To eat meat or not to eat meat …
Crystle lent me the book Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. What an eye-opening book for sure! It discusses how many of our food resources are wasted in feed for our animals - especially beef.
After reading it, I’ve decided to challenge myself to make meat dishes only twice per week for the summer. This is a HUGE switch for us, as we currently eat a vegetarian meal maybe once or twice per week.
Really though, when it takes 2500 gallons of water to make just one pound of beef, and 7 pounds of grain (Lappe), does it make sense to comsume beef many times per week? Chicken is slightly less of an energy consumer, but still, compared to grain and vegetable sources of protein, it just doesn’t make sense (from the perspective of the planet anyways) to rely on animal sources of protein when plant sources are much more readily available and abundant.
Wish me luck on my new adventure!
Gina Taylor said,
May 7, 2009 @ 1:05 am
Good luck Kim.
You’ll need plenty of protein for your push up challenge though
Did 53 yesterday in five sets, maximum was 18 in a row. Tim watched while drinking a beer.
gina
kim said,
May 7, 2009 @ 1:12 am
Rock on! That’s awesome! I think I got to week two …
Laura said,
May 7, 2009 @ 10:23 am
Oooh, yeah, I forgot all about that sit-up challenge thing … bad me …
That book sounds really interesting. Chris is pretty insistent that we eat meat every night. I wonder if I could get him to read it?
kim said,
May 7, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
Honestly, I’d never EVER before understood how completely silly North America is about raising meat and meat eating. Brad was once pretty insistent too, but since I do all the cooking … well, ya know … I get to pick
Ryanne said,
May 9, 2009 @ 3:08 am
Can’t you just eat range-fed beef or bison?
We won’t ever cut out that much meat, it would be grounds for divorce in this household :p
kim said,
May 9, 2009 @ 4:01 am
LOL We could, Ryanne, but I just don’t believe that we need to be that dependent on animal sources of protein - free-range or not. Really, I need to challenge myself to do something drastic so I can learn a bunch of vegetarian recipes - I won’t do it if I haven’t resolved to do something outrageous!