Global Hunger and Meat-based Diet

[HelpingHands]

The Eucharist is our Divine food, of course. :angel1:

 

[Scanner]

I live an Atkin’s lifestyle for my health so this topic interests me a lot. An Atkin’s diet is basically a caveman diet (for those of you who beleive in cavemen so this may be lost here but humor me) - meat, cheeses, vegetables, and berries. Part of the operational theory of the Atkin’s Diet is that our bodies have been thrust into an agrarian diet and or bodies haven’t had time to evolve to the foods we currently eat. Processed food has only been around about 90 years, about 5 or so generations - this is why we are seeing an explosion of diet related diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabesity.

What the above poster wrote is true - beef is much more nutrient dense than bread so if I am starving, I would much rather have a couple quarter pounders than 8 hamburger buns. Some peanut butter would be good too, not to totally discount vegetables.

Vegans absolutely detest what Atkins has done to change American’s way they view food, so much so that a group became empowered against it - The Physicians for Responsible Medicine - a group of liberal MD’s who advocated vegetarianism and a food gov’t food pyramid diet.

Sorry. . .

Back to the subject - I beleive we are overlooking 3/4 of our earth’s surface - the ocean. Fish farming is growing as an industry and I do try to get my protein in the form of fish - so I’ll take a big hunk of salmon, thank you and pass on the Wonder or Wheat-flavored bread at our supermarkets. I had some fish-farmed salmon this morning for breakfast - of course, food coloring is an issue in that but I do my best. I hope I just pee it out.

To the topic of social justice, this is complicated. I know good Catholics think charity is the answer to poverty and starvation and charity definitely has it’s place, like absolutely necessary during the Tsunami disaster.

However, charity as a long term solution is not a form of social justice - it only increases dependence and creates a unilateral relationship.

The answer to this question of starvation lies in a combination of initatives:

1. Bringing 3rd world nations into the industrial and modern world economy so they can feed themselves by creating wealth where there was no wealth before.
2. Population control (oh, boy. . .popping Tums on this one)
3. Overthrowing totalitarian regimes where the gov’ts serve the governors, not the people.
4. Introducing more technology into grain and meat production.

Having the world go vegetarian is neither healthy or realistic. I believe many of us are genetically descended as hunter/gatherers and we should strive to eat like this

(I am a good hunter for the deal at the supermarket - my wife, she’s the gatherer. It’s a guy/gal thing )

 

[springbreeze]

Petergee:

There are three main fallacies with this article.

1. A pound of bread is not by any measure equivalent to a pound of beef and they cannot be swapped. The beef contains far more energy per pound, as well as various other nutrients not found in bread, and some not found in any non-meat food. (My doctor has ordered me to eat at least one serve of meat every day because of my tendency to anemia.)
2. As Gandhi I think said, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.” There is plenty of food, both meat and vegetables, to go around, just that the injustices of our economic and political sydstems prevent some people from getting their share of it. And no, the world’s population is NOT exploding. Even the UN predicts the world’s population will never double again, and within 50 years world population will be FALLING.
3. As mentioned, most meat animals worldwide are raised on non-arable land.

Dear Peter

You are right that meat is nutritious, we don’t need as much of it as we think we need though. A serving of meat as recommended by dieticians, is alot smaller than the great hunk of meat most people serve up for themselves. There are different nutrients found in bread than meat and there are quorn based products that are higher in iron and protein than meat.

You are also right when you say that there is more than enough arable land and crop production to feed the entire world, it’s just all in the wrong place and also western countries import meats for production of processed meat foods from other countries around the world, that would be better using their land to grow crops.

You are right when we talk about population in that this world was created to sustain all life God creates; it is us who have mismananged the resources of the world to live a high consumption material lifestyle.

Greed of the few to the sufferance of the majority, greed for power, greed for food, greed for resources, greed for oil, greed for money, greed for sex, greed for material possessions, greed , greed , greed!

The way we farm and the way the third world countries are being led…greed!

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[jman507]

geezerbob:

Are snide remarks really necessary? :tsktsk:

Ok Ok, if we solely used our agriculture products for food, our agriculture industry would be crippled. We have plenty of food to feed people, the problem is more if we can get it to the people in need, either due to political obsticals or natural obsticals, like natural disasters or lack of roads in the mountains. We have farmers who are paid not to farm feilds, while part of that is due to better land management, it does not indicate a lack of food. But the area now where agriculture is making innovations to keep farming profitable is to make the crops into hundreds of non-food products, many of these pioneered by George Washington Carver.

 

[HelpingHands]

Regarding fish farming,
I’ve heard that a lot of antibiotics used in this. Also, some other enviornmentally unfriendly things. I’ve been avoiding farmed fish because of this. Does anyone know more about the fish farming practises? Someone was telling me of some of the negatives of fish farming the other day in the fish section of the supermarket. It sounded pretty bad.

 

[springbreeze]

Dear friends

Some articles on Fish Farming

http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/fishbacklash.cfm

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2465/is_5_31/ai_76285487

http://www.organicconsumers.org/toxicarchive.htm

http://www.vjel.org/editorials/2002S/labriola.html

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-27642-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/02/030210080251.htm

The thing that needs clarifying is that it’s ok to eat all foods, the problem and moral dilemmas lie in how we are farming them.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[puzzleannie]

HelpingHands:

Dear PuzzleAnnie,
I don’t fall into the catagory of a ‘no meater’ or ‘pro meater’. In fact, tonight I made homemade vegetarian pizza, with beef stir-fry on the side. So, I’m no ideologue, by any means. But, I do believe in good stewardship of the Earth and think that we could all do better.

I am not an idealogue either, especially on this topic, but I was responding to someone who told me I was off-topic. since original post was directed at meat-eating in general, and did not differentiate in how resources were used to raise, process and distribute the meat, I simply offered another point of view. I am simply astounded by the emotion aroused anytime this topic comes up. the issue of stewardship if the Earth is related to, but subordinate to, stewardship if the people who inhabit her.

 

[Scanner]

Theresa,

Very excellent point - it’s about the farming, not what we choose to eat. I know fish farming is not the pancea for protein but the industry is only at the beginning stages (and thus chock full of problems as one poster pointed out).

I am a bio. major originals and I have to say I am annoyed when ecologists publish problems without offering solutions. The essays above to me, taken in context, are just an attack upon the Big, Bad, Fish Farmers from the “liberal proliteriate.” Instead of attacking fish farmers, we need to help them. 2% of our population feeds the other 98% and yet we want to villify that 2%.

I think the next big step will be huge platforms, like oil platforms only bigger, out in the ocean that farm fish (ocean variety of course). Far enough from land, the ecological damage they do may be reduced to nil in the “desert” of the ocean.

But farmed fish (or beef) is never as good as wild - the loss of the Omega-3 Fatty Acids is not good for our cardiovascular health. We will need to genetically alter the fish to produce this or supplement.

It’s a tradeoff - we either return to a hunter/gatherer society or find ways to study our health needs, what our bodies are meant to eat from a scientific standpoint, and ways to feed our population nutritiouis foods.

I am not looking to break any longevity records. I want to live to be 76, my life is about half over. I just want to live as healthily as I can up til that time.

 

[vern_humphrey]

jman507:

Ok Ok, if we solely used our agriculture products for food, our agriculture industry would be crippled. We have plenty of food to feed people, the problem is more if we can get it to the people in need, either due to political obsticals or natural obsticals, like natural disasters or lack of roads in the mountains. We have farmers who are paid not to farm feilds, while part of that is due to better land management, it does not indicate a lack of food. But the area now where agriculture is making innovations to keep farming profitable is to make the crops into hundreds of non-food products, many of these pioneered by George Washington Carver.

You are right – there is no lack of food in the world. Not producing or eating meat wouldn’t get a single mouthfull of food to the people who are hungry. Hunger is due to inability to get food to the people who need it. And that is often due to brutal and oppressive governments or warring factions who use hunger as a weapon.

 

[Erich]

HelpingHands:

It takes sixteen pounds of grain to produce a pound of feedlot beef. It takes only one pound of grain to produce a pound of bread.

So, I can either eat 16 pounds of grain, or 1 pound of beef (and, if I eat the pound of beef, I can also get other nutrients not found in bread, and some not found in any non-meat food). Personally, I might be able to eat a pound of beef in one meal. But, I sincerely doubt I could eat 16 pounds of grain in one meal, however.

From an “intake” perspective, I fint it’s much more efficient to eat the pound of beef. Just think of the amount of “equivalent” food I’m getting!