By tkingdoll.
A few days ago I found the cure for the common cold. This week I have single-handedly solved global warming.
The answer to the big issue of energy conservation is…
…toast.
Or rather, no toast.
Think about it. Toast is cooked bread. But bread is already cooked! Why are we wasting energy by double-cooking something that’s already perfectly delicious and edible as it is?
Electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels in a turbine, which emits carbon dioxide and contributes to global warming. Powering a toaster produces about 1kg of CO2 per hour.
In the UK alone, there are 30 million people tucking into toast every day. Let’s say that’s five minutes of toasting time per person. That’s 2,500,000 toasting hours per day, which produces 2500 tons of CO2. Now add in all the toast from the rest of the world. That’s a huge amount of CO2 just from crunchifying your bread!
Next time you’re thinking of tucking into a slice of tasty, hot buttered toast, WON’T YOU THINK OF THE PLANET?
This post was brought to you by the Sandwich Defence League.
What is the SDL's stance on BLTs and club sandwiches?
-PopeTom
Isn't 5 minutes per person a bit of an overestimate?
BLTs and clubs on UNTOASTED bread?? Sorry, that's the limit…
mollishka, you are ruining the hysteria! I am trying to generate some sort of toast backlash and save the world here.
Anyway, some people grill their toast and that makes it even worse.
And don't get me started on poptarts.
Finally, someone says it! And don't even get me started on the redundant tragedy that is refried beans.
*ba-dum-chshhh*
The toast isn't the problem, it's the obsolete power plants that are still in use because a certain irrational segment of the population still thinks that nuclear power is only good for bombs.
I just leave all the food I don't want to eat cold out in the sun in the morning, and eat it in the afternoon when it's nice and warm.
Hey, Psamathos, we need those bombs. If you use them all up saving the planet we won't have any left to drop on Eurasia and Eastasia, and what would happen to our way of life then?
If I have to choose between yummy toast with delicious butter and a really shitty life for future generations… well, I know what I'm choosing.
Thanks Rebecca for a great blog. Checking in every day to get my daily fix.
Take care and keep up the good work.
-Chris aka Skepticnurse
Poptarts have more problems than the fact that people like them toasted.
"skepticnurse said,
Thanks Rebecca for a great blog. Checking in every day to get my daily fix.
Take care and keep up the good work.
-Chris aka Skepticnurse"
Hey, Rebecca didn't write this! That's it. You're OFF my Christmas card list. I don't actually send Christmas cards…
…but I do have a list.
Phew.
Toast isn't ~just~ cooked bread that was already cooked. Actually, it's a chemical reaction that not only browns (and "crispifies" as you said) but affects the taste. The process is called the Maillard reaction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction).
I would tend to agree that if all toasting did was to add to the support structure (and perhaps aesthetics) of a sandwich it should be done away with. A Club sandwich was mentioned earlier and those even require TOOTHPICKS for support. How ridiculous is that? I digress.
But actually, it does add to, or at the least change, the flavor of the bread. Already delicious? Perhaps, but, suiting the cause, like a nice breakfast sammich, the bread is made even more delicious by this fascinating process.
There's no bread? Let them eat toast!
As a lover of the birds and the bees, the mountains and the trees, I am pro nuclear power. Or I should say I'm looking for the biggest bang for the buck with the least environmental damage on land and wildlife. Mining and wind farms aren't going to cut it, though I hope for more solar generation. Our wasteful electricity habits CAN be curbed. I also dislike like the fact that I pay more for electricity when I use so little – the price goes down the more one uses with my company (I use less than 1,000 kw per month.) I understand how business works, but it's just seems so wrong from an energy conservation standpoint. I'm not the problem.
Mollishka: Now don't be dissing PopTarts! (Actually, I get lazy about pulling out my toaster so I nuke them. Hmm, power usage between microwave vs. toaster…must look that up.)
June 8, 2007 at 8:08 pm, mollishka wrote:
If you only eat one piece of toast, yes.
What the fuck ? Are you people completely nuts? Toast is not the problem, we need to bring back the atomic car Ford trialled in the 50's. Better still the atomic powered Ford F350.
Now if any namby pamby liberal greenies start whining about nuclear powered utes then we can just change to whale oil. I hear the whale populations are picking up again so it must be time to slaughter a few.
Then again down here in NZ we only contribute 0.01% (or is that 0.0001) of the worlds greenhouse gases so we can afford to be self righteous.
Toast is ALWAYS the problem.
And if you melt cheese on it, you're DOUBLEPLUS UNGOOD. Cause cheese is also already edible without further meltage.
Man alive, I could eat a toasted cheese sandwich right now. Pass the HP Fruity.
Very few foods really NEED to be cooked. Except maybe meat.
Call yourself a European?
I like my meat raw. Well, steak, anyway. Chicken and pork, not so much. Hello painful death!
But to love tartare is to love life. OK, forget the toasted cheese sandwich. Now I want a steak tartare with all the trimmings.
So only pork and poultry (and it's unborn offspring: the egg) need to be cooked. Everything else can be eaten uncooked or slightly warmed up.
You don't need to cook eggs, especially atop a delicious steak tartare.
That's just pork and poultry then.
Hey, this is how cults get started!
Anyway, the point is not to not cook foods once, it's to not cook them twice.
Hmm, it would be interesting to chart the carbon footprint of a grilled cheese sandwich from farm to plate. I'm speculating that toasting the bread would be trivial in comparison to the on farm & transportation costs. Therefore you may as well toast the fucker because it ain't gonna make any difference.
If all you produced was ONE grilled cheese sandwich, then it would be quite a footprint. But more than one sandwich's components are being transported from that farm, so their effects are probably just as negligable as the grilling part. It's when you add them all up that it becomes a big number.
Hmm good point. But what if we add a slice of genuine Provencal Butchers manuka honey home smoked bacon to that cheese sandwich being grilled at 110 volts in a Dupont Circle apartment? In fact lets chuck in a hunk of Kapiti creamy blue & some Pukekohe shallots. Woah the carbon footprint would cover the sun ( and thats ignoring the 110 volt vs 230 volt implications for electrical energy transmission loss).
On a serious note ( well serious for us antipodeans) this is the tactic that the obesely subsidised French peasant farmers are using to try and prevent us Kiwis flogging our dead sheep in the EU.
Well, the Brits are doubly bad because not only do they toast the bread, then they let it cool down so that it isn't even warm. At least we murikans eat it warm.
I've fed bread to a duck before. That type of mallard reaction isn't particularly appetizing.