My Favorite Subject or Is it anymore?

Every Sunday when I was younger and still to this day when I go home, I go grocery shopping with my dad. When I was younger I would always ask him, how come the prices of fruit and vegetables would change during each week or each season. His response was because different fruits and vegetables are harvested throughout the year, which means the price would reflect the availability. Many of the fruits for example, mangos and avocados, were always a dollar or more during the winter months but cheaper during the spring and summer months. The apples and orange prices would shift a bit but never on a grand scale. Why?, I would him and my dad would reply because our apples come from New York and our oranges would come from Florida. He also told me that a lot of the fruits you sometimes see were not even grown in this country. That for example, if I wanted a mango in the middle of the winter, there is a good chance that mango was not grown in the States at all, it had to be transported to get to the store to our table.

Now that I am older, those lessons always stick with me when I do my own grocery shopping. I always buy fruits and vegetables that are in season, like apples and carrots in the fall, winter squash and fresh spinach in the winter, strawberries in the summer and late fall months, and of course watermelon and kiwi in the spring and summer months. I rarely buy pineapples during the middle of the winter because of the fact that I now know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has a direct link to climate change, and transportation on planes or ships deeply increases my carbon footprint. I also know that the little tags on the fruits and stickers on the vegetables tend to tell you where your that product was grown and harvested. To many people, this is just a sticker with words on it. To me, it’s a sticker reminding me of the impact I am having on this earth.

Since we are on the topic of food, I realized that taking a look back on the food I have consumed in the past two days, I am speculating what item had the most impact on the environment. The answer,the Chinese food I ordered last night. I ordered chicken and string beans that came in its own plastic container, the side of rice that came in its own paperboard container, the two vegetable spring rolls, that was wrapped in paper. Then to think of how each item was individually wrapped, then placed into a plastic bag, that was placed into someone car who delivered it to me is a little frightening. Why, you may ask, because I do not know where that chicken came from, nor do I know where the string beans came from, where the plastic and paper was manufactured, where did the delivery man car came from, nor do I know how much gas he consumed driving back and forth for my one order, to the point where I ask myself, how much raw materials were needed, how much energy was consumed to feed me that one meal? Now multiple that by how many people ordered in that night, to the energy it took me to eat and consume my food, to the end point of where will my products go after I am done using it all?
The scary question is: How much energy did I just consume and use? Was it sustainable?
The scary answer is: I really do not want to know right now. Maybe I will just stick to grocery shopping and prepare my own meals so that I know I can make a difference by trying to live more sustainably.