Water for food for thought-- sip on this

March 22, 2012 came and went and I didn't hear so much as a peep on social media about World Water Day, a day to spread awareness about clean water and water conservation, a day of action brought forth by the United Nations since 1994. I only knew about it because an email titled "Get off the bottle" was sent to my office address.

You might recall that I have a strong opinion regarding plastic water bottles, but really I just have a strong opinion regarding pollution and short-sighted thinking.

We all need water to live (humans, animals, plants, the earth), but we waste it and poison it without thinking twice. Maybe we should think a little bit (or a lot) more about where our water comes from and just how precious it is.

Making small changes is all it takes to make a difference, like cutting down on animal products. It's something to consider.

According to the World Water Day website: To produce food, water is consumed by the plants in the field through evaporation and transpiration.

The amount of water needed varies with crops and depends from place to place, on local productivity and conditions of available water supply through rainfall or irrigation.

Once the product is harvested and becomes available on the market, the water embedded in the product changes status from ‘real’ water to ‘virtual’ water.

Check out this chart. To those of us who grew up without ever learning the Metric system, a liter is about four cups in the English system. [unrelated sidenote: The English System was a really cool band that I admired in my high-school years, when I was obsessed with another little band called Breaking Pangaea.]