Dear Umbra,
I recently became a vegetarian for environmental reasons. Everyone says I should start eating soy products and tofu. But doesn't soy come from evil industrial farms in Iowa? I thought the idea was to increase biodiversity, not just eat the same thing 20 different ways. Also, can I keep eating eggs and milk?
Ben T.
New Hampshire
Dearest Ben,
Why are people so dang bossy about food? There's a vein of "food as personal savior-ism" in the U.S., and it can be quite annoying. Umbra is no exception, admittedly, but we hope to limit our bossiness to environmentally focused dictates. Good job on going vegetarian -- I hope you are enjoying your meals! And you're right: Biodiversity is good for you, both inside and out.
I traded my burger for this?
There are several reasons vegetarianism is a benefit to the environment. Large-scale meat production is great in that it provides relatively cheap, plentiful meat for those who want it. But, as you probably know, producing meats en masse -- in huge concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs -- also wreaks havoc on air and water quality, is believed to be a major contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions, and has sundry human health implications ranging from overexposure to antibiotics to clogged arteries. Hooray for those who can stop eating meat.
Because we're accustomed (nay, nearly brainwashed) into thinking that hefty helpings o' burger et al are life necessities, we still tend to organize our food thoughts in a meaty way, and think of dinner as a hunk of protein accompanied by a lonely veggie and starch. I know I do. Here is where your excellent summation of dietary goals can come in handy for all striving meat reducers: biodiversity on the plate. No, you don't need to substitute soy on a one-to-one basis for the pork, beef, chicken, and other animals you're foregoing. We already get plenty of soy as a mystery ingredient in our processed foods. And you're right: It's largely grown on huge, monocropped conventional farms. It's also fairly certain that any non-organic soy is genetically modified, and you may not wish to join in the poorly regulated GM experiment.
The answer? By all means, mix it up with all sorts of beans as well as protein-filled vegetables, nuts, and dairy products, if you wish. Or try no protein at all once in a while. The USDA, purveyor of such cultural icons as the food pyramid, tells us to have 50 grams of protein a day, and nicely provides searchable databases that list nutrients in thousands of foods. Let's see: One piece of unfrosted chocolate cake from a box has about 5 grams of protein. Ten slices of chocolate cake and you're set for your daily protein needs.
A good cookbook will also help you with diversifying your veggie diet beyond soy. Regular readers know I like Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I'm also newly engrossed (as I mentioned last week) in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. (Combine those two books and I'm sure everyone can cook everything vegetarian.) Other readers certainly will have suggestions (bring 'em on!). In the meantime, if you happen to come across a decent used book store, it may have classics like Laurel's Kitchen by Carol Flinders et al, which comes straight out of '70s Berkeley, with comprehensive nutritional tables (or pick up the sequel, The New Laurel's Kitchen).
As to the dairy and eggs -- a key problem, again, is the fact that they're produced by large-scale factory-farm ops, which have limited pollution controls and cause all manner of other woes. If you can cut out the dairy and eggs, more power to you. But if you can't, Bossy Umbra has her usual refrain: Buy local, buy organic, buy from small-scale producers. You live in New Hampshire, thus these options are available to you. Have fun eating divergently, differently, and deliciously.
Supportively,
Umbra
Martha Stewart blisters meat industry in Thanksgiving show
Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
Comments
View as Flat
Earl Killian Posted 2:19 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
lorax Posted 4:46 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
PermieWriter Posted 4:54 am
29 Sep 2008
If I were going veggie, I would be sure to include small bits of animal protein (humane, sustainable, of course) every so often so that your internal flora that break the stuff down don't all die off. I've known some strict veggie friends who got really sick after eating a restaurant or potluck meal that contained some animal product, and it was no fun at all. I don't think it takes much to keep those enzymes, etc. active and you could save yourself much misery down the road.
Permalink
tboggia Posted 6:21 am
29 Sep 2008
I went on a 5 day, 300 mile bike trip, and by the end I wasn't craving meat, I was craving beans!
Permalink
achoirguy Posted 8:41 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
achoirguy Posted 8:41 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
curlytoplaura Posted 9:02 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
whirledwidepeas Posted 9:09 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
rstanek Posted 9:31 am
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
karimetzger Posted 3:49 pm
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
helenheathfield Posted 5:19 pm
29 Sep 2008
Permalink
archigeek Posted 2:13 am
30 Sep 2008
Permalink
hikerreese Posted 2:19 am
30 Sep 2008
You can't go wrong with Indian food either. Try some of the Molly Katzen cookbooks like the Moosewood Cafe. I think that is the name.
Permalink
sullivanbruno Posted 5:21 am
30 Sep 2008
Personally, I'm a huge fan of Isa Chandra Moscowitz's "Vegan with a Vengeance." There are definitely some ingredients in there that will be new to a non-vegan, as I was when I bought it, but I was able to find the majority of them in Bismarck, North Dakota, which is where I lived when I bought the cookbook originally. I could be wrong about this, but my thought is that if you can find it in Bismarck, you can find it nearly anywhere. And it's not stereotypical "healthy" food -- there are recipes for gravy, some pan-fried foods, and great baked treats.
Permalink
treefrog Posted 9:55 pm
30 Sep 2008
If you're a food adventurer, you'll like this site. great photos, mostly simple, healthy meals and the author provides lots of options to change ingredients around to suit your own tastes. I'm an omnivore and the site has been a great help in cooking for veggie friends and days when I'm out of ideas!
Permalink
CyberBrook Posted 3:16 am
03 Oct 2008
In the extensive links section, there are various veg recipe sites, including VegCooking.com
Good luck, enjoy the process, and savor your positive choice to help your health, animal welfare, and the environment.
Permalink
VasuMurti Posted 4:26 am
03 Oct 2008
Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth. Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth. However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk deer.
It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called "canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals. A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of magnesia content. Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia. It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their prey, and reach the nutritious marrow.
Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book, The Naked Ape: "It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding patterns."
In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read: "...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful vegetarians, rather like chimps or gorillas. The popular image of the murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves."
Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth--showing that they were destined to deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the vegetable kingdom...
"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and by condiments.
"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse.
"I remember taking some medical students into a slaughterhouse. They were about as hardened people as you could meet. After seeing the animals slaughtered that day in the slaughterhouse, not one of them could eat the meat that evening."
Author R.H. Weldon writes in No Animal Food:
"The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man can take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with a carnivorous instinct, but the very thought of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger, he will eat fruit to gratify taste."
As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that: "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." More recently, Wiiliam S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens concluded: "Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease."
Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that killing animals for food is natural:
"This is quite an admirable argument. It explains practically everything; why we do not eat each other, except under conditions of unusual stress; why we may kill certain other animals (they are, in the order of nature, food for us); even why we should be kind to pets and try to help miscellaneous wildlife (they are not naturally our food). There are some problems with the idea that an order of nature determines which species are food for us, but an examination of human history indicates the broad outlines of just such an order, though inhibitions against eating certain species may vary from culture to culture.
"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it justifies hunting. The distinction between hunting and animal husbandry probably seems rather fine to the man in the street, or even to your typical rule-utilitarian moral philosopher. The distinction, however, is obvious to an ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature, then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature.
"When one species of animal preys on another in nature, it only preys on a very small proportion of the total species population. Obviously, the predator species relies on its prey for its continued survival. Therefore, to wipe the prey species out through overhunting would be fatal. In practice, members of such predator species rely on such strategies as territoriality to restrict overhunting and to insure the continued existence of its food supply.
"Moreover, only the weakest members of the prey species are the predator's victims: the feeble, the sick, the lame, or the young accidentally separated from the fold. The life of the typical zebra is usually placid, even in lion country; this kind of violence is the exception in nature, not the rule.
"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist. The philosopher is free to argue that there is no moral difference between hunting and slaughter, but he cannot invoke nature as a defense of this idea.
"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task by the larger community for their killing of animals? Hunters usually react to such criticism by replying that if hunting is wrong, then meat-hunting must be wrong as well. The hunter is certainly right on one point--the larger community is hypocritical to object to hunting when it consumes the flesh of domesticated animals. If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be meat from a hunted animal."
In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:
"Killing an animal is in itself a troubling act. It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat we would all be vegetarians. There may be exceptions to that general rule, but it is true that most people prefer not to inquire into the killing of the animals they eat.
"Very few people ever visit a slaughterhouse; and films of slaughterhouse operations are rarely shown on television...Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.
"If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?"
Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."
Dr. Milton Mills' "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating," http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, http://www.pcrm.org , argue persuasively that the optimal diet for humanity is a vegan diet. However, even if humans really are omnivores and not frugivores, my friend Mareechi Duvvuuri (another Hindu-American!) who once studied sports medicine, pointed out that the diet of natural omnivores is mostly (80 percent) plant food.
Permalink
Tai Haku Posted 6:55 am
07 Oct 2008
First you lump us with chimps, gorillas and other primates as frugivores based on anatomy. A) Gorillas have proportionally more massive intestinal tracts than us (hence that big pot belly) and B) Chimps are skilled and efficient hunters that work together frequently to kill small primates for food and hence are also omnivores.
Then you compare human anatomy to that of pure carnivores which is a rather unfair comparative standard. The other widespread mammalian omnivores in the world are the pigs so they would be a fairer comparison and guess what pig anatomy is very similar to humans.
The murderous ape australopithecine reference is I believe a reference to the now discredited bloody ape theory which suggested australopithecines were often canabilistic killers (based incorrectly on what turned out to be evidence on a number of fossils of leopard predation).
I have no problem with the vegetarian lifestyle at all - my fiancee is one and I've cut most of the meat from my diet - just don't misrepresent the science
My tip for those trying and struggling with an environmentalism-based switch to vegetarianism would be to allow yourself the odd-bit of eco-friendly meat (eg pasture raised cattle or locally reared chicken).
Permalink
VasuMurti Posted 10:34 am
07 Oct 2008
"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."
---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation
One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.
A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.
A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.
One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.
Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.
Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.
"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."
---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York
Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.
The world Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, hadock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.
The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.
Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.
Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.
The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.
The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.
33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.
"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."
---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.
Permalink