Cycling and energy

There's a long running dispute in our household as to whether it uses more energy to cycle fast than to cycle more slowly.

I don't mean does it take more energy for the same amount of time. Obviously cycling faster is harder work, and uses more energy in a short time.

The question is this: if you need to go from here to the Sidgwick site, and you could go gently at, say, 10 miles an hour, or very energetically at about 15 miles an hour, you'd get there quicker by the latter method, but would you have burnt up all your weetabix more effectively?

Well here's the answer. Suppose the Sidgwick site is 2 miles away. Going at 10 miles an hour it will take you 12 minutes. Going at 15 miles an hour it will take you 8 minutes.

If you weigh 10 stone (which I don't, but never mind: we're trying to compare the results for the same person, not different people), riding at 10 miles an hour uses about 381 calories an hour, so you'll use 76.2 calories in 12 minutes.

The same 10 stone individual riding at 15 miles an hour uses about 636 calories an hour. So you'll use 84.8 calories in 8 minutes.

A serving of two weetabix with milk provides 190 calories, so by riding to the Sidgwick site you'll have used less than half your calories either way. But the difference between riding fast and riding slowly is 8.6 calories, which is about 1/10th of a weetabix. So if you are going to ride energetically, you'll need to eat a bit more breakfast if you're not to get hungry before elevenses (but on the other hand you gain an extra 4 minutes in which to go to the Buttery and get a coffee and a doughnut to keep you going).

What does it mean to be green?

It means that on Bank Holiday Monday you have a choice of either staying at home by the fire all day, or putting on your wellies, waterproof trousers, kagoule, sou'wester and gloves.

I chose the former today.

Shopping Bags

You'll remember the fuss about a month ago, relating to the cotton bags that were promoted by Sainsbury's to try to persuade people not to use plastic bags. The fuss was about the fact that the bags were made using cheap labour in China, were not organic cotton, nor fairtrade, and had been shipped across the world to the UK. I've kind of had it in mind to say something about it for some time.

Besides the issue of whether it's really very green to buy a bag that was shipped across the world, I can't see that it's at all helpful to promote the feeling that we must always have the latest fashion image. Of course I can see perfectly well why Sainsbury's wanted to capture the news headlines, and boost its green credentials (it's all part of the marketing business, and that's always in direct conflict with green initiatives, because the idea of marketing is to get people to buy things they don't need and pay more than is necessary for them). But really we ought to get rid of this whole idea of "having things" in order to be seen to be fashionable (or to be seen to be "green").

How about a fashion for not having things?

That's what would be truly green (as long as it wasn't achieved by throwing away perfectly good things we already have).

Here are some of the bags that we use for shopping. The first is my favourite brown suede bag. I've had it for, maybe, ten years, and I could do with putting in a new thong to tie it up with because the current one is a bit tatty in places, but otherwise it's got many years of service left in it. I bought it second hand in a charity shop, but it evidently originally came from Warehouse, though it doesn't say where it was made.

The second picture shows two leather duffel bags hanging on the cloakroom door. There's a history to these bags. About 25 years ago I went to the craft market in All Saints Garden on Trinity Street and was much taken with a stall where the man was selling his hand-made leather duffel bags and other leather goods. I bought the blue duffel bag on that occasion and gave it to the professor (well, he wasn't a professor then) for his birthday. But he was not at all pleased because the bag was much too small for any useful quantity of shopping. So the next week I went back to the stall and asked the man to make a larger bag, a really large one for doing lots of shopping. The wonderful red duffel bag is what he came up with. I hope the man who made them is able to see this post, because he should be proud of the fact that these lovely handmade local products have been used ever since and are still going strong. In particular the red one is used several times a week for the most strenuous tasks that would quickly break the back of any plastic bag: 25 lbs of potatoes, 8 bottles of wine, 15 lbs of marmalade oranges, gardening equipment and all sorts. Being leather it is indestructible and always protects its contents from the rain and the knocks. And the leather thongs that serve as the carrying strap and the closure never get dirty: they just get polished with use. This really is a bag for life, though you'll perhaps be able to see in the picture the scuff marks that reflect its 25 years of service.
In the third picture is a little cotton bag that came free with a set of table cloth and napkins about ten years ago. I added this picture because this is a bag that folds up so small that it's neater than a plastic bag, as well as stronger, so if you need to take an extra bag besides the leather shopping bag, or take a shopping bag in your briefcase to work so as to do the shopping on the way home, this one is very handy. And it's washable too, so although it doesn't stay clean and grease free, the way the leather ones do, it's easy to restore it to its original condition.

And fourth there's the shopping basket. I used to use this a fair bit when we walked to the local shop to buy loose eggs in Oxford, but I don't really find it very helpful now since we don't have a grocer's shop in walking distance. But it does have an advantage for keeping things flat and not pressing on each other: good for taking a tin of baked goods to a cake sale and so on.

So here's my green tip for the day: don't go out and buy a gimmicky new bag. Find a well loved and well used one and use it again and again and again and again. Let's make it fashionable to have an old well worn bag, the older and more venerable the better!

Links from Ted Hutchinson

Here are clicakable links to the resources Ted Hutchinson mentioned in his comment: The World's Healthiest food Calcium .
With regards Vitamin D readers should be aware that 80% of our vitamin d comes from the action of sunlight on our skin.
Dietary sources of Vitamin d3 are not good and so it's not surprising that 90% of UK residents have insufficient status in the Winter and 60% remain insufficient through the Summer.

See this research Hypovitaminosis D in British adults at age 45 y:

Our bodies work best with between 3000 and 5000iu daily see Human serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol response to extended oral dosing with cholecalciferol
The Vitamin D Council have lots more information about Vitamin D3 including on their links page links to cheap sources of Vitamin D3 at an effective strength (not sold in the UK) and at a very good price for sufficient to last one person 2 yrs.

Calcium and vitamin D (further thoughts)

Richard pointed out (in an e-mail) that I had claimed that there were no very good vegetable sources of calcium, and that the only serious alternative to milk was the fish where you eat the bones and all. What I said there had been based on rather popular and inexact reports on the internet, so I promised to check out some facts.

Here (from Denise Mortimore The Complete Illustrated Guide to Vitamins and Minerals) are some figures for quantities of dietary calcium in mg/100g (this is just a selection from a longer list of course, but the top ones are the important ones):

Kelp 1,093
Cheddar cheese 750
Sesame seeds 700
Sardines with bones 550
Dried figs 280
almonds 234
watercress 220
plain yogurt 200
pilchards 105
whole milk 103
cabbage 57
brown rice 32

So what I said was not quite accurate. Kelp is a very good source (but you would probably have to go out of your way to get that in even quite small quantities on a daily or weekly basis. It's not part of an ordinary popular diet available in schools and homes, in the way the milk, cheese and sardines are). Sesame seeds are also a good source, but again not so regular in our local produce. My concern is that one ought to be able to get adequate nutrients from a non-fussy seasonal diet based on local produce. And in that respect, the normal way of securing a calcium intake in this part of the world, where traditional meadow pasture is available, is from dairy products.

As regards vitamin D, in mcg/100g

Cod liver oil 212.5
Herring and kipper 22.4
canned salmon 12.5
eggs 1.6
butter 0.8
liver 0.8
cheddar cheese 0.3
whole milk 0.03
and a trace in dark green leafy vegetables.

Looking at this list, you might think that the butter, milk and cheese was a rather less effective way to get this vital nutrient than the herring and the cod liver oil. But the fact is that a good spread of butter on your bread twice or three times a day and some creamy milk on your breakfast cereal is likely to ensure that you have that smidgeon of a regular daily intake that is needed to add to the glimmer of sunshine that catches the edges of your ear lobes and (on a warm day) the backs of your hands on your way to work. Of course if you have a kipper or a boiled egg for breakfast every day, this will be quite helpful too, and might make up for the fact that we're giving up foreign holidays in sunny places because of the carbon emissions. Instead we can make up for it by going on a brave English holiday, with plenty of walks in the hills to get above the clouds, and staying somewhere where they serve The Traditional English Breakfast.

Norwich and the local election results

I think I should have said something about the spectacular results in the local elections in Norwich, because they didn't feature as prominently in news bulletins as they probably should have done.

In the recent city council elections in May the Green party gained an extra seat, going up from 9 seats to 10. In itself this is not an enormous difference since Norwich already had more Green party councillors than any other city in the UK.

However what's significant about it is that the Greens have 10 seats, the Liberal Democrats have 11 and Labour have 15 (the Conservatives are in fourth place with 3). So although Labour have a majority, it's not very large, and the Liberal Democrats are only just holding onto the second place.

And how near to not holding onto it they are! Their candidate won in Thorpe Hamlet by one vote. The Greens came second, losing that seat by one vote (Jeremy Hooke 953, James Conway 952, after four recounts).

Now, if the Greens had got that seat instead of the Liberal Democrats, the result would have been that the Greens had 11 and the Liberal Democrats had 10, and the Green Party would have been the second largest party.

Now that makes it looks as if it might actually matter whether you bother to vote in a local election...

Milk cartons

On my way to Norwich this week I picked up a tatty copy of the Eastern Daily Press in the train. On about page three was an exciting article headed "pilot for greener pinta packaging". I immediately assumed it was talking about glass milk bottles but no. "First came the traditional glass milk bottle, then the plastic alternative – and now a Lowestoft supermarket has launched the ‘Green bottle.’"

That's how the article opened. Anyone would think, reading these words, that the traditional glass milk bottle no longer existed. And that the move from glass to plastic to the new sort was progress towards a greener alternative.

Alas no. This is yet another attempt by the supermarkets to climb onto a fake green wagon and persuade us that shopping at the supermarket is some kind of positive contribution to eco-friendly ways of doing things. This time the idea is that there is a cardboard outer bottle, which can be sent to cardboard recycling, and some kind of unspecified (plastic? presumably so) inner bag which evidently can't be recycled, but "is quickly biodegradable".

Hmmm

So you have to pull it apart and put part of it in the recycling box (or, for Cambridge presumably, the compost bin) and part of it in the landfill rubbish. Well, I'm sceptical how much of that will happen.

Part of this report makes sense: "With more than 100,000 tonnes of plastic bottles currently going to landfill each year – the equivalent of 260 jumbo jets ... "

Well, exactly. None of that need happen if people have their milk delivered in glass bottles that are re-used.

But some of it just doesn't make sense: “Designer Martin Myerscough said ‘It's always bothered me that consumers have had to buy milk in plastic bottles that are difficult to recycle.’”

But consumers in Britain don't have to buy milk in plastic bottles. If supermarkets didn't sell milk, no one would buy it in plastic bottles.

In my ideal Greener Britain, all local councils would subsidise the delivery of milk in re-usable glass bottles to people's doorsteps, so that it was the preferred way to get your milk, and they would allow only independent corner shops to sell milk over the counter. No milk available in supermarkets at all, and nothing in plastic bottles. That would cut 260 jumbo jets out of our landfill sites at a stroke. Just like that. And there'd be no cardboard to collect for recycling either. So the council would save money and the milk would be cleaner and greener. And people could have other groceries delivered, bread, milk, eggs, juice, yogurt, probiotic drinks and all the other things the milkman brings. And they wouldn't need to drive to the supermarket. And the Milkies would make a decent living, and they'd have enough families on their round to make their journey less wasteful. And the corner shops would be part of the community. And all would be well.