Recently I have started making my own yogurt. “Why?” one might ask, as my husband did,
twice, recently. Not because I am the clichéd
“granola eating”, wholesome, Luddite, vegetarian zealot type. And not
because it is cheaper either. I use organic
milk, which tastes like something, as opposed to the one not labeled “organic”,
which tastes like nothing. It is more
expensive. Add to that the energy it
takes to make, and I doubt that my yogurt is cheaper than store bought; but I confess
to not having done the math. Better tasting or not, I really buy the
organic milk in the hopes that the “organic” cows are treated more humanely
than the industry standard. Hope does
spring eternal, and I pay for it.
One day I was half-listening to the news on the radio when I
half-heard a report about the consequences of America’s new infatuation with
Greek yogurt. In order to thicken Greek
yogurt, one needs to strain the whey off of it, and it takes 3 gallons of milk
to yield 1 gallon of Greek yogurt. In
order to feed America’s appetite for it, I can’t even imagine how many 1,000’s
of gallons of whey are being produced that need to be disposed of (!) Apparently, the whey from yogurt does not have
enough protein to be used effectively in animal feed, so disposal is indeed a
problem. In such quantities, it is not a
food, it is a pollutant, and its dumping in waterways would result in fish
kills. Again, holding to the idea that
hope springs eternal, I choose to believe that American Industry, unlike that
in other parts of the world, is acting scrupulously when it comes to disposing
of such waste. That day, I stopped buying Greek yogurt.
Last Sunday, my husband saw me making one more batch of
yogurt; and having forgotten the answer I gave him the first time, he again
asked why I had chosen to start making it.
I love yogurt and eat it every day.
And after the report I heard on Greek yogurt, I started thinking of the
hundreds of plastic containers of yogurt I have bought over the years: one or
two big containers a week. That’s a lot
of plastic. I decided to make my own
yogurt in order to stop buying plastic containers, at least where yogurt is
concerned. You see, I think of the dead plastic zones in the middle of our oceans all-too-often, and it hurts me to think of
all the wild-life that dies as a result.
I explained my reasons to my economist husband, and he
smiled that “you must be kidding/are you nuts” economist smile of his; a smile
prompted by reasoning that as an economics degree wielding wife of an economist
I fully understand. In the big scheme of
things, my stopping to buy 80 or so plastic containers a year puts no dent
whatsoever on human plastic waste, and barely puts a dent on my own consumption
of plastic. The plastic continents in
the middle of our oceans will keep growing whether or not I stop consuming
plastic yogurt tubs. When The Ranting
Economist looks at me with that cost/benefit analysis smile of his, I bring out
the econ jargon and tell him that “I derive utility from not consuming plastic
tubs with my yogurt. I am getting benefits exceeding my costs, even if I'm not making a marginal bit difference.” Hey, there’s
just no arguing with “Because I feel like it.”
Last week, on that same Sunday, we went shopping at WholeFoods. We go there because they claim
their meat is humanely raised; and yes, that impacts the utility I derive from
eating meat. I don’t love Whole Foods,
in fact, I mostly dislike it. The
produce, like most produce in America, looks tired, limp and dead; whether their
fruit will taste good when you try it at home is a crapshoot; and finally,
things are too expensive and I am sure too much of it ends up in the trash. The
place is just too big and just too corporate to merit the name “Whole”; but it
has good, tasty, and hopefully humanely treated meat, so we shop there for it. What
struck me last week as I first walked in, other than the usual unappetizing exhaust
blast of cooked fish cum rotting food smell that overwhelms one as one walks
into the place, was the sheer amount of plastic enveloping EVERYTHING. For one of those weird super clear moments
one gets every once in a while, I was overwhelmed by all that plastic and felt
paralyzed. Whole Foods is supposedly the
food industry’s answer to the food industry’s abuse of the environment, and at
that moment, that felt like a cruel joke.
But soon the “little shopper” in me took over, my moment of clarity dimmed,
and my paralysis cleared; I was off and running.
I am a 21st century American capitalist pig; or
what the art critical establishment calls “neo liberal” these days. I do go to the supermarket and I do buy the
plastic enveloped food they dish out, I even shop at (horrors!) Wal-Mart. And whether I spend time thinking about the destruction
of the planet or not, I am surely helping to destroy it just like the next guy. I know I do have some choices and could
mostly limit myself to buying locally. I
sometimes do; but it is costly and inconvenient, the food isn’t that good, and
even the local guys hand you the food in plastic bags. I do often wish we would go back to the days
when things came wrapped in paper and in glass containers; but I know glass is heavy,
and transport costs affect food costs.
But when I think of such costs, I do wonder about how much we, as a
species, actually value our planet; and the evidence seems to point to “not
that much”... Or maybe it is futile to
think of “we as a species”…
…Heck, I’ll just keep
making yogurt.
