A diet for a small planet
One read this book, first published in 1971, and it is difficult to believe that people diets will improve in the future.
Can you imagine, in the 70s!???...I was not even born!
I do not even say that everybody needs to have a perfect diet or that we all need to be vegetarian.
I'm not vegetarian and live good with that decision just by the fact that I eat meat very seldom.
And with the time that I have been doing vegetarian meals, I want less and less to cook meat.
There are a few points in the book that are very simple to explain:
1. Hunger is human made.
The food production system takes abundant grain, which hungry people cannot afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for.
But I did not fully appreciate that our production system not only reduces abundance but actually mines the very resources on which our future food security rests.
2. Why do people want more meat?
Can you imagine, in the 70s!???...I was not even born!
I do not even say that everybody needs to have a perfect diet or that we all need to be vegetarian.
I'm not vegetarian and live good with that decision just by the fact that I eat meat very seldom.
And with the time that I have been doing vegetarian meals, I want less and less to cook meat.
There are a few points in the book that are very simple to explain:
1. Hunger is human made.
The food production system takes abundant grain, which hungry people cannot afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for.
But I did not fully appreciate that our production system not only reduces abundance but actually mines the very resources on which our future food security rests.
How is it possible that more and more grain is used to produce meat when at least a quarter of the world’s people go without even the basic grain they need?
Those who want and need the grain cannot afford to buy it, so livestock get it.
And this is truer every day as the poor are pushed off their lands by the more powerful landowners and as new technology denies the landless poor the jobs they need if they are to buy food.
And this is truer every day as the poor are pushed off their lands by the more powerful landowners and as new technology denies the landless poor the jobs they need if they are to buy food.
Meat tastes good.
Meat, especially beef, is also
a status symbol.
Realizing that a meat-centered
diet does not bring greater well-being but in fact risks to their health has
been one step in rethinking their definition of “progresss” or “development”.
3. Do we need meat?
Lots of protein is essential to a good diet, I thought, and the only way to get enough is to eat meat at virtually every meal.
But I learned that, on the average, Americans eat twice the protein their bodies can even use.
Since our bodies do not store protein, what’s not used is wasted.
Moreover, I learned that the “quality” of meat protein, better termed its “usability”, could be matched simply by combining certain plant foods.
4. What is the problem of eating meat?
The dramatic change in the diet
over the last 65 years is not in our protein consumption.
It has actually
varied little, fluctuating between 88 grams and 104 grams per person per day
(roughly twice what our bodies can use).
The change is in how protein is
packaged.
65 years ago we got almost 40% of our protein from grain, bread, and other cereal products.
65 years ago we got almost 40% of our protein from grain, bread, and other cereal products.
Now we only get 17% of our protein from these sources.
In their place, animal products, which then supplied about half of our protein, now contribute two-thirds.
In their place, animal products, which then supplied about half of our protein, now contribute two-thirds.
And I will not refer the problems for the environment as water and fuel use, especially for the intensive fields grain production, neither CO2 and methane emissions from cows, and outputs of nitrate and other chemicals from the farms to wastage.
Do you really want a beef today?