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The Fife Diet: Part 2

Hugh
2008-12-22 14:41:00 UTC

And it’s the answer to the question you’ve all been asking (and I have indeed been asked multiple times) – did we survive the Week of Fife?

Some of you may be curious about the methodology behind the rice/potatoes comparison in the episode.

Firstly, to be blunt, this is definitely back-of-an-envelope level stuff rather than a controlled study. However, even at that level, it demonstrates that there’s clearly a lot of variation in energy and hence carbon emissions from cooking, probably more than travel in a lot of cases.

CO2 emissions for travel were taken from a major climate change site (can’t recall which one, sorry), and the capacity of the plane was taken from the Wikipedia entry on 747s. I assumed that the rice was being air-freighted, which is probably wrong, so in actual fact the carbon emissions for travel are likely to have been much lower.

Cooking figures were assuming an induction hob, because that’s what I had the wattage figures to hand for, and also because an induction hob is, according to the stats I’ve seen, about as carbon-efficient as gas and a lot more carbon-efficient than normal electric cooking. I’m assuming a one-person portion of both rice and potatoes, although it’s me so it’s a pretty large one-person portion. The rice is cooked with 2.5 times its volume of water, a la Nigel Slater, whilst the potatoes are boiled. (Roast potatoes come out orders of magnitude less efficient still).

So – possibly not exactly right, but where I had the chance, I made assumptions in favour of the “food miles” camp, rather than against them.

As a related note, this does throw up one important point. If you’re concerned about your food-related carbon emissions, and you have a conventional electric cooker, you’ll probably make a much greater dent in your emissions by switching to gas or induction (twice as efficient) than any amount of local shopping!

Anyway – there it is! Fife Diet over. We’ll have a summary mini-episode a bit later on, discussing the week as a whole, and we might post soon about what we’d do differently to make up a livable locally-sourced diet, but in the meantime – what do you think? Have you tried living locally? Is it something you’d give a go, or have we put you off?

Comments

Jean-Loup | 2008-12-22 16:37:27 UTC

If I was back home, I’d love to try a “Normandy-diet”. We’d have to live pretty much on apples, pear, and cream, milk, seafood, fish, beef, locally produced candies and I’m pretty sure bread shouldn’t be a problem as I used to live around wheat fields.

Darn, even with all these year, food is still what I miss the most :/

Adam | 2008-12-22 17:03:26 UTC

Hey guys, I’m enjoying the show, but I just had to comment on the player for this episode. I’m not sure if it’s you or blip.tv who’s to be blamed for this, but the pop-over commercials every 30 seconds are extremely annoying. To the point where I’ll probably stop watching the show if it continues. Just wanted to let you know. Other than that, thanks for the show, I’m having a lot of fun watching it.

HUgh | 2008-12-22 17:18:33 UTC

Adam – thanks, noted. I’ll look into it.

Jean-Loup – I spent a lot of time on holiday in Normandy as a kid. I think I could manage a couple of weeks on local food there too – sounds rather nice, actually.

Mark Sutherland | 2008-12-22 18:24:44 UTC

My good friend Eugene takes issue with your back of the envelope calculations. Unfortunately he’s too much of a pussy to actually bitch in front of you, so I’m doing the bitching for him in the hope that it’ll make life interesting:

17:55 <slowriot> man that episode of kamikaze cookery is pissibg me off heavily 17:56 <slowriot> aside from his inability to pronounce fraoch, why the fuck don’t they have chicken in fife now?
17:57 <slowriot> did they think to look at a butcher's, or poulterer's? 17:57 <slowriot> NO
17:57 <slowriot> also what the fuck kind of farmer's market did he go to where he couldn't get local eggs?? 18:01 <slowriot> where the fucking hell did he get his 120g of carbon from flying rice from india shit?
18:04 <slowriot> are they honestly suggesting that a 747 burning nice clean avgas, at 700mph for a couple of hours is going to release more carbon than a fucking ship with a gulching 500L diesel engine? 18:04 <slowriot> on the sea for 14 days or so?
18:05 <slowriot> and do they really suppose that 747 is packed to capacity with rice? 18:05 <slowriot> i bet they didn’t even include packaging volume in their “back of envelope” shite
18:06 <slowriot> and don't get me started about working out "carbon efficiency" of cooking when they're using fucking electric 18:06 <slowriot> “Cooking figures were assuming an induction hob, because that.s what I had the wattage figures to hand for, and also because an induction
hob is, according to the stats I.ve seen, about as carbon-efficient as gas and a lot more carbon-efficient than normal electric cooking.”
18:06 <slowriot> so they're working out carbon from the wattage of their electric hob. 18:06 <slowriot> which is literally meaningless
18:07 <joe> really? 18:07 <slowriot> well yes, since that power could be generated by the coal station down the road or by the nuclear station up the hill
18:07 <slowriot> you're no longer even discussing your own carbon emissions 18:08 <slowriot> basically talking about saving a couple of grams of CO2 based on the things that nobody can control (freight fuel use)
18:09 <slowriot> and intentionally ignoring the variability of grid power which makes an infinitely bigger difference 18:09 <slowriot> they should just shut up about their stupid potatos and go campaign for nuclear power if they’re bothered
18:09 <joe> well, they're generally arguing against the whole local food thing anyway 18:09 <joe> saying that it’s nonsense
18:09 <slowriot> but it isn't really, that's what gets me 18:09 <joe> seriously, go troll on their site
18:09 <slowriot> the way they're doing it is of course 18:10 <slowriot> but my butcher gets his meat literally down the road, quarter of a mile from him – and he’s maybe two miles from me

so, there you go. To be fair, I should perhaps point out that he does live next to Carstairs…

Hugh | 2008-12-22 18:38:43 UTC

I’m not entirely sure what his issue is. I figured the 747 emissions out on the basis of CO2 emitted from a fully laden plane, divided equally between the cargo load. Mass is mass – transporting 50g of rice in a fully laden 747 will result in exactly the same carbon output as transporting 50g of hamsters.

I assumed coal-powered for the power station – again, going for worse-case scenario. Yes, it’s true, it could be coming from nuclear. That would be nice.

I did my research on the air versus sea transport thing. Authorities who know more than me say that sea transport is a LOT more carbon efficient per kilo of mass transported than air transport. I’d be interested to see stats to the contrary, but just because it’s counter-intuitive doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

As for eggs – we mention having eggs several times.

pajh | 2008-12-22 19:30:28 UTC

Your pal is entirely welcome to go on the Lanarkshire Diet for a week if he fancies.

marveen | 2008-12-23 05:17:39 UTC

I’ve been reading this local-diet experiment with interest as I follow such practices whenever possible. (Beekeeper down the block sells me honey by the gallon. Booyah.)

I do wonder why nobody grows rice any closer than India. (The climate here can’t be THAT different from Europe’s, forpetesake. I have a wide choice of domestic rice, doesn’t anyone in the EU grow it?)

Hugh | 2008-12-23 11:31:03 UTC

I seem to recall looking into this and discovering that rice is actually a bit of a bugger to grow unless it’s in exactly the right climate.

But it sounds like you know more – where are you based, if it works OK?

marveen | 2008-12-23 16:07:01 UTC

United States.

According to the USA Rice Federation, there are rice growers in Arkansas, California, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas.

I’ll admit those are all pretty warm states, but surely the Med has some comparative areas.

debt management program | 2011-03-08 02:53:47 UTC

Thank you for this article. That’s all I can say. You most definitely have made this blog into something special. You clearly know what you are doing, you’ve covered so many bases.Thanks!

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