Solar Cooking is fun

Why spend time cooking inside when it’s sunny outside? Preparing food outside in your backyard or in nature is fun and relaxing. Preparing food with renewable solar energy is doubly so, as you get the satisfaction of doing no harm to the environment while you cook healthy food with free solar energy. Why not organize a solar club in your area, the children absolutely loved building the solar oven on the left. Any excuse to get mucky I guess.

Climate Change

Every time you cook food using electricity, natural gas, propane or wood, you release polluting greenhouse gasses into atmosphere.

The scientific consensus is that global warming is happening, and that climate disruption is directly linked to atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel and biomass burning. Solar cooking emits zero CO2 or other greenhouse gasses. Solar cooking is the sustainable way to cook.

Peak Oil

Petroleum geologists all agree that the Earth’s reserves of oil and gas are finite, and that eventually they will reach a point of peak production, then decline. Unless you choose to adopt the argument of ‘abiotic oil’.

In fact, a scientific consensus is rapidly building that global oil production has peaked, and that natural gas production in North America has already peaked, and is now in decline. Solar cooking uses no fossil fuels, and produces the same results when the sun shines.

Health

Solar cooked food is healthier and often tastier than food cooked by other means. Nutrients stay in the food, and you never need to worry about burning food. Because there is no smoke, cooks don’t need to worry about inhaling toxic, unhealthy smoke from charcoal barbecues or cook fires.
Food doesn’t dry out or burn, like it can when being fried or cooked over an open fire. Solar cooked food is succulent, moist and delicious. The diagram shows that water only needs to reach 65C in order to be safe to drink.


Deforestation

Global forests are under threat from deforestation. Solar cookers have helped people in the developing world save their remaining forests. Some three billion people rely on firewood for their cook fires. This simply cannot continue if the global environment is to be preserved and human populations sustained. When people in developed countries invest in solar cookers, they can help people in the developing world.

Empowering Women and the Poor

The acrid smoke from cooking fires subjects women and their children to levels of smoke that at times are often 100 times above the international safety standards. This results in 3 deaths a minute, totalling over 1.6 million deaths each year.
In many developing nations, families spend a far too large percentage of their incomes on fire wood and charcoal for making fires. The burden of gathering wood and making charcoal often falls on women, whose health is damaged from smoke, and whose income and time are drained in the quest for fuel. Solar cooking empowers women in developing countries from enslavement to the cook fire, freeing their time for other chores, and improving their physical and financial health.
All of these reasons should convince you that the time to buy a solar cooking appliance is now.

Solar Cooking Uses Free Fuel

When you cook with electricity, gas, wood or propane, you pay hard earned money for the fuel that you use, while much of the energy in the fuel gets wasted as heat in your kitchen or outside. With solar cooking, your fuel is the free energy of the sun. If you replace your backyard barbecue with a SolReka Solar Cooker and use it regularly, your cooker will pay its cost back in fuel savings within 1 year. For the remaining years, you are cooking literally for free.

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2 Responses to “Why cook with the Sun?”

1. solar lau Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 4:32 am

   I always believe that the potential of economic benefits is rather big. However, nobody wants to risks the cost of developing renewable energy is the core of the problem.

2. Sophie Says:
   August 21st, 2009 at 2:00 pm

   You know, I’d never have managed this possible, but with the world going the way it is, it’s definitely something I want to give a go for our next summer barbeque, thanks for the idea!

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