Counting calories

I was browsing at the NTUC Fairprice just the other day and saw a bottle of stewed mushrooms going for $1.50. I love mushrooms. This came in a nice bottle and the contents looked quite tempting as well. At $1.50 it's really quite cheap.

Actually, I thought it is amazingly cheap. When I looked at the nice bottle, I could not help but wonder about all the resource that went into making the bottle, the metal lid, cooking the mushrooms and then transporting it from China to here. Are all these resources worth just $1.50.

It's not that I have anything against cheap food. In fact, I hate inflation and would like to see food prices remain cheap. But I think we are really not paying for the real cost of the food. $1.50 really does not cover the environment costs and social costs involved in making that bottle of stewed mushrooms.

I remember there was a documentary years back (it was when I was in Junior College, so that's like almost 20 years ago. I remembered that because my JC classmates laughed at me when I brought up the topic) which pointed out the gross inefficiency in the way we gain energy from our food. The irony is that the calories we derived from canned food, for example, is really a fraction of the total calories that is used to get it to our dining table. Energy was used to mine the tin ore, refine the ore into tin, manufacture the tin cans, cook the food, package the canned food and transport it -- the total energy used in the whole process far exceeds the few calories we derived from the food in the can.

I had a good look at the bottle of mushrooms and then put it back on the shelf. I decided that eating fresh is healthier and less demanding on the environment.