Carbon Footprint Labels on Food Seems Like a Waste of Ink
Via The Underwire:
UK Food retailer Tesco is going to spend $10 million on testing of foods at Oxford University in order to develop a carbon labeling system, letting their customers know exactly what kind of “carbon footprint” their cereal and steaks leave on the environment.
It seems to me that putting “Carbon Footprint” labels on foods is just another waste of energy. It would require more paper, more ink, more physical printing (which adds to the carbon footprint!), and would require a lot of changes to current labels. Not to mention the inherent consumer education issues. It is very popular to be passionate about the environment, especially the Global Warming issue and humanity’s role in it. However, does that mean that a lot of day-to-day consumers are going to understand these labels if and when they are implemented? Not likely.
How many people read and understand current labels? Do you know what Riboflavin is? How many diabetics use the exchange list information accurately?
Incidentally, for a quick reference on all the food you eat, I recommend NutritionData.com. They break things down much more in depth than the food labels can. (Incidentally, I bet the carbon footprint of running their servers for ANYONE to access this information is much smaller than the printing, applying, and shipping of all the individual labels, not to mention all the other work needed to get said labels to the consumers!) Take one of my favorite foods: Liverwurst (hush, it’s not gross!). Nutritiondata tells me how filling it is versus how nutritious it is. It will tell me exactly what vitamins and minerals are in the average serving. I can search for substitutions for liverwurst based on my needs, like weight loss, optimum health or weight gain. Granted, not all the data options are FDA approved, but the FDA also allows a certain amount of wasps’ heads in your fig newtons, too. Go ahead, scroll down and read it, I’ll wait. Yeah, don’t read the rest of that.
Still I think the poster that Underwire writer Sonia Zjawinski cited, from the NY Farm Bureau, really does sum things up the best.
Reposted here for your convenience:
