When you eat a meal, do you ever wonder what has had to happen to make it, and how it has come from field to plate? In this article I hope to discover more about the food we eat.

Did you know that a huge 34 litres of water has to be used to make ten grams of rice? This huge amount of water going into food growth draws down heavily on global water supplies.

Also, if you do not live in the country in which the rice is being grown in, you could effectively be causing a drought in another country, as their water goes into growing food to feed you, rather than to the people who are dying of thirst.

If you walk to the shops, you may think that you are significantly lowering your carbon footprint and the amount of oil that is being used to get your food from farm to plate. By walking you are lowering the amount of oil used, but unless you choose to buy locally grown food you are not really lowering the amount of oil much at all.

If you do walk to the shops please don’t start driving, and if you do drive, and could possibly walk please do so, but also consider where your food has come from. This is because if you buy a 100 gram pork chop, that has not been grown locally it could take around 70 ml of oil to get it to your home.

So next time you eat a meal, just take a moment to think about the process of how the food has got to your plate.

If you liked this article you may also like my D3O article which is also about applied technology.

Just to let you know, I have recently re-launched my technology blog on its new domain name: (http://www.technology.christopher-roberts.co.uk/) For more info on this please read my New Domain Name article.