Muffin-Eater

Muffin-Eater

Up up up above the clouds
Somewhere between Denver and Huston,
I awoke to the jangle of soda bottles on a beverage cart.

Sitting as I was
In the second-to-last row of the airplane
I woke just in time to see the cart disappear into the steward’s quarters.

A man to my left was eating a muffin.
Across the isle, I spotted another man with exactly the same type of muffin.
“Did they give you that muffin?” I exclaimed.

Being fed on the airplane was like a throwback to pre-911 travel and with it the national tradition of complaining about soggy bread and frozen milk- but at least there was something to eat if you got hungry!

The stewardess handed me my very own muffin. I was voracious, breaking pieces of moist bread. I held a piece in my hand, staring at the speckles of blue food coloring, reminiscent of blueberries. What flavor was this muffin and why did it have to be reminiscent of good food? The only flavor I detected was sugar. Now I thought about this muffin and its food miles and carbon footprint and all this post-modern politico-food ethic shit that I love to shoot, and it dawned on me what a fascinating microcosm of the complexity of the whole food-miles debate this now sacred muffin and muffin-eater could become. I thought about renaming my blog muffin-eater. Really.

So, to count the food miles of this particular airborne indulgence I am confronted with three questions: 1. Where to begin. 2. Where to end. And perhaps the most convoluted 3. Which miles to attribute to me alone, without muffin and which to bequeath upon said muffin.

I began my travels this morning in Denver. It could be said that I traveled all the way from that metropolis to indeed eat this muffin. Yet, this muffin was not my sole motivation for this expedition across the sky. Matthew J. Mariola in his recent article The Local industrial Complex? Questioning the Link Between local Foods and Energy Use, claims that a piece of fruit or vegetable grown and consumed locally could possibly have a greater carbon footprint than one produced across the globe and shipped to a grocery outlet. The sticking point being that while a pint of raspberries, for example, might travel 500 miles from where it is harvested to where it is sold, that individual package of raspberries can only be accountable for a small fraction of the total fuel usage since it is not traveling alone. A similar pint of raspberries picked on a farm in rural Maine and trucked 20 miles to the local farmer’s market via that farmer’s gas-gusting flatbed pickup truck must be accountable for a much greater fraction of the fuel consumed since the small farmer is trucking much less and using a less efficient vehicle. Further, Mariola points out that the purchaser attending the market may herself have driven 20 miles across town to attend the market where she finally bought the berries, thereby doubling their carbon footprint.

Extending Mariola’s argument to the saga of the muffin, I would include my journey from Denver and the muffin’s journey from wherever it was baked (on board… over New Mexico?) as well as the journeys of each ingredient from their respective harvest locations.

Now, the tallying of food miles stops either when I accept the on-board treat or when I consume it, which fortunately for this analysis occurred simultaneously.
But how many of these total miles can I really attribute to the muffin alone? Mariola includes the miles a shopper travels to attend a local market or pick up a produce box at a farm stand. For myself I can say that I will not drive anywhere just buy one item. Similarly, I did not go on this flight just to eat a muffin. In attempting to reduce the impact of your food choices a plethora variables and obstacles come into play. And I think Matthew Mariola is right to point out that the “greenest” option might sometimes surprise you. Here’s another interesting article about food miles and the ecological impact of food choices: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2008/apr/science/ee_foodmiles.html

I do think it is important to remember that there are other important benefits to eating locally produced food- it builds community and relationships with our environment, and sometimes, as in the case of honey, eating local can acclimate us to our environments building tolerance for allergens and the like.

When it comes down to it, you do what you can and try not to stress out too much because after all, “we are all spiritual beings having a physical experience.” And it is pretty ridiculous to count the food miles of your muffin when you yourself are flying across the country~ the single biggest indicator of a person’s ecological footprint is wealth; which makes sense since wealthy people consume more….