Friday, October 30, 2009

Eating Animals

If you've ever seen the film Everything Is Illuminated, (with a very young and absolutely hilarious Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello) you'll know that the character in that movie is based on a real person. His name is Jonathan Foer and he's got a new book called Eating Animals coming out soon. I'm going to buy it and read it, but if you're impatient (like me) you can read the article that he wrote that is the pretext for the novel.

You can find it here

Thursday, October 29, 2009

More Meatless Monday talk

So Change.org has a great piece about how going meatless ONE day a week is equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road. The foodie debate that's been swelling is quickly approaching what I feel is a zenith. There will be time in the VERY near future when this hit's mainstream. You may say that they already have, but I'll tell you that even though movies like Food Inc did so much to move this discussion along, only approximately 3% of Americas population is vegetarian or
vegan.

About 3% of Americans are vegetarians, and about 1% are vegan.
In 2009, 3% of Americans were vegetarian and about 1% were vegan (Vegetarian Resource Group - “How Many Vegetarians Are There?”).
In a 2008 study on natural and alternative remedies, 1.6% of U.S. respondents said they had tried a vegetarian diet in the last 18 months. But this doesn’t include those who follow the diet for non-health reason.
In a 2006 poll, 2.3% of respondents said they never eat meat, poultry, or seafood/fish. 1.4% said they didn’t eat dairy products or eggs (Harris poll commissioned by the Vegetarian Resource Group). In a joint 2003 Canadian-American dietetic association position paper, 2.5% of Americans were labelled vegetarians.
(source here)

The debate is pretty simple especially in these hard economic times, who would you rather subsidize, Big Pharma and people like AMI or a more "earth friendly" and sustainable lifestyle choice? Yes, I consider vegetarianism a lifestyle choice, because I CHOOSE not to eat meat, I CHOOSE to consider what I put in my mouth.

Here's the article on Change

Oh and by the way ... just on a personal note, I saw the Pogues here in Austin last night. Shane and the boys, we love you and hope it doesnt take you 20 more years to come back. Rain or not, it was a life affirming show.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Battle Goes On ... Meatless Monday

Who'd have thought this issue would cause such a panty twist?

The people at the Atlantic are doing a really good job of looking at this:

Industry Ire

There's SO much I can comment here:

The outward lies, the untruths, the pressure by an industry who's seeing the loss of profit. Need proof?

A quote from Janet Riley with the American Meat Institute:

"Meat is associated with weight control. It's not the number one source of fat in their diet." She also invoked her own two sons to emphasize that kids require animal protein in their diets. "Meat is what keeps them satisfied and out of the pantry," she told me.

Really? Do I need to discuss these facts again?

My personal favourite quote from the article:

In an editorial published earlier this month, Pork Magazine wrote, "The Baltimore school officials have taken it upon themselves to relieve dietitians and nutritionists of part of their duties, at least for the first day of the school week." Funnily enough, it was the school district's only dietician, Mahoney, who conceived the program.

Go read the article ... Armed with facts, any industry can dismantle any argument lodged at them. What I see everytime that I read an article like this, is a corporation who is less concerned with facts and more concerned with profit.

Defining who we are by what we eat

Once again, I start off by linking to Huffington Post:

Natatlie Portman discusses How Eating Animals Changed Her

Some points to hi-light here:

I say that Foer's ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

This touches on a very fundamental part of my belief system. I remember years ago listening to a Buddhist priest talk about why they were offering free food to people at their temple in NYC. He discussed why not only that it was a good thing to do but also the right thing to do if they wanted to be an integral part of the community. Of course it was all vegetarian. When asked why, he said something that made me really think for the first time about food in a way that I'd never thought of before. He said that they believe that the violence inherit in killing the animal was ingested when they ate the meal.

I have not read Mr Foer's book yet, but be assured that it will be on my winter reading list. More to come ...

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Hype and the Media

Ah Lou Dobbs, what would we do with you. The blustering blowhard from CNN who as of late has been rankled with charges of racism and being courted by that bastion of impartiality Fox News has let another verbal shot across the bow of reason fly ...

"On Monday night, Lou Dobbs did a segment on how "Meatless Monday" is being adopted by the Baltimore city school district in an effort to cut costs and get children to eat healthier food. The segment showed schoolchildren eating vegetarian chili and grilled cheese sandwiches, and CNN reported that they found no parents who objected to the policy.

The news network also noted opposition to the one-day-a-week of vegetarian food by the American Meat Institute -- a trade group that represents meat processors and packers with obvious financial interests in meat consumption. Without pointing out factors that helped fuel the initiative, such as childhood obesity and a national school budget crisis, CNN reported that the AMI is concerned that "students are being served up an unhealthy dose of indoctrination." The institute's Janet Reilly claims the policy was depriving students and parents of "choice."

After watching the segment, Dobbs described this as "a real political storm in the making." (this is from Huffington Post)

Pardon me for a minute while I rant and wail against thinking like this. Forgive me if I get a touch ... well snarky .. because sometimes snarky is all I have.

First lets talk about facts:

The problem of childhood obesity in the United States has grown considerably in recent years. Between 16 and 33 percent of children and adolescents are obese. Obesity is among the easiest medical conditions to recognize but most difficult to treat. Unhealthy weight gain due to poor diet and lack of exercise is responsible for over 300,000 deaths each year. The annual cost to society for obesity is estimated at nearly $100 billion. Overweight children are much more likely to become overweight adults unless they adopt and maintain healthier patterns of eating and exercise. (from The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry)

And then there's this:

According to research published in the journal Pediatrics, schools in Philadelphia banned soda, educated staff and families about nutrition and rewarded kids for eating well with raffle tickets, where winners got prizes like bikes, basketball hoops, calculators, and jump ropes, researchers report. Schools in the study's control group didn't undertake these initiatives.

The findings show that a comprehensive approach to battling childhoold obesity in schools can make a significant difference, according to lead researcher Dr. Gary D. Foster of Temple University.

The findings were fascinating. For instance, researchers found that 7.5 percent of the students in the program for two years were still overweight compared with nearly 15 percent of youngsters who were overweight after not making any changes.

Notice anything here? We have an EPIDEMIC in this country but education on what is considered a lifestyle choice is something that can't be discussed without causing a "political storm in the making."

Now some facts about AMI:

They came up with this web site:

http://www.safefoodinc.org/

Remember these guys? They were the ones saying that the claims in Food Inc weren't based in fact. Go look at the web site. It's got all kinds of nice little graphs and diagrams with no source material. I'm not a statistician by ANY stretch of the imagination but I know that if you're going to refute claims that you need information to refute it rather than just blindly stating .. "Well that's just not true ... and you should believe us."

This is their tag line from the web site:

America’s food supply is a modern miracle and one in which we as a society can take pride. American consumers deserve all the facts – just what this web site aims to deliver.

Really? So all of that fighting you've been doing against food labeling, the reduced standards on beef testing all of that is in our best interest? I'll say it again .. Really?

YES .. YOU deserve the facts. The things I point out here was just a CURSORY glance at the information available to the average consumer out there. Don't believe the HYPE even if it comes from CNN.

Now onto my rant. Mr Dobbs, I applaud the fact that you're trying to helm such a weighty and "beefy" subject (forgive the pun) but you're not doing anything to advance this arguement along. You're stating that the AMI is upset. Boo hoo! Imagine a food industry that is monolithic in it's ideas, that is monopolistic in it's tendencies and really doesn't care about us, the consumer, as long as they get PAID. This war about food comes down to a few things. Knowledge, power and money. Slowly people are waking up to the fact that industries like the meat industry, the insurance industry and others along those lines, don't want us, the consumer, to know the truth about what goes into what we eat. They LIKE us being sick. They like us eating the crap that they produce. Fat, lazy, sick, undereducated, but they're buying our products. Sounds like a winning slogan to me. Wake up America, the voices that you hear inside your head probably make more sense than the ones that get prime time news shows.

Friday, October 2, 2009

World Farm Animals Day

Oh yeah and I forgot to comment on this. Today is World Farm Animals Day ... go to www.wfad.org to read more about what you can do in your community.

The problem with Sustainability

There's a great article on Change.org about the Sustainability Movement and the problems that the US faces when dealing with it (article is here.) The line that sums it up the best, at least in my opinion is this:

The problem is that in America, we don’t like to eat healthy.

Yep ... you really cant say it any more clearly than that. As a vegetarian, even in the left leaning progressive city of Austin Texas, I'm still in the minority. Everyone from my co-workers, to my boss, to my friends utter things like "but where do you get your protein?" or "but who doesn't like meat?" ... and I have to tell them that it's just not my "thing." My mother was diagnosed with colo/rectal cancer when I was in my mid-twenties and I found out that one in 3 of my relatives over the last few decades had died of some form of cancer. If you've ever known someone with cancer ... well need I say more. I'm not suggesting that meat eating lead to their cancer, but it's been shown that people who consume beef are more prone to developing colo/rectal cancer than people who have more plant based diets. To a young man, that was all I needed to know. I quit eating beef then and there and a few years later, quit eating everything else that was animal based. In a nation where you read things like this:

"The United States places last among 19 countries when it comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, according to new research."

or

"Overweight–obesity (216,000; 188,000–237,000) and physical inactivity (191,000; 164,000–222,000) were each responsible for nearly 1 in 10 deaths. High dietary salt (102,000; 97,000–107,000), low dietary omega-3 fatty acids (84,000; 72,000–96,000), and high dietary trans fatty acids (82,000; 63,000–97,000) were the dietary risks with the largest mortality effects."

Another quote from the article on Change:

"But the truth is that our current system of industrial agriculture is based almost entirely on giving people what they really want: cheap meat, and lots of it. If we were to produce meat on pastures in family farms, a more resource-intensive method, we couldn’t eat as much of it. And asking Americans to sign on to that — even many of the smart-talking foodies who pay lip service to sustainable eating but continue devouring meat daily — is a tall order."

It seems pretty clear to me. We've been shown the way out of this, but it seems that no one wants to hear the voices.