Let's Make a Deal

I have selected you at random from a live studio audience to play a game I am calling, "What's for Lunch?"  We open the curtain, and in front of you are four lunch bags (I know game shows love threes because of the potential to do the "we'll-show-you-one-you-didn't-pick" thing in order to make things more interesting.  By the way, always switch your pick, because your odds of winning double.).  Each bag contains 625 calories worth of food - about as much as the average adult should have for lunch each day, and if you pick the right lunch, you get to eat that for free every day for a year.  If you pick the wrong lunch, you have to pay for it every day for a week.  I proceed to give you a series of pieces of information about the lunches to help you make your choice.

First piece of information:  Price

A= $0.95        B = $6.67         C = $10.05      D = $1.99

You have thirty seconds to make your choice.  It's tough, because on one hand, one of the pricier options could be a really fancy lunch, and if you win it, you could end up with a great prize.  On the other hand, if you have to buy it yourself for a week, you want to make sure you can afford it.  You fall back to make your decision on what you would do in normal life.

Second piece of information:  Embodied energy

A = 1,425 Btu   B = 11,257 Btu    C = 9,550 Btu    D = 5,300 Btu

This includes the typical energy needed to grow the base components, including feed for meat products, then process the food, transport it, and prepare it for sale.  It does not include the energy needed for you as an individual to prepare, transport, dispose.  We now have a bit of a shift, and there does not necessarily exist a one-to-one relationship between the cost and the energy content.  Although this may not affect your one-year outlook as to the value you win, those diets that have a greater reliance on energy will also exhibit greater sensitivity to increases in energy prices, and specifically the cost of fertilizer as oil prices increase.

Third piece of information:  Water content

A = 64.5 gal     B = 517.4 gal      C = 193.9 gal    D = 119.1 gal

Water follows the same path as energy, with the highest to lowest energy matching the highest to lowest water.  As water becomes scarcer in certain areas, and as we start to drive competition among energy generation and agriculture for water resources, the price of water will increase, and those foods most dependent on water will see further volatility in pricing.  However, we should make one adjustment to this information: since energy generation itself relies on water, and water flows require input energy, we need to adjust the water numbers to include the water necessary to provide the energy for processing the food.  That would result in the following shift:

A = 64.6 gal     B = 518 gal      C = 194.2 gal    D = 119.4 gal

Not a huge shift relative to the other life-cycle costs, however, if spread over a fifty-thousand-person population of a small city, or even over an eight-million-person city like New York, that increase makes a difference.

Fourth piece of information:  Carbon footprint

A = 0.65 gCO2e B = 3.47 gCO2e C = 1.70 gCO2e D = 1.77 gCO2e

This includes the carbon associated with growing, harvesting, processing, and selling the food product.  This is net of any carbon that contributes to growing the plant, but does not include the carbon equivalent associated with the energy and water that feed the plant.  With those included, we would see the following:

A = 97.0 gCO2e B = 765.5 gCO2e C = 649.4 CO2e D = 360.4 CO2e

Prior to including the energy impact on carbon, the greatest and least impactful mimicked the energy and water usage, however, now the middle two options switched.  Does anything other than price change your mind?  Or are you going to stick with your first choice?

Now we know the cost, energy, water, and carbon impact of each of these 625-calorie lunch options.  The least expensive option also has the lowest energy, water, and carbon impact.  The most expensive option has – on its own – a low carbon impact, but a significant energy and water impact.  You are still not sure what you should do, so I ask if you want me to eliminate a couple of the options.  When you agree, I eliminate the extremes in price leaving you with two options:

·      A $6.67 meal with high energy, water, and carbon impact.

·      A $1.99 meal with significantly lower impacts all around.

I give you one last piece of information before making you choose:

The $6.67 meal is the most popular in the country.

So which is the “right” choice?  What will you do?

Of course, we do not make this choice in a vacuum without knowing what we are going to eat, and although the game show format is fun, it does not really simulate life.  Interestingly enough, the last piece of information about popularity does have some effect on our choice.  For others, knowing how healthy the meal is might sway their choice one way or another as well.  Before I show you what the items are, extrapolate the numbers to see what the impact of three-hundred million Americans eating each of these meals daily for a year:

Meal A               Meal B               Meal C               Meal D

$285M              $2,000M           $3,015M            $597M

427.5BBtu         3,377BBtu          2,865BBtu         1,590BBtu

19.38Bgal          155.4Bgal           58.26Bgal          35.82Bgal

14,500tCO2e    114,825tCO2e   97,410tCO2e     54,060tCO2e

Although no one person generally eats the same thing every day for a meal (Elvis notwithstanding), you can see how impacts add up when we spread it across the entire population.  Eating meal C on a countrywide basis will take a larger chunk of the economy (although with $15T in yearly GDP, it barely makes a dent), but eating meal B will have serious impact on water use and carbon output.  As I mentioned previously, meal B is the most popular in the country.

All of these will get improved if we find less energy intensive ways to grow food, or if we find ways to use renewable energy instead of carbon-based energy for the support services (processing, transportation, preparation).  So let’s make a deal: besides starting to make healthier choices, let’s also commit to promoting and choosing options on a regular basis that reduce energy and water impacts.  In the long run, it will save us money, and will reduce the likelihood of huge price spikes and water shortages.  We do not have to eliminate variety and taste from our diet, but we should be more judicious about our choices looking at the full range of impacts, both personal and societal.

So here’s what we had:

Meal A:  3.75 Little Debbie’s Zebra Cakes

Meal B:  Elevation Burger and fries (1/2 order)

Meal C:  Salad with cheese, nuts and poppyseed dressing

Meal D:  Peanut butter and jelly with apple and Veggie Straws

Which would you pick now?