Chewy Nuggets

What’s for Dinner? - Michael Ruhlman has an interesting thread at his blog on staple meals - what people actually cook for dinner. The variety among people who responded (177 comments and counting) is pretty astounding, with a lot of ethnic food -- more than I would have predicted.

Let’s Do the Math - An engaging post at Ethicurean points to a study that the majority of greenhouse gas emissions occur “during the production of food, not from transportation.” Eating locally is equivalent to driving 1,000 fewer miles a year. But switching out of red meat - for just one day a week - to a vegetarian meal equals 1,160 fewer miles driven per year.

Out of Softshell Crabs - Senators want to declare the Chesapeake blue claw crab a disaster, triggering $20 million in emergency aid for the fisherman. The bay suffers from hypoxia stimulated by agriculture and urban water run-off - essentially choking oxygen out of sea life.

Sustainable Sushi? - I took a quick look at Gourmet.com at the rising tide of sustainable fish in Japan, of all places. They still love their bluefin tuna and whale, but sustainable fish is slowly gaining ground (beachhead?) in supermarkets.
- Samuel Fromartz

Comments

[Cheryl]

I love round-up posts like this from sources I trust. It helps streamline my own info-gathering, so for that I thank you.

As for the local/meat/greenhouse gas discussion, I interviewed someone from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture earlier this year, and he, too, talked a lot about Life Cycle Analysis. One thing he said still sticks with me: "Eating more of the things that are good for you (i.e. fruits, veggies, grains) is also good for the planet."

So simple, but still enlightening.

[Anna]

Why is it that vegetarian eating is always considered so "eco-green" and meat-eating is automatically "eco-destructive"? The tired arguments toted out to support this notion for the last couple of decades aren't really true and don't really give people good information. And the examples given are always so over simplified and misleading.

Consider the vegetarian couple who started the 100-mile diet. They found they couldn't consistently eat, let alone stay healthy eating both local and vegetarian for much of the year in their British Columbia location. 100milediet dot org

I'd argue that the way most Americans eat "vegetarian" (highly processed fake foods) is as bad or worse ecologically and energy-wise than the SAD, and it certainly is worse than eating local real food, vegetarian or omnivorous.

There is nothing eco-wonderful about aseptic packages of highly processed soy juice with gums, sugar, and flavor additives marketed as "milk" or ersatz "burgers", "dogs, or soy "cheeze".

Nor is there anything especially eco-wonderful about the way grains (including corn) are produced and consumed in the US (& westernized nations). Anyway, grains/corn mess up the body's glucose and insulin balance, often resulting in excess weight gain and ill health, require massive energy inputs during production and processing, tremendous amounts of processing just to make them edible, and aren't even very nutritious to begin with.

Anyone who thinks grains and corn are great eco-choices should look a bit further and find some new sources of information.

Also consider Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm, which inputs comparatively very little fossil fuel into the farm and lets nature do the work in a biodynamic pasture-based model that essentially produced high quality, nutritionally-dense protein (meat) from sunshine. His farm isn't alone in this low energy practice, but it's one of the better known farms. Naturally-raised, pasture based farming, especially with a polycultural focus (rather than industrial one crop production - monoculture) is a better solution than eating mono-cropped, energy intensive crops like corn, wheat, soy, and conventionally raised produce. Even industrial organic plant mono-crops are a huge energy hoggin industry.

And why lump all meat together in these pro-vegetarian arguments disguised as eco-advice? There is a huge difference between naturally raised, pastured (grassfed) animals and grain-fed feedlot animals from CAFOS, one being ecologically more sustainable and the other admittedly indefensible.

[Sam Fromartz]

I don't think the article at Ethicurean was "pro-vegetarian" if you read it. What it did was look at GHG emissions in various systems. And livestock produce methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas.

I agree it's important to point out the differences between pasture-based models and confinement farms, but even if you're eating Joel Salatin's meat, there is no way you are going to eat a lot of it unless you buy a half cow and freeze it. Prices for sustainable meat take it off the center of the plate. And that's fine. There are many good things to eat besides just meat, but that said I had a good burger last night!