KONIALIAN'S KITCHEN: SUSTAINABLE MEALS FOR YOUR WALLET AND THE PLANET
WATER FOOTPRINT CALCULATIONS
How They Were Done
Water footprints for each recipe were estimated from data compiled by Mekonnen and Hoekstra in multiple reports from the Value of Water Research Report Series of UNESCO-IHE. All reports can be found on the Water Footprint Network website https://waterfootprint.org/en/resources/publications/value-water-research-report-series-unesco-ihe/.
Mekonnen and Hoekstra published reports on the green, blue, and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products as well as farm animal and animal products. These extensive reports broke down the water footprints of numerous food products by country. Since the United States of America was missing a few data points, I opted to use the footprint values listed under Global Average for the sake of consistency across my calculations. The footprints for farm animals and animal products were also broken up by country; however, the data was divided even further by the production system. There was no guaranteed way to determine if the ingredients were produced using a grazing, mixed, or industrial system, so I used the weighted average of these three systems.
The report series listed water footprints in cubic meters of water per ton of product (m^3/ton). To determine the appropriate footprint for each recipe, I needed to calculate the proportion for just the amount of each ingredient that I used. To do so, I began with multiplying the listed water footprint of a desired ingredient by the weight of the ingredient that was used in the recipe. This indicated how many cubic meters of water was needed for that specified weight of the ingredient. The amount of water was then converted to gallons. Once this process was completed for every ingredient in a recipe, then the total number of gallons was added up to determine the overall water footprint. This value was divided by the number of servings the recipe produced in order to quantify the water footprint of a single serving.
Disclaimer
While at an initial glance these reports appeared to include every food product under the sun, there were a few of my ingredients that were not listed. In these instances, I found the most closely related substitute and included their values in my calculations. For example, I used the water footprint of spinach in leu of parsley for the red lentil kufte recipe. Since these are both leafy greens, it can be assumed that their footprints are not astronomically different.
There are no sources with information about the water footprint of broth of any type. Due to this lack of information, I counted any broth used as plain water. It is possible that there is a lack of data on broths since these products are typically made by boiling animal bones (or vegetables for vegetable broth) in water, so there is no precise way to calculate how much of the animal and its associated footprint impact such products.