Calorie Return on Investment

Kelly posted an article about local eating and the energy costs of various low calorie foods like diet soda and iceberg lettuce. A Cornell group released a study with various shocking statistics such as:

• Americans drink an average of 600 cans of soda a year. Totally insane!
• A diet soda with one calorie requires 2,200 calories of fossil fuel energy to get into your hands.
  
• Nearly 20 percent of all energy in the US goes into the food system - almost as much as is used for all our cars.
• On average food travels 1,500 miles before we get it.
• Each calorie we consume takes about 4 calories of transportation energy.
• On average across the US a person spends only $15 per year on local food (the average family grocery bill is $3,000 per year).
  

New Yorkers should consider eating New York cabbage rather than California lettuce. A one-pound head of lettuce contains 50 calories of energy but requires 400 calories to produce in irrigated California. It then takes another 3,000 calories to ship it to New York state.

“So you've got a 50-calorie head of lettuce that now has an investment of nearly 4,000 calories. And it's 95 percent water,” Pimentel [the study author] said.

New York-grown cabbage also requires 400 calories but doesn't have to be shipped across the country. “And it has more vitamin A, more vitamin C, more protein than lettuce and you can store it all winter long here in New York state,” he said