[Greenbuilding] Fat Americans (was Re: Staggering 1/2 tonne per person per year cement production!)

[Reuben Deumling]

Well since you asked...

we were trying to come up with some basic quantities as parameters to use
in a very early version of the Ecological Footprint calculator. Then (as
apparently now) the numbers out there for food consumption are pretty
shoddy. We did not have a composting toilet then, so weighing the poop was
a little beyond our abilities & inclinations.

There was no moral dimension to the experiment or to my posting the numbers
here today. Just a bit of quantification I thought might help us make sense
of the disparate figures being tossed out.

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 9:22 PM, Antonioli Dan <solardan26 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Reuben,
>
> Did you factor in how many pounds of solid poop you and your wife dumped?
> Did you divert it to humanure? Did you quantify the amount of water used to
> grow the food you ate? Transportation, etc.?
>
> Is there some kind of assumption here that an “energy analysis” vis-a-vis
> food and anything else. makes any sense whatsoever?
>
> Formulaes, numbers, Fortran throwbacks, calories, what is anything is
> being stated here, let alone proven?
>
> Note that grains are bad for you……even if you live in a net-zero energy
> cob cottage……
>
> Whatever happened to “paving the way?”
>
> How about “caving the way” with our caveman consciousness?
>
> Lentils = Bad.
>
> Prius = Silly!
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 15, 2015, at 9:08 PM, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> About fifteen years ago, my wife and I decided to weigh all the food we
> ate for a year. We identified 172 categories. We also weighed our compost.
> I offer these statistics as a contribution to this lovely
> (unrelated-to-greenbuilding) conversation:
>
> During that year the two of us ate 1,659 lbs (net of compost)
> which averages to 2.7lbs/person/day.
> - grains incl. bread 599 lbs
> - vegetables 427 lbs
> - dairy products 397 lbs
> - fruit 320 lbs
>
> (category totals sum to more than the annual total because the experiment
> actually ran for 14 months)
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 8:44 PM, RT <ArchiLogic at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 15 Apr 2015 22:34:47 -0400, Antonioli Dan <solardan26 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  No scientific reference to this link, Nick. Is it in there somewhere?
>>>
>>
>>  On Apr 15, 2015, at 4:35 PM, <nick_pine at verizon.net> <
>>> nick_pine at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>
>>  sanjay jain wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ... we produce 1/2 tonne cement per person per year. That's more
>>>>> cement than food!
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No. An average American eats about 1 ton per year
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> Assuming that an "average" American eats three meals a day, in one year
>> they'd eat 1095 meals.
>>
>> For an "average" American to eat a ton of food a year, they'd have to eat
>> almost two pounds of food at every one of those 1095 meals.
>>
>> An "average" adult will feel full after eating about a pound of food.
>>
>> Eating another whole meal after one already feels full is nothing short
>> of gluttony and will surely result in gross obesity if not premature death.
>> That's only logical.
>>
>> Okay then. A quick show of hands: How many of the American listmembers
>> here are obese ?
>>
>> If you're not, then you're not an "average" American, if we are to
>> believe Nick.
>>
>> --
>> === * ===
>> Rob Tom            ADT1
>> Kanata, Ontario, Canada
>>
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