Eating Oil for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Everyone has heard about the problems Americans face (case in point: war) due to our dependence on foreign oil. However, most of us confine our worries to our cars or heating our homes. As prices for oil go up, worst case scenario, we'll have to start carpooling, right? Wrong.

Our dependence on oil goes to the very heart of our ability to exist: food. Without fossil fuels, we literally would not be able to eat given the current system we have in place for getting food to the marketplace.

"Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal per capita for the daily diet in the United States, the 10/1 ratio translates into a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic energy per capita each day. However, considering that the average return on one hour of endosomatic labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of exosomatic energy, the flow of exosomatic energy required to supply the daily diet is achieved in only 20 minutes of labor in our current system. Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to produce."

As we approach the upcoming Presidential election, this issue should remain in the forefront of our minds. We may not need to drive, but we certainly need to eat.