Iron Chef - Low Milage Edition

This week, in Sustainable Agriculture, we had another famous Iron Chef Competition. However, this Iron Chef was different. Over the past couple of weeks, we have shifted our focus of learning from how to be a sustainable farmer, to why it is important and the aspects that go into it. More specifically, we have learned about the mileage that food, especially processed, goes through in order to get to to our doorsteps. For example, I learned that the average food item travels about 1,500 miles from leaving the farm/factory to arriving at the grocery store and finally being bought and brought home. We learned the importance of low mileage food as it has many environmental benefits. So, because we have learned about this, our Iron Chef competition theme was about low mileage. My group made a potato hash with sunny side up eggs. Our potatoes and rosemary came straight from our farm. Overall, we totalled about 800 miles for our dish when the average same dish travels about 2300. The winning team made a beautiful salad, with all their ingredients straight from the farm, totaling 0 miles of distance. Before learning this material, I had never realized how much of an impact food processing and travel is. I learned that if you buy it, you support it so in the future I am going to try to limit the mileage of traveling of the food that I consume.

-Jackson Barry