Why Peanut butter is good for the planet
I'm giving the site a special American theme today, since I had an email from a reader who finds it hard to source green gadgets and other products in the states. More on that later, but what better way to kick off the day with than with the news that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are, apparently, good for the planet?
Among the reasons: eating a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich instead of a grilled cheese or chicken sandwich saves 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s almost half of what you’d save if you switched to a Hybrid car. Growing peanuts also takes less land than animals — so your sandwich could help preserve 12-50 square feet of land from being used for cultivation.
Cate Sevilla, Dollymix editor and long-suffering 'voice of America' for Shiny Media remarked: "that kills me", before adding that however good for the earth peanut butter may be, she's not giving up her grilled cheese sandwiches.
If, however, you'd like to use this excuse to eat lots of the nutty stuff, Whole Earth American-style crunchy peanut butter is the best you can get for an organic stateside sandwich experience. £1.85 at Goodness Direct!
One non-green fact however: Nearly all of the peanut crop produced in the USA is grown using a rather heavy dose of pesticides, herbicides and non-organic fertilizer. There are some organic crops grown--but its minute. Most of the USA's peanut crop is grown in Georgia--and goes into penaut butter, snack peanuts and ingredients for other uses. This fact, the heavy agrichemical use, tends to eliminate the "peanut butter as green" argument--with the exception of the less than 5% of peanut crops which are grown without the use of chemicals.
Posted by: lucas | November 21, 2007 7:44 PM