positively impact the environment.  Try setting a maximum number of ingredients for the foods you eat to have.  For instance, decide not to eat foods with more than 5 ingredients (shout out to Kai’s section!) for a week.

6.     Be aware

This rule refers both to the food itself, as well as where it comes from and how it was produced. It’s important to know what you’re eating for both your own health and the health of the environment.  Know who grows, harvests, and packages your food. We focused mostly on where food comes from in this blog, but that’s definitely not the only consideration. It’s also important to be cognizant of whether or not your food was grown with pesticides (could have long term impacts on your health as well as the health of neighboring communities), and whether the people involved were treated fairly. Sometimes, it could be a toss up between a local farm that treats its employees well or a farm a few states away that treats its workers humanely and uses pesticides. This isn’t a black and white, good or evil type issue. There are nuances!

7.     Enjoy delicious food with family and friends!

In our minds, food exists to be shared, start conversations, build community, and create fun. Have fun buying food, preparing it, eating it, and cleaning up. Do it with your friends, family, and loved ones! Food is fun! Yay yay yay!

Ratty Foods Tracking—the Last of the Numbers!

After much more intensive research, we have finally come up with an approximation for the carbon footprint of eating in Brown Dining Halls for a day.  I cannot stress enough that especially with dining hall foods this number is an estimate.  While tracking the source of local foods was quite easy, because we knew the exact farms and locations each item came from, tracking the source and journey of more processed foods was quite a challenge.

The fact that most of these products stopped at one or more production facilities on their paths to our plates made the tracing process significantly more complicated.  While we tried to take into account some of the bigger production facilities foods passed through, I think it’s pretty safe to say that some facilities slipped under our radar (meaning that the actual carbon footprint is probably a little higher than we calculated). 

In order to source our foods we first talked to a fabulous real food intern for Brown Dining Services.  She basically does what we have been doing all year round in terms of sourcing dining hall foods (amazing!), and was able to tell us the origins of many Ratty foods.  For some items (such as eggs and milk) we were pleasantly surprised to learn they were from (easily traceable) local farms.  Other foods, on the other hand (such as cucumbers and cherry tomatoes) generally came from one of two large food processors: Fresh Point (of Connecticut) or Performance Food Group (the closest one is in Springfield, MA).  We contacted Fresh Point and they were able to give us the states where their fruits and vegetables were grown.  On the other hand, our voicemails at Performance Food Group went unanswered, so in order to track Performance items we did some research about which areas were big producers of the foods in question and simply tracked from those location to Performance and then Brown (hopefully giving us a somewhat accurate estimate).  You can note the foods for which we took an educated guess regarding its origins by the “(likely)” in front of its source.

And now what you have been waiting for, the estimated carbon footprint of eating in Brown eateries for one day is…a whopping 45,847.98 lbs CO2, or approximately 1,528.266 pounds per item.

wow.

Our local carbon footprint for one day was 618.5 lbs CO2, meaning that the dining hall footprint was approximately 74 times the size of the local footprint. Even examining the average carbon footprint per item (given that we consumed almost double the ingredients eaten on our dining services day), our calculations suggest a footprint of 35 times more. I think the numbers speak for themselves in showing how enormously reduced the environmental impact becomes when eating locally.

Even besides the obvious environmental impacts in terms of CO2 of eating locally versus otherwise, there is also the simple fact of knowing where your food comes from.  We tracked every local ingredient without fail, and it only took about an hour to do so.  For dining hall foods, on the other hand, we spent many hours doing research, and still did not come close to finding all the sources of our food.

In attempting to track the origin of the Ratty’s feta cheese, for example, I was never able to find the exact source.  While a real food intern informed us that the cheese was from a company called Atheno’s, their website had literally no information about the source of the cheese or even a number we could call.  After another 30 minutes of research I discovered that Atheno’s is owned by Kraft, but except for an online “general inquiries” form (that curiously requires you to include your age) the Kraft website also has no contact information.  We had no way of getting in contact with the company whose products we were eating, and this, to say the least, was extremely disturbing.

For those who are interested, here is the list of foods we ate and tracked from Brown Dining halls.  As with the local foods, we used hootroot.com to calculate the carbon footprint.  Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns!

Eggs: Little Rhody Foods, Pete and Gerry’s Organic Farm, Monroe, NH   232.68 lbs CO2

Apples: Hill Orchard, Johnston, RI   12.31 lbs CO2

Milk: Rhody Fresh milk (this local company uses numerous RI dairy farms for its milk, so we picked one called Emma Acres which is in Exeter, RI), Exeter, RI   24.85 lbs CO2

Yogurt: Haynes Dairy, Claremont, NH, 85.83 lbs CO2 to Stonyfield Yogurt Works, Londonderry, NH, 104.92.  Total: 190.75 lbs CO2

Pizza: 6595.86 lbs CO2

            mozzarella: Narragansett Creamery, Providence, RI    4.26 lbs CO2

            tomato sauce: (likely) California, 3388.61 lbs CO2

            tomato: (likely) Florida, 1412.59 lbs CO2

            flour: (likely) Kansas, 1790.4 lbs CO2

Cucumber: Florida, 1343.53 lbs CO2 to Fresh Point, Hartford, CT 06114 , 92.97 lbs CO2.  Total: 1446.5 lbs CO2

Feta: Athenos, owned by Kraft, (likely) Wisconsin 1250.81 lbs CO2

Cherry tomato: (likely) Florida, 1375.12 lbs CO2 to Performance, Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 1462.22 lbs CO2

Spinach: (likely) California, 3328.61 lbs CO2

Quinoa: (likely) Colorado, 2108.45 lbs CO2 to Performance, Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 2195.55 lbs CO2

Whole-wheat pasta: (likely) Kansas, 1710.37 lbs CO2 to Performance, Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 1797.47 lbs CO2.

Carrots: California, 3211.7 lbs CO2 to Fresh Point, Hartford, CT, 92.97 lbs CO2.  Total: 3304.76 lbs CO2

Snap peas: (likely) California, 3328.61 lbs CO2

Short Grain Rice: (likely) Arkansas, 1486.1 lbs CO2

Corn: Corn Belt, (likely) from Michigan, 931.44 lbs CO2

Zucchini: (likely) California, 3211.7 lbs CO2 to Fresh Point, Hartford, CT, 92.97 lbs CO2.  Total: 3304.67 lbs CO2

Pinto beans: (likely) North Dakota, 1917.58 lbs CO2 to Performance, Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 2004.68 lbs CO2

Black beans: (likely) North Dakota, 1917.58 lbs CO2 to Performance, Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 2004.68 lbs CO2

Guacamole: most Avocados are from Mexico, 2742.46 lbs CO2

Sour cream: (likely Daisy brand) Garland, Texas, 1831.12 lbs CO2

Monterey Jack Cheese: (likely) Wisconsin, 1170.78 lbs CO2 to Performance Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 1257.88 lbs CO2

Mac n’ Cheese: 939.68 lbs CO2

Noodles: (likely) from Philadelphia Macaroni Company, Warminster PA, 250.49 lbs CO2 to Performance Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 337.59 lbs CO2

Butter: Cabot Cheese Company, Cabot, VT, 201.52 lbs CO2 to Performance Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 288.62 lbs CO2

Milk: Rhody Fresh milk (this local company uses numerous RI dairy farms for its milk, so we picked one called Emma Acres which is in Exeter, RI), Exeter, RI   24.85 lbs CO2

Cheddar cheese: Cabot Cheese Company, Cabot, VT, 201.52 lbs CO2 to Performance Springfield, MA, 87.1 lbs CO2.  Total: 288.62 lbs CO2

Red onions: Fresh Point, Hartford, CT, 92.97 lbs CO2  

Clementines: (likely) California, 3328.61 lbs CO2

Sweet potatoes: (likely) North Carolina, 659.74 lbs CO2 to Fresh Point, Hartford, CT, 92.97 lbs CO2.  Total: 752.71 lbs CO2  

TOTAL: 45,847.98 lbs CO2

Watch Your (Fo)odometer

Really great video on how much oil we "eat" when consuming the food that we enjoy everyday. Check it out if you have a chance!

Money Makes the World Go Local!

I’m a (relatively) poor college student. Nora’s a (relatively) poor college student. Many of you are probably poor college students. Thus, it was super important to us to try and do some calculations on how economically feasible it actually is to eat locally! Let's chat $$.

We'll start with Brown Market Shares! As I mentioned before, I have a ginormous crush on this program.

They offer a produce share for $200/10 weeks, a bread share of $50/10 weeks, a full dairy share of $150/10 weeks, which breaks down to an Egg share of $40/10 weeks, a Milk share of $30/10 weeks, a Cheese share that’s $50/10 weeks, and a Yogurt share which costs $30/10 weeks. The full pricing information can be found here, and varies slightly depending on semester.

As I wrote about previously, Market shares was kind enough to give us a produce, bread, and dairy share for free for the sake of this experiment, a $40 value. That said, given that we only ate locally for one day, we weren’t able to consume all of the food in those 24-hrs. Consequently, I’m going to do a little bit of creative subtraction/division to try and get a closer estimate of the dollar value of what we actually ate.

Out of the produce, we ate around half, which cuts that cost down to $10. We did eat all of the bread, so I’ll leave that at $5. We didn’t eat any of the eggs, so I’m not going to include that $4 in there. We drank around 2/3rds of the milk, cutting that price to $2. Of the cheese, we ate approximately half, bringing it down to $2.50, and around half of the yogurt, bring that down to $2.50 as well.

That comes out to a total of $22 worth of food from market shares.  My math is based off of the assumption that we would have eaten all of the food we received, which, given how delicious everything was, would probably not have been a problem!

Now, let’s figure out pricing for our Farmer’s market food! At the farmer’s market, as written in our previous post, we spent $1.50 on a clove of garlic, $8 on fresh pasta, $5 on mozzarella cheese, and $6 on tomato sauce.

Again, I think it’s important to try and come a little closer to figure out our pricing on just the food we consumed that day. So, considering we only ate 3/4ths of the pasta (our hungry friends finished it off), I’m going to cut that down to $6. Similarly with the garlic, we used maybe 1/3^rd of the clove, bringing our price for that down to $.50. We also only consumed approximately 2/3rds of the tomato sauce, so I’m going to reduce the price for that as well to $4. We did, however, eat all of the mozzarella cheese, so that’s an even $5. Yum yum yum. Taken together, that comes out to a total price to $15.50.

That brings our total price of the day, for three meals for both Nora and I (6 meals in total), to $37.50. Per meal, that’s a price of $6.25.

In comparison, meals on Brown’s standard, 20 meals a week plan are valued at $6.40. By eating locally, Nora and I actually saved money (if we were off meal plan), and were able to eat much higher quality food!

It’s also worth noting that, if $6.25 still seems high as a price per meal, that there are countless ways to trim down this number. One would to be more cognizant of prices. As Nora noted, we managed to purchase the most expensive garlic glove in the entire farmer’s market. Additionally, on our day of eating locally, we purchased items that, though local, were very expensive compared to their non-local counterparts, particularly our pasta. By eating predominantly locally, but buying cheap essentials like pasta from the supermarket, you could save money and still get many of the benefits of eating locally.

Additionally, Brown Market Shares offers low-cost shares to faculty, grad students, and other members of the community, though unfortunately not to undergraduates at this time.

Overall though, I think that our average meal price is really exciting. It’s showing, somewhat definitely, that eating locally doesn’t have to be out of reach for individuals at Brown University. It’s a definite economic possibility for most of us.