August 13, 2007

On eating green

Sir Fiona Harvey informs on August 13 that now there is “A chance for shoppers to start counting carbons” beside the carbs, and that a packet of Walkers potato crisps contains 75g of carbon dioxide a mango and passion fruit smoothie 294g.

Great, this is more information for an information starving world. But how do we best digest it? For a start and even when I run a blog on the environment, http://www.ourpiedaterre.blogspot.com/, I have not a faintest clue of what 75g of carbon dioxide means. ¿Could you give it to me in equivalent to litres of petrol? Eating those chips means driving how many miles? I could perhaps connect more easily to that sort of information; I mean having been told that to get rid of those potato chips I have to walk so many miles.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for maximum disclosure, but if it is to be helpful and not produce more g of carbon dioxide in the gathering and printing of this information than what it saves in the consumption of those same g then we need to increase its transparency. Next time what I would like to see is how many g of carbon dioxide Walkers potato crisp contains by g of carb, calories and fat, saturated and non saturated of course. With this information I might then be able to be so much more effectively green in my dietary and culinary endeavours. By the way, could this be a way for children to make up for not eating their greens?