Saturday, May 16, 2009

Meat free one day a week

A city in Belgium shows how to save the planet by cutting back on meat consumption. Cows and chickens the world over applaud.

4 comments:

Steve Bates said...

This has been known since the days of Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet: vegetarians are gentler on the environment.

I forgo meat one day a week: That day is "today." If you had had the veggie fajitas I had today for our late Sunday meal, you'd be happy to become a sprout-eater too.

ellroon said...

I don't know.... I was born with canine teeth for a reason....

But the older I get, the more sense it makes. But I'm not quite ready to give meat up entirely... I'll start with one day a week.

Steve Bates said...

Well into my sprout-eating days, I was persuaded by a geneticist colleague that humans are indeed natural omnivores. But there is a whole continent-full of humans that get by without meat, so it isn't strictly speaking necessary. One does have to watch a few dietary requirements; it's easy for sprout-eaters to suffer certain deficiencies. But in America it's no trouble at all to compensate.

Humans being natural omnivores, they have to have a reason to become vegetarians. The usual reasons seem to be (first and foremost) the unavailability of meat, personal or societal religion or philosophy, minimizing one's environmental footprint, and (as I've heard it put) not wanting to "eat Bambi." I suppose I'm in that last category, though having been lacto-ovo-veggie since about 1982, I don't really remember how I started.

By the way, I do not like sprouts very much. "Sprout-eater" is mostly a conventional expression for me.

ellroon said...

Sprouts make it sound like 'tree-hugger' etc... but I understand the concept.

We've got several dietary demands in our extended family that make serving food at family gatherings complex so I'm aware of the different levels of vegan/vegetarian/non-four footed meat eater/diabetic/ allergy prone etc etc.

It might be easier if we all went back to eating twigs and leaves....