dear friends,
i know that in the past (sadly i know less about the present for many of you), most of us have orbited, if not entered, the vegetarian universe. why you ask? my personal reasons include living next door to madeleine cohen whilst i was learning to cook, the general grossness of raw chicken skins, and wild fears of "bad meat." however, as i learned the other day, in a sense all meat is "bad meat."
this judgment call of badness is related to the ratio of foodstuffs required to produce meat. it takes approx. 16 pounds of edibles (i'd say mostly grain) to produce 1 pound of meat. those are 16 pounds of food that could be consumed by other human beings on our rapidly populating, overheating, justin bieber-crazed planet. (did you know justin bieber is canadian?) instead, we feed perfectly good food to cows to produce less food in the form of meat.
don't think i don't have the bacon cravings, or that i don't eagerly give in to them. but just as an informative, fact-spreading, non-coercive, apolitical discussion of ideas, i thought i'd trot out the ratios and give us a little food for thought.
i know that in the past (sadly i know less about the present for many of you), most of us have orbited, if not entered, the vegetarian universe. why you ask? my personal reasons include living next door to madeleine cohen whilst i was learning to cook, the general grossness of raw chicken skins, and wild fears of "bad meat." however, as i learned the other day, in a sense all meat is "bad meat."
this judgment call of badness is related to the ratio of foodstuffs required to produce meat. it takes approx. 16 pounds of edibles (i'd say mostly grain) to produce 1 pound of meat. those are 16 pounds of food that could be consumed by other human beings on our rapidly populating, overheating, justin bieber-crazed planet. (did you know justin bieber is canadian?) instead, we feed perfectly good food to cows to produce less food in the form of meat.
don't think i don't have the bacon cravings, or that i don't eagerly give in to them. but just as an informative, fact-spreading, non-coercive, apolitical discussion of ideas, i thought i'd trot out the ratios and give us a little food for thought.
justin is clearly contemplating the ramifications of a meat-based diet.
-the statistics mentioned are accessible through mark bittman's new york times column: http://bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/
-the statistics mentioned are accessible through mark bittman's new york times column: http://bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/
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