I've written previously about my skepticism regarding the organic/local/sustainable food movement. I question whether the practices this movement espouses deliver the benefits claimed. I suspect that widespread adoption of the organic/local/sustainable ethos would do little good and might actually cause much harm.

One of my main peeves with the organic/local/sustainable crowd is that they are generally quick to point out the supposed benefits of adhering to their dogma and the supposed costs of doing things conventionally, usually without any solid data to support their claims. Further, they rarely examine the opposing set of facts, i.e., the benefits of conventional methods and the costs of organic/local/sustainable approach.

I was reminded of much that I detest about the organic/local/sustainable crowd when @bayareabites tweeted a link to a Huffington Post article by Isabel Cowles titled Nasty Habits of Food Network Celebrities. As is typical for this genre of writing, the story preached the organic/local/sustainable credo while offering little substantiation of its purported benefits.

Cowles begins by taking Giada De Laurentiis to task for "manag[ing] to add nearly 1,000 square inches of aluminum foil to her Los Angeles landfill" while preparing dinner for six.  She invites readers to "imagine the ramifications if thousands of Food Network fans were to routinely mimic such an extravagance." The innuendo, of course, is that, were Food Network viewers to mimic said celebrity cook, our landfills would overflow in no time. (Nowhere does Cowles invite us to imagine the ramifications of using the extra water necessary to wash the dishes that can be returned to the cabinet without washing if covered in foil.)

I did more than imagine the impact of such behavior, I calculated it. Food Network garners "about 260,000 viewers a day in its target female 25-54 demographic." Let's say that each viewer used 1,000 square inches of aluminum foil per day for a year. Let's also assume that the foil is 0.008 inches thick, which is on the high side for aluminum foil. The yearly volume of aluminum foil usage in this scenario would be 260,000 X 1,000 X 365 X 0.008 = 759,200,000 cu. in. of aluminum foil per year. To make the arithmetic easier, let's round that up to 1,000,000,000 cu. in.

One billion cubic inches of aluminum foil per year. Sounds like a lot. Or is it?

One billion cubic inches is equivalent to a cube that is 1,000 inches (or 83 feet) on each side. Mucho aluminum for sure but is it enough to have any noticeable impact on our landfills? To figure that out, we need to determine how large is a landfill.

The average landfill in Texas is 172 acres in area and 71 feet in height. Because this is not quite tall enough to handle our 83 foot high cube, we'll redistribute volume so it measures 166 ft. X 83 ft. X 41.5 ft., meaning that our annual De Laurentiis-inspired aluminum foil dump will cover 13,778 sq. ft. An acre is 43,560 square feet. So, every year, the De Laurentiis "extravagance" will occupy 13,778/(172 X 43,460) = 13,778/7,492,320 = 0.2% of a single landfill the size of the average landfill in Texas. In other words, don't blink or you'll miss the "ramifications" of "such an extravagance."

(As an aside, and not wishing to be accused of promoting bad habits even if the landfill issue is a total red herring, I would point out that aluminum foil is as easily recyclable as other forms of aluminum and would encourage you to recycle it, not to save landfill space but to save electricity. If your local recycling program doesn't like foil because it's dirty, I'll bet you could stuff it inside a can and no one would be the wiser. Just don't tell them I said you could do it.)

Cowles next target is Guy Fieri, who she claims "is an environmental and nutritional nightmare." She bases this on Fieri's "Dragon's Breath Chili" recipe stating, "This single dish calls for 4 pounds of meat from three animals, if you include the chicken stock." Sure, but the recipe makes eight servings so it works out to 8 oz. of meat per serving. I'll grant you that eating this much ground beef and sausage (not to mention butter, bacon grease, cheese and fries) at every meal would be unhealthy. But, given that the average American consumes 12 oz of meat per day, it hardly seems fair to bust on Fieri for providing a recipe that aligns to average American eating habits. After all, I don't think he ever claimed to be hosting a show about healthy eating. (Cowles neglects to point out that Food Network offers Healthy Appetite for those who want to learn about cooking healthy food.)

What really gets my goat is Cowles next comment where she says, "Chances are the average family can't find local, organic butchers to source the wide variety of flesh Fieri calls for, so he sends his audience to the nearby grocery store to support what Mark Bittman called, 'assembly-line meat factories,'" and proceeds to provide a laundry list of the supposed ills of said "meat factories." This bothers me because Cowles implies that meat from "local, organic butchers" somehow cures these supposed ills while offering us absolutely zero evidence that this is true. That the local part of the equation decreases carbon footprint is a dubious assertion. Ditto that idea that organic is necessarily better for the planet. Note the links I've provided to substantiate my skepticism.

Cowles ends her screed by taking aim at "the perky Sandra Lee" whose sin "is telling us to buy our ingredients encased in plastic, even when purchasing them fresh would be perfectly simple—and more affordable." News flash, Ms. Cowles, some people with busy lives value their time and believe that the trade-off of paying more for ingredients to save prep time is well worth it. Her ultimate complaint is, however, that "the vast majority of [Lee's] food...comes wrapped in soon-to-be-waste. ... Multiply all of that packaging by Lee's national audience, and you've got a lot of unnecessary garbage."

This is essentially the same complaint that Cowles leveled against Giada De Laurentiis. We saw how that one worked out. I can't run a similar calculation for Sandra Lee's waste because I don't have volume or weight data for her packing. However, based on the aluminum foil example, I'm dubious that any extra garbage generated because Lee's viewers emulated her techniques would have a material impact on landfills.

It's interesting and perhaps ironic that plastic makes up only about 7% of the material in landfills, less than even food waste (8%). If Isabel Cowles really wants to cut down on the amount of garbage that we generate, perhaps she ought to encourage people simply to clean their plates.