Re: One Week's Worth of Food Around Our Planet

What strikes me is all the packaging with these foods -- even the California family has nearly everything shrink-wrapped, bottled, or boxed, in a state where the climate is mild enough year-round for people to buy from local Farmer's Markets (which cuts down on the embodied energy in the foods, since the delivery system is much more energy-efficient.)  check out the family from Scicily, Italy, for a look at fresh, unpackaged foods.

Japan's was surprizing in terms of packaging -- many foods appear dried instead of fresh.  I wonder how this affexts the nuteritional quality over years of consumption.

Eating lower on the food chain also helps reduce energy consumption -- it takes far more energy to raise and produce animal products, especially cattle, than to produce grains and nuts that can provide an equivalent nutritional content.  Shrimp is one of the worst -- for every 1,000 people who stop eating shrimp, more than 12,000 pounds of by-catch, or unintentionally-caught sea life -- can be spared,  That's 4.5 TONS of sea turtles, juvenile fish, birds, and other sea life for every ton of shrimp.  Reducing your intake of fish in general reduces the pressures of overfishing on the oceans.