- In the morning I grabbed a banana, peanut butter Kashi bar and a glass of iced water for breakfast before heading to work. Both the banana and the Kashi bar were both previously purchased from target. The banana which was raised and produced on one of Chiquita's organic food farms in Central America that ended up going to one of Target's distribution centers located in Lakeland, Florida. Once assorted and prepared for sale it was loaded into one of Target's delivery trucks and traveled a couple hours south to the Target in Gulf Coast Town Center. Since there was no packaging of the banana the peel was garbage and thrown away. The Peanut Butter Kashi bar was produced and packaged in Kashi's only facility in Solana Beach, California. Kashi only uses organic ingredients in its all of its products. Since this is the only facility Kashi operates in they constantly have trucks delivering across the nation. Kashi's facility operates all on machinery assembling all granola bars and cereals. Kashi bars are grouped into twelve bars per cardboard box and then wrapped into pairs.
Lunch -
- In the late afternoon while on break at work I went to a nearby Subway and got their meal of the day which was a six inch meatball sub, chips and a drink. After reading some information I found out that Subway is a franchise and each individual owner of the Subway gets there meat, cheese, bread etc. from the closest supplier at a cheaper cost. My meatball sub was freshly prepared in front of me within a minute or two. It took the energy from the truck to get all ingredients, the oven to bake the bread and the heater to boil the water to keep the meatballs hot. Water was most likely used in the dough and also the cheese. The sub was wrapped in a piece of paper is not recyclable because it was covered with food and then put into a non-recyclable plastic Subway bag. The Miss Vickie's Jalapeno kettle cooked chips were part of my meal with the sub. Since Miss Vickie's is a Canadian brand of chips that were made in Ontario, Canada at their potato chip factory. Miss Vickie's then transfers trucks full of boxes of these bags of chips across both Canada and the United States which go to the local distributors that each Subway owner buys all the ingredients from. The energy used in making these chips were the grease that the chips were kettle cooked in and the machine that makes and seals the plastic bags which end up becoming garbage. The bottle of Dasani water was also used during my lunch and was made at the local Coca-Cola plant that is off of Alico road. Coca-Cola actually uses tap water from local supplies and then adds magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride and salt after it is thoroughly purified. The making of the plastic bottle which is actually made up to thirty percent plants and is still one hundred percent recyclable.
Dinner -
- After getting home from work I prepared some Gold'n Plump grilled chicken and brown rice for dinner. The chicken and rice were both purchased from Target later earlier this week. The Gold'n Plump chicken was originally started at a family farm where the chickens were raised humanely following animal welfare standards set by the American Humane Certified farm program. The chicken is separated by cut and grade then packaged into Styrofoam with a plastic seal that are not recyclable. The family farmers send out the fresh chicken to the Gold'n Plump facility to be inspected, graded and labeled by the USDA then sent out to the grocery stores by delivery truck. The energy and the water used to make the chicken was also consumed by the chicken which was the pure natural hormone free food such as corn and then purified water. The brown rice was prepared in the microwave in sixty seconds as the chicken was cooking. The Minute rice was packaged in a non-recyclable plastic container and seal. This rice was made at one their facilities where they use machines to dehydrate the rice before packaged and shipped out.
Based on what I ate this day I do not think my food choices were the best choices possible towards being sustainable. Although I was working and on the run I tried to make decisions to the best of my ability thinking about how much waste is created after consuming from leaving the packaging and if it is natural or not such as the banana peel. While shopping for groceries I do try to be both as healthy and reasonably sustainable by buying natural items with minimal packaging that is not recyclable. The best way to improve my food choices would be buy more produce and to find more natural farms and places that do not use packaging or at least try to minimize the waste created by packages.
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