Why Solar Cooking

Why Solar Cooking

by Deb Powers

For most of us in the so-called civilized Western World, solar cooking is a fun gadget or something to do when we go camping. In many Third World countries, though, a solar cooking can mean so much more.

In the rural regions of many Third World countries, families cook their food over a smoky fire fueled by wood and dried dung chips. Anyone who has not had to live this way can not conceive of the remarkable difference that a solar stove can make in the lives of a family who has no choice but to cook this way. Imagine yourself for a minute in the situation - what does that smoky wood fire mean to your life?

First, it means that someone in the family must spend hours finding the fuel for the fire. There's no local supermarket where you can buy a bag of Kingsford charcoal briquets. Instead, someone - a child if there is one old enough - has to go out looking for wood or animal dung that is dry enough to burn. If you're lucky enough to own animals - even a few chickens - you hoard their droppings, spreading them out in the sun to dry so they can make fuel for the fire. That's hours a day spent finding fuel to cook food instead of playing, or better yet, studying so you can learn to read and do something better with your life.

If gathering your own fuel isn't possible - if you must instead spend your time working, or growing food to eat or making things to sell - then you'll have to pay dearly for fuel to light your fire so that you can cook your food. In a world where money is so scarce that a job making the equivalent of a dollar a day is a job to be valued, fuel for the fire can cost more than the food that it cooks.

But money and time are only part of the cost. The World Health Organization estimates that in 23 of the poorest countries in the world, a full 10% of the deaths can be attributed to just two causes: poor water sanitation and indoor air pollution from smoky fires used for cooking and heat. (source: Why Solar Cook?) In fact, health professionals estimate that indoor cooking fires that use solid fuel contribute to childhood pneumonia, which kills 4 million children a year in poor countries, as well as a number of other illnesses - including glaucoma - that they see all too frequently.

Benefits of Solar Cooking

Solar cookers for these countries offers an array of benefits that are hard to achieve in other ways. Solar cookers allow people to :

• pasteurize water, making it safe for drinking
• cook healthy foods like dried legumes
• use the 25% of their income used for cooking fuels in other ways
• reduce the danger of burns - very real when cooking fires are the only way to cook
• reduce illnesses caused or exacerbated by toxic smoke
• reduce the impact on the environment of solid fuel fires

The Cost of Solar Cooking

The cost of a solar cooker depends on the complexity or features of the cooker itself. There are a number of organizations that distribute solar cookers that cost less than $20 each to make. A solar oven may cost $50 for a family - a prohibitive cost for most - but microfinancing can help them to afford it.

Solar Cooking Fun Facts

• There are solar ovens that can be installed in an outside wall so that the oven can be accessed from indoors.
• One massive solar cooker in India prepares food for 20,000 pilgrims a day. (source: Solar cooking and health).
• It's possible to can food and preserve fruits and meats by dehydration in a solar cooker.
• You can make your own solar cooker with a cardboard box, aluminum foil and a sheet of glass.
• There are dozens of ways to help families in Third World countries get a solar cooker.
• A solar cooker can reduce a family's need for solid fuel by 40%.
• The solar oven is as easy to use as a slow cooker - and cooks just as well.

 For more information about solar cookers and Solar Cookers International, visit the Solar Cookers Wiki and find out how you can help promote health, economic goals and save the planet at the same time.

Comments

[Solar Panel]

Thank you for given this good article ...

[KnowYourPlanet]

Take a look at my video demonstrating how you can save energy by using a lid. After watching this video you will never cook without a lid again ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Val4Vo3fVFY

[SolarTown]

Some companies manufacture hybrid solar ovens that can be plugged into an electrical outlet. In the absence of sun, an electrically powered infrared heat source keeps the internal chamber at the proper cooking temperature.