My Diet

I realized recently that I have not blogged yet about my diet. Since my diet choices are based on my politics, it seems appropriate that I do.

A year ago or so (maybe more, I do not remember), I decided officially that I was going to cut back on meat. For a while I had been see-sawing between effective vegetarianism and serious meat-eating with nothing guiding me. That worked at the time because I had no moral or ethical reasons for going either way.

As I learned more about food production in the US, I saw the effects of our dietary choices. First, I started consuming "free-range" eggs as often as I could. This change stemmed from my new understanding of the conditions of battery cage chickens, including the large amounts of antibiotics and hormones that are injected into them to keep them from getting sick (which is far more likely due to the unsanitary conditions in the battery cage operation).

More than that though, I learned about the industry behind our beef consumption. In fact, the meat industry is an enormous contributor to green house gasses and becoming a vegetarian is an easy way to decrease your carbon footprint. I also learned about the scale of pollution produced at the feed lots in the middle of our country and the conditions animals are kept in to feed our enormous appetite for beef.

The conclusion I came to is that our meat consumption is far higher than needs to be and far higher than is sustainable. This is possible because the prices we pay do not take into account the impact we are having. Introductory level economics courses will tell you that markets are ineffective at including environmental costs into the prices of goods (without regulation). Therefore, we are often underpaying, and therefore over-consuming, things that have serious negative environmental impacts. Meat is a perfect example of this.

I firmly believe that if we included the true cost of meat production, including the costs of pollution and greenhouse gasses, prices would be higher and consumption would be lower. People would realize they do not need to eat meat twice or three-times a day.

In the face of all this, I realized that I needed to decrease my meat consumption even before the market found a way to accurately price meat. I first cut back to eating meat no more than once a day. That was not as challenging for me since I was not eating meat for dinner. My next step was to cut back to eating meat no more than three times in one week. My final step has been to cut back to meat no more than once a week, and when I do I try to get it from somewhere that is raising the meat in a way that is sustainable and treats the animals more humanely.

So far, I have found it pretty easy to cut back to this level. (It helps that I have someone who can cook - and teach me how to cook - great vegetarian dishes.) Once you start trying, you find lots of things to substitute for meat. And when you do eat meat, it feels like a treat.

As you can tell, I do not believe that we all need to become vegetarian. I do believe however that we should think about how often we eat meat and the effects that has. It seems in our country that we feel we should eat meat at every meal as a right. There is no legitimate reason for this. We could all cut back and still lead healthy (maybe more healthy) lives and allow for our meat to be raised sustainably and humanely. As my experience has proved, cutting back on meat is not a major sacrifice. You still eat meat, but less frequently.

Now, in truth the same logic could apply to my egg consumption. I feel that free-range is marginally better than battery-cage. However, the bigger problem is overall consumption of eggs. I almost always eat at least one egg per day, which means I am definitely contributing to a level of overall consumption that is likely just as unsustainable as for meat. I will probably need to deal with this sometime if I want to really tell myself that I am being consistent.

How about this, I'll cut back on eggs if you cut back on meat? We'll do this together.