Advantages of solar cooking

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Contents [hide] 1 Fuel Scarcities 2 Health and Sustainability 3 Improved solar cookers and training 4 Cooking and Food Processing

[edit] Fuel Scarcities

One-fourth of humanity suffers fuel scarcities. Half of the world cooks with wood. Accelerating wood shortages in many countries add new burdens to families, particularly in eastern and southern Africa.

• Families must be fed every day.
• Rural women of all ages - including those who are pregnant and have infants, the elderly, and very young girls who should be in school - spend more time and walk ever-longer distances to find, then carry, heavy loads of wood.
• Urban families in many developing countries now spend up to a third of their income for cooking fuel.
• Refugees in Kenya, prior to getting solar cookers, often barter away part of their food rations to get fuel to cook the remainder.
• Many families are unable to cook nutritious foods such as beans and maize, which require hours of cooking, and substitute less nutritious, faster cooking foods such as pasta.
• Families are also less able to heat/pasteurize their water and milk to reduce water borne-diseases, the major killers of children. Solar cookers easily cook most foods and pasteurize milk and water.
• Fuel-gathering is one factor in the tide of migration to cities. A rural Zimbabwean summed up the possibilities: "Today many young Zimbabwe women don't want to stay in rural areas because gathering fuelwood is so difficult and time-consuming. Solar cookers can make rural life easier for women so they'll want to stay there."
• The annual per capita wood consumption for cooking in most parts of the world is about .5 ton (1.32 kg per day), or about 3 tons per family of six people. A solar cooker can save one ton of wood per year.
• The cost to replace cut trees in India is double the market price of cut wood.
• Many governments including Zimbabwe and Kenya import and subsidize less sustainable fuels at great expense.

[edit] Health and Sustainability

Current cooking methods are unhealthy, unsustainable and unavailable to future generations.

• Cooking with fire means fire hazards and dangers of burns for small children
• Smoke causes lung and eye diseases.
• Future generations will have fewer options.
• The slower, gentler cooking provided by many solar cookers preserves more nutrients.
• The ability to pasteurize water with free solar energy can help prevent many diseases.
• The energy for solar cooking is infinitely renewable and entirely non-polluting.

[edit] Improved solar cookers and training

• Historically most solar cookers were either curved parabolic reflectors focusing intense heat onto a single pot, or heat trap boxes with a window on the top and one or several flat reflectors. Both types were too expensive for most people, cumbersome and sometimes even dangerous to use.
• A wide variety of new solar cookers are more convenient, much lower-priced, and now competitive with alternatives such as wood, charcoal, and wood stoves. One such model, an open reflector, has been widely tested and has proven useful in the USA, Kenya and Zimbabwe. It pays for itself in fuel savings in two months or less and becomes a recurrent economic benefit to individual households.
• Developed in 1994 by an international team of volunteers and dubbed the "CooKit," it is ideal for introducing the basics of solar cooking. It is easily hand-made and also is being mass-produced in USA, Kenya and Zimbabwe with modifications to suit local needs and climates.
• Participative instruction quickly teaches solar cooking skills and trains local women to also teach their neighbors.
• Many millions are waiting for the simple, life-long skill that they can pass on to future generations.

[edit] Cooking and Food Processing

• Food needs little attention while cooking, leaving the cook free to attend to other matters.
• Scorching is very rare, so clean-up is simplified.
• Most of the preparation for a meal can be done early in the day, so there is less last-minute fuss.
• While food cooks in the sun, the kitchen stays cool.
• The gentle cooking preserves flavor and aroma, so the food tastes better.
• Foods can be preserved for out of season use at no cost in power, either by solar dehydration or, in the case of some acidic foods, by canning.
• In some climates, the fact that a panel cooker has potential to be used at night as a chiller could be very useful in preserving some types of short-term fresh foods or leftovers.

Solar cooking deserves new attention.