How bad are bananas?

I have to admit, I don't actually like bananas. But I've just bought a book called "How bad are bananas? (the carbon footprint of everything)". And it contains far more than just musings on bendy-shaped yellow fruit.

Bananas galore!
Image: Martin Wiesheu

The author, Mike Berners-Lee, meausres carbon footprints for a living. While it's not an exact science, he does at least explain how he arrived at his figures, and is very careful with some of his results that contradict popular wisdom.

I even found the answers to the hand drier versus paper towel debate and the fruit juice dilemma :

• Using two paper towels is equivalent to using an electric hand drier. Surprisingly, there is no difference in the energy used, even though the paper towels are usually transported by truck. So if you can get away with using a single paper towel, that's the more environmentally friendly option. However, even this is trumped by a cyclonic hand drier, like the Dyson Airblade, which wins hands down.

• Fresh juice seems to beat concentrated juice. Oranges are usually transported by boat, which is fairly efficient. However, creating fruit juice concentrate uses lots of energy. So despite the fact that concentrates are made to reduce the volume and weight of the juice, so it can be transported more easily, it doesn't translate into less energy being used overall. It just means that a single boat can carry more.

I found some other surprising facts about transportation that I hadn't considered. For example, a bottle of wine imported from New Zealand to the UK could have a lower carbon footprint than one from Italy. Products from within Europe tend to be transported by road, whereas the New Zealand wine will arrive on a boat. So even though Italy is closer to the UK, it's the mode of transport that makes the biggest difference. The concept of "food miles" is beginning to look a bit suspect to me now.

By the way, the same logic applies to bananas too. They may come from far away, but they usually arrive by boat.

Which begs the question, why don't we ship more freight by sea and waterway?

Photo by Martin Wiesheu, CC-BY-SA licence, obtained via http://www.flickr.com/photos/49325640@N00/3768818

Marketing Uncovered: Food Labels

Image credit: Ralf Roletschek

In the latest instalment of Marketing Uncovered articles, I decided to explore some of the ethics around food labelling and advertising claims.

Here, as always, is a run down of my pet hate marketing phrases, together with what I think they really mean.

No added sugar
This just means that the product hasn't been sweetened with sugar. But if it's a sweet product, and it's a processed food (eg. a soft drink), then it has to get its sweetness from somewhere. Sometimes manufacturers use fruit juice concentrate, which is really a sneaky way to use fruit sugar instead of normal sugar. However, for the most part, I find that "no added sugar" usually means "contains artificial sweeteners". Also, because sugar is a natural preservative, removing it can mean that products like soft drinks need stronger artificial preservatives to compensate. So "no added sugar" doesn't necessarily mean "better for you".

Real ingredients
This doesn't necessarily mean you're eating a hand-made product, or one that only uses natural ingredients. Going from the products I've seen using this claim, it currently seems to mean that natural or close to natural ingredients are used. This might include "nature identical" ingredients, for example, a strawberry flavour that is made in a factory, but is almost identical to the natural substance in real strawberries. But as I haven't been able to find an official definition of "real ingredients", it's really anyone's guess as to how tomorrow's products will use this phrase.

85% Fat Free
Regular readers will have already worked this one out. It means that the product contains 15% fat. In other words, when you look at the nutrition information on the back of the pack, you will see that there is 15g of fat per 100g - fairly high. Thankfully, recent industry changes in the UK mean that there are now controls over the use of phrases like "fat free". But it still serves as a useful illustration.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm the one in the supermarket looking at ingredient labels. At least they have tight regulation, and they have to disclose most (but not all) of the contents. I find it a great way to dispel the marketing spin, but only if I have one of those rare ingredients: time!

Image: Bilder im Supermarkt by Ralf Roletschek, CC-BY-SA licence, obtained via Wikimedia Commons.

Beyond marketing: juice concentrate

When I look at fruit juice labels, I always find the phrases "not from concentrate" or "made with concentrated juice". I often wondered what this meant, and why concentrated juice is usually cheaper.

But is one really better than the other? I did some research, and found that the answer is far from clear cut.

Concentrates start as fresh fruit juice, but some of the water is evaporated. The resulting concentrated juice takes up less space, and uses less energy to transport. If you're shipping orange juice from (let's say) Brazil to Europe, that seems a pretty important consideration. Eventually, when the concentrate arrives at the juice factory, the missing water is added back in and the juice is delivered to the shops.

Juice marked "not from concentrate" doesn't go through this process. This makes it sound fresher, because it's squeezed closer to home. But it does mean that the whole fruit has travelled further, as opposed to just the juice from the fruit - which means more Food Miles.

In terms of nutrients, the government's "five a day" campaign makes no distinction between types of juice - one glass of juice equals one portion of fruit.

Which gives something of a dilemma. Unprocessed and fresh, or fewer food miles: which do you go for?

(Photo credit: Orange juice carton by Gerald_G (CC0/public domain licence). Obtained via: http://openclipart.org/detail/9149/fast-food-drinks-juice-orange-by-gerald_g )