‘Peanut Butter & Jelly’
courtesy of ‘@joefoodie’
Here’s an idea: as Earth Day approaches, check out the PB&J Campaign.
The idea is that each time you have a PB&J, you shrink your carbon footprint, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution, cut back on habitat destruction, and conserve water.
And you get grade-A comfort food to boot. Where’s the best in town? Our authors are divided on the merits of Potbelly’s. What do you think?
I love this idea, mainly because I love PB&Js! Our of curiosity, are there any crops that do more harm to our environment than factory farming? Corn for example?
PB& Honey is by far superior to PB&Jelly.
Jelly freaks me out.
Max, great question! The issues are intertwined, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan talks about a lot of this in detail (highly recommend it). It explains how farm policy over the past few decades has encouraged growth of corn (and soybeans) beyond all other crops, and beyond what we could reasonably eat.
To find uses for all that corn, we started feeding it to animals, even those who don’t naturally eat it, such as cows. This is one reason, in addition to crowding on factory farms, we need to feed cows antibiotics to keep them healthy. And we use it to make processed foods with xantham gum and other weird stuff like the high fructose corn syrup in that jelly Rebecca finds so weird (smart girl).
We grow far less of other crops, creating a monoculture that leaves us eating mostly one food, which isn’t very healthy (Pollan says we are corn chips with legs), and vulnerable if that crop should fail.
So a solution is to eat less meat – and to diversify what we grow. Diversity also keeps the soil fertile and limits need of fertilizers made of petrochemicals. One of the many reasons I support farmers markets. Is that a long enough answer? ;)