Eat Your Greens
February 25, 2009
Please check out this very interesting article in Time magazine about the benefits of a plant-based diet.
One great fact from Time’s Bryan Walsh:
“A meal at McDonald’s produces more carbon than your trip to the drive-through.”
An interesting point: “The most efficient way to shrink the carbon footprint of your menu is to eat less meat, especially beef. Raising cattle takes a lot more energy than growing the equivalent amount of grains, fruits or vegetables: most produce requires about 2 calories of fossil-fuel energy to cultivate per 1 calorie of food energy; with beef, the ratio can be as high as 80 to 1. What’s more, the majority of cattle in the U.S. are reared on grain and loads of it–670 million tons in 2002–and the fertilizer used to grow that feed creates separate environmental problems.”
After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, my eyes were opened to the sorry diet that most cattle are receiving. But I wonder if a vegetarian world is the answer? After all, if none of our land animals were eating, would this not produce problems? What would happen to our wonderful Canadian beef farmers? Our dairy farmers? I think that people should eat less meat–it should be a side dish, perhaps, rather than a main–but I’m not convinced that meat should be removed from our diets altogether.
Entry Filed under: 12 Grain Program, Books, Diet Rehab, Food, Grain of the Week, Health, Local, Vegetarian. .
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1.
Meghan Telpner | February 25, 2009 at 8:52 am
There is no need to be eating meat three meals a day, or even everyday as most eaters do. You are totally right in stating that meat should be a side dish. We should also be wary of the cheap, government subsidized meat and note that the grain that feedlot cattle are fed is genetically modified- another whole problem unto itself.
If we are going to eat meat, my feeling is that we should know where it comes from, how it was raised, and how it was killed, processed and transported. Good meat will cost more, but cheap meat is just cheap meat.
2.
Steph | February 27, 2009 at 8:52 am
I whole-heartedly agree that we should be eating meat that we can trace. I have found, however, that this is impossible. Meat from organic farms may be slaughtered at commercial abbatoirs. Halal beef may not be raised organically or even humanely, even if it is slaughtered humanely. I have, so far, been unable to get definitive answers from farmers, health food stores, etc. re: the provenance of meat.
For me, the decision to excise meat from my diet had much more to do with a reluctance to support ghoulish farming and slaughtering practices than it had to do with my health (though eating healthier, and smarter, has been an added bonus). I choose not to support farmers, Canadian or otherwise, who refuse, for the sake of profit, to treat animals humanely. And my diet and my health have benefited. Win-win, I say.