"Where Does My Food Travel" - Week 4

Quaker oatmeal
Tomato Soup
Saltine Crackers
California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Chicken Pizza

Today started out with a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal, which to the best of my knowledge is made in Chicago, Illinois. From there I imagine that it is either trucked or ferried to Alaska, however I could not find out which line of transportation the company uses. It seems that most freight comes to Alaska by boat into ports in Valdez and Whittier though as it makes it’s way from the Lower Forty-Eight to Alaska. It is then trucked up to Anchorage and on to Fairbanks. The Campbell’s Tomato Soup I could not find out where it is manufactured and canned, however I imagine that it once again travels the long transportation line from truck, to ship, to truck, to the store, and finally to the lunch bowl. The Saltine Crackers were very hard to track down. Wikipedia states that Saltine was originally trademarked by Nabisco Corporation but lost the trademark when the word saltine started being used as a generic term to refer to crackers. This makes it hard for me to know which type of saltine cracker was actually eaten today with the tomato soup I had for lunch.

On the other hand, the California Pizza Kitchen Barbecue Chicken Pizza that I had for dinner was very interesting to research. According to Wikipedia it seems that California Pizza Kitchen is actually an offshoot of, “…Wolfgang Pucks Spago restaurant in Beverly Hills…” Due to the fact that it seems to be made and packaged in California it seems the strongest possibility that California Pizza Kitchen pizzas that are store-bought probably arrive in Alaska by boat, and are then trucked up to Fairbanks via Anchorage.

This was a rather interesting investigation just in the fact that most of the time one stays mostly oblivious to the actual background information about the food that is eaten on a day to day basis. However, if one chooses to research the food there is quite a bit of information available on the internet about the various foods that are commonly bought and eaten.

“Saltine Cracker.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 5 Feb. 2008. 19 Feb. 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltine

“California Pizza Kitchen.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Sep. 2007. 19 Feb. 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Pizza_Kitchen