Ilya Adams
Spain & Algeria
Sustainability of Dishes
The dish one the left is Alfredo pasta, modified Caprese salad, honey drizzled pears, and an apple cider vinegar drink from trader joes. I chose this meal because I really like alfredo pasta. The rest of the meal I just used to fill up the rest of the parts needed for a healthy meal with what I had on hand at 1:00 am. Most of my meal is from Italy and is an everyday sort of meal without much of a special meaning.
The second meal I chose is called Shakshuka, which I have eaten and even made many times at home. The dish originates from northern Africa, including my focus country of Algeria. While it is eaten particularly during breakfast time, it is often eaten for any meal during the day. Shakshuka is a staple food of north Africa. The word itself means "mixed" which comes from its varied ingredients.
Ingredients And Sourcing
The ingredients for the pasta and salad, which will be my primary focus in this analysis include the following: alfredo, fusilli pasta, olive oil, mozzarella, tomatoes, and cucumbers. All of these ingredients are typically locally sourced in Italy. Alfredo is typically homemade in Italy and is actually not used often other than in the restaurant of its origin. The pasta however, is typically produced in a factory most of the time while some still roll the spiral shape of the noodles themselves. The main ingredients for the salad are typically bought from local farms and markets while the olive oil is sometimes bought more commercially. Although the production of fusilli is trending towards being organic, all of these ingredients have organic options available but are not usually produced that way. Italian culture heavily emphasizes sourcing fresh, high quality, and seasonal produce in order to let the quality of ingredients shine through the simplicity of the dishes. Italian culture also emphasizes the importance of spending time with family so families often cook and prepare food together.
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The ingredients for shakshuka include onions, eggs, garlic, chili peppers, bell peppers, and tomatoes are also primarily sourced from local markets and farms and even grown through subsistence agriculture by many families. This is especially true for the eggs which usually come from domesticated chickens in households. Due to the cost and access issues, Produce is not typically organic. Many ingredients in shakshuka, but especially tomatoes are found very often in Algerian dishes.
Alfredo Di Lenia serving his signature dish
<img src="https://algeriainvest.com/storage/uploads/news_logos/1483085400news_logo.jpg" alt="An Algerian-Dutch cooperation project for the desi... | Algeria Invest"/>
A tomato farm in Algeria
<img src="https://plinius.homes/images/articles/dcb78199ea3e232854f48d3129ea89e1-max.webp" alt="Italy Food Markets - P L I N I U S"/>
A local Italian market with a variety of produce
<img src="https://worldcrunch.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=27041718&width=2000&height=1500&quality=85&coordinates=11%2C0%2C11%2C0" alt="Cash For All In Developing World? Algeria Ponders Universal Basic Income - Worldcrunch"/>
An Algerian market with local produce
Sustainability
Evaluation
While some ingredients in the caprese salad such as the cucumber and tomato produce less than half a kg of c02 per kg of food, the Alfredo and pasta both produce a little over one kilogram each which is considered a larger amount. The mozzarella on the other hand produces over 10 kg per kg of food making it very detrimental to the atmosphere. The typical cost to grow produce is actually pretty high in Italy as well even though most of these ingredients are not too expensive compared to others. Italy has more access to modern equipment which helps them farm more efficiently. Italy sometimes struggles with overproduction which can cause c02 emissions to rise as well as more food, land, and water being wasted through unsustainable farming practices.
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For the shakshuka, the same applies for the tomatoes producing less than half a kg per kg of tomato. Onions are actually one of the vegetables with he lowest carbon footprint at around .17 kg produced. Eggs tend to produce only a little bit more than the Alfredo sauce and pasta at just over 1 kg whereas garlic is around half of that. While chili peppers produce almost 5 kg, they are a very small part of the dish and are therefore probably more efficient carbon wise than most ingredients listed already. Due to its ingredients being common and inexpensive shakshuka is also very cheap to make for most families cooking it as well as farmers producing the ingredients. While there are benefits to shakshuka, there are also some factors that make it not the most sustainable. The farmers usually have a hard time getting access to technology which makes it harder to grow food. Algeria struggles less with over production but if it happened it could cause wasting of water and land, and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. A lot of these problems also happen due to inefficient distribution systems causing market imbalances where there is too much of a certain food and not enough of others.
Conclusion
From my comparison of the two different dishes, I concluded that shakshuka is more sustainable than the alfredo pasta and caprese salad albeit by a thin margin. The main reason I came to this conclusion was from their co2 emissions. I decided that this was the most important factor in their sustainability due to the effects of climate change from greenhouse gases becoming worse every day. The biggest factor in the co2 comparison was the fact that mozzarella, which is a main ingredient in the salad produced over 10 kilograms of c02 for just one kilogram of cheese. This, combined with the fact that shakshuka used more vegetable that produce less c02 when cultivated and only really had the eggs that produced a notable amount was what brought me to this conclusion. Most of the other aspects of sustainability where very close to each other and the only advantage Italy really had was access to modern farming equipment. Another reason I chose shakshuka was because of the fact that a lot of the time the ingredients were produced through subsistence farming which is usually much better for the environment. Throughout my comparison and learning of these two dishes, I garnered many new aspects and perspective of how some foods can be sustainable and better for the environment than others. I also got a more in depth look on how some crops and foods like mozzarella, onions, and tomatoes affect the environments in different ways. However, the most interesting thing I learned was about the culture of the two countries I studies throughout this task and how agriculture and food looks throughout different parts of the world