A long time ago, in our galaxy, in fact on our planet, the most inconvenient truth of all – if you were part of the Church aristocracy in particular – was that the Earth was neither flat nor the centre of the universe. Many theologians had bolstered their case on the delusion that Earth held a supremely divine place in the universe, and thus, by implication they elevated their place in this dimension.
By the same token, we live in a world where we have somehow come to believe that the only way to get from A to B is in a vehicle with an engine that conforms to the combustion template. So it runs on fossil fuels etc etc. Of course there are plenty of options we human beings can substitute to before we even begin to nag and queue for a new engine engineering. I am not advocating, not in the slightest, that research into alternative engines not be made our greatest priority. But I am saying there are some commonsensical truths that we can focus on in the mean time.
Some years ago I read a book called Diet For a New America. Even then the writer posited the common sense behind a vegetarian diet. Even the most basic of these form a cogent argument for human beings to change their habits. A more vegetarian based diet is healthier. Is a vegetarian diet is also cheaper compared to meats etc, and surprise surprise, if more people follow a vegetarian diet, we can decrease the strain on global natural resources a great deal.
A world with more vegetarians naturally implies far fewer MacDonald’s, KFC and other fast food-junk food outlets. Wouldn’t this be a good thing. There must be something wrong with our thinking if there are 31 000^ MacDonald’s restaurants in 120 territories. Americans eat 550 million Big Macs a year, 17 each second, and have an obese population as large as the population of Spain. Being fat is directly correlated to being unhealthy.
It is incredibly difficult to become overweight on a largely vegetarian diet. Refined foods, including produce in the form of bread are the exception.
In South Africa fuel oil prices have translated into higher food prices (as is the case elsewhere in the world. Over the past year the greatest price increases have been in meats:
Whole frozen chicken: +30.2%*
Pork chops per pack: +46.5%
Sausage: +31%
Milk (long life full cream): +29.3%
Maize: +22%
Tomatoes: -4.5%
Bananas: -20%
This is the most inconvenient truth of all. The energy it takes to get meat from the field to the dinner table is disproportionate, to put it mildly. It costs us not only fuel, but also massive quantities of water, medicines – including antibiotics – must be made available to massive herds. Then – and people simply don’t imagine this aspect – once the animal has been transformed from quadruped to plastic wrapped packs, these have to be kept refrigerated until sold. This includes long haul shipping and trucking with constant refrigeration. The energy expenditure here is also gargantuan.
For anyone who has eaten beef in countries like South Korea, Britain or South Africa, the differences are noticeable. Beef in the first two countries are often imported, frozen and lose a great deal of national value. This beef also has a bland taste and a leathery texture. Even in South African supermarkets, although beef tastes a lot better than in countries where meat is imported, it is a lot less tasty than beef (or other meats) eaten on the farms where these animals live and range (outdoors) in herds.
This means that not only does the refrigeration cause the quality and taste of meat tissues to deteriorate, it also discolors and must otherwise be prevented from rotting. Thus colorants and other additives are applied to these animal tissues to prevent them from turning blue or purples.
It has also been pointed out on numerous occasions that, based on our dental and intestinal design, human beings are not primarily carnivores, and yet the proportion of meat in the average diet reflects a predilection for meat. Our bodies in fact are designed for a diet that is mostly (perhaps as much as 70%) based on non-animal foods.
Thus a simple way to measure the health of the systems on Earth is to connect these to the health of the human species that governs these systems. How healthy are you? What proportion of good food do you consume? How much is water, how much is junk? Because to the extent that we are capable to intoxicating our own bodies, we will necessarily rape and ruin the environment, and the results for ourselves and the organic systems will invariably be the same. Cancers, heart attacks, breakdowns of some or other sort.
This brings us to the bottom line. The question we are faced with when considering all the inconvenient truths, including those that apply pertinently to ourselves is:
By the same token, we live in a world where we have somehow come to believe that the only way to get from A to B is in a vehicle with an engine that conforms to the combustion template. So it runs on fossil fuels etc etc. Of course there are plenty of options we human beings can substitute to before we even begin to nag and queue for a new engine engineering. I am not advocating, not in the slightest, that research into alternative engines not be made our greatest priority. But I am saying there are some commonsensical truths that we can focus on in the mean time.
Some years ago I read a book called Diet For a New America. Even then the writer posited the common sense behind a vegetarian diet. Even the most basic of these form a cogent argument for human beings to change their habits. A more vegetarian based diet is healthier. Is a vegetarian diet is also cheaper compared to meats etc, and surprise surprise, if more people follow a vegetarian diet, we can decrease the strain on global natural resources a great deal.
A world with more vegetarians naturally implies far fewer MacDonald’s, KFC and other fast food-junk food outlets. Wouldn’t this be a good thing. There must be something wrong with our thinking if there are 31 000^ MacDonald’s restaurants in 120 territories. Americans eat 550 million Big Macs a year, 17 each second, and have an obese population as large as the population of Spain. Being fat is directly correlated to being unhealthy.
It is incredibly difficult to become overweight on a largely vegetarian diet. Refined foods, including produce in the form of bread are the exception.
In South Africa fuel oil prices have translated into higher food prices (as is the case elsewhere in the world. Over the past year the greatest price increases have been in meats:
Whole frozen chicken: +30.2%*
Pork chops per pack: +46.5%
Sausage: +31%
Milk (long life full cream): +29.3%
Maize: +22%
Tomatoes: -4.5%
Bananas: -20%
This is the most inconvenient truth of all. The energy it takes to get meat from the field to the dinner table is disproportionate, to put it mildly. It costs us not only fuel, but also massive quantities of water, medicines – including antibiotics – must be made available to massive herds. Then – and people simply don’t imagine this aspect – once the animal has been transformed from quadruped to plastic wrapped packs, these have to be kept refrigerated until sold. This includes long haul shipping and trucking with constant refrigeration. The energy expenditure here is also gargantuan.
For anyone who has eaten beef in countries like South Korea, Britain or South Africa, the differences are noticeable. Beef in the first two countries are often imported, frozen and lose a great deal of national value. This beef also has a bland taste and a leathery texture. Even in South African supermarkets, although beef tastes a lot better than in countries where meat is imported, it is a lot less tasty than beef (or other meats) eaten on the farms where these animals live and range (outdoors) in herds.
This means that not only does the refrigeration cause the quality and taste of meat tissues to deteriorate, it also discolors and must otherwise be prevented from rotting. Thus colorants and other additives are applied to these animal tissues to prevent them from turning blue or purples.
It has also been pointed out on numerous occasions that, based on our dental and intestinal design, human beings are not primarily carnivores, and yet the proportion of meat in the average diet reflects a predilection for meat. Our bodies in fact are designed for a diet that is mostly (perhaps as much as 70%) based on non-animal foods.
Thus a simple way to measure the health of the systems on Earth is to connect these to the health of the human species that governs these systems. How healthy are you? What proportion of good food do you consume? How much is water, how much is junk? Because to the extent that we are capable to intoxicating our own bodies, we will necessarily rape and ruin the environment, and the results for ourselves and the organic systems will invariably be the same. Cancers, heart attacks, breakdowns of some or other sort.
This brings us to the bottom line. The question we are faced with when considering all the inconvenient truths, including those that apply pertinently to ourselves is:
Do you care?
Increasingly it seems that we no longer know how to differentiate between real need and inflamed appetites. Until we can assert what is really necessary, we will continue to fail to care for our world and ourselves.
^McDonald’s, wire agencies
*National Agricultural Marketing Council
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