creative project: maps, maps, maps

Here are my maps for the final project. I chose 10 random (yet regular) food items from our cafeteria (baby lima beans, Barber's milk, chicken tenders, Frito Lay potato chips, green beans, Heinz marinara sauce, honey mustard, Juicy Juice, Nestle water, and canned pineapple), and mapped a minimum distance which they traveled to get to our cafeteria (thanks to google maps, Mrs. Melissa, and a bit of research).

Some foods could be traced farther back (for example, I could trace the tomatoes in the Heinz marinara all the way back to plant and seed), while others I couldn't get information on past a certain point in shipping (like the honey mustard).
Let it be noted that all of our food from the cafeteria (excluding what occasionally comes out of our garden) comes through Sysco Food Services of Central Alabama, located in Calera. That adds an automatic 30 miles to everything coming through our doors (which seems like a miniscule amount compared to the hundreds/thousands of minimum miles most foods traveled).

I was suprised to find that the chicken tenders are local- although I admit I couldn't figure out where they had been breaded (hopefully in the same plant?). Barber's is a local milk company. All the rest were from out of state, the farthest being (not suprisingly) the pineapple- which I lost track of at its shipping port in Singapore (a mere 9,520 miles away).

so here they are (you can't read the text, so added it above):

Baby Lima Beans- 1149 miles

Barber's Milk-57 miles

Chicken Tenders- 135 miles

Frito Lay potato chips-1,877 miles

Green Beans- 1,055 miles

Heinz marinara- 3,428 miles

Honey mustard- 1,218 miles

Juicy Juice- 2,085 miles

Nestle water- 1,058 miles

Canned (port royale) pineapples- 9,520 miles (the dotted line is to Singapore)

The results are, at a basic level, incomparable because not all of the foods could be traced to their origin, ingredient for ingredient (e.g. the multiple ingredients in marinara, honey mustard, and canned produce). But, as an image of base-line transportation, I think the maps can be informative.

...Hope you find them interesting!