Food, obesity and famine issues, and a book review
This news prompted me to write something about food, in our daily lives and in the world. A report from the Red Cross, published Sept. 22, warns that
Obese people now outnumber the hungry globally, but hardship for the undernourished is increasing amid a growing food crisis
The numbers are incredible. 1.5 billion people are obese, and 925 million “only” are undernourished, according to that report. Obviously the famine issue is not as easy at it seems (or is it?), I believe that, the way the world works today, the change won’t happen by just clapping your hands.
It is, however, a powerful reminder that the way food is produced and distributed must be completely wrong. Of course, you could say that political, economic reasons are also prevalent in this situation. But why not start wondering how we could help change that, by looking at our everyday meals?
My vision is a short-sighted, poorly documented one. But reading that news actually resonates with my recent reflections about what we eat defining who we are.
My recent dealings with food
Food is just so normal in our daily lives (at least for us, in the developed and well-nourished world), that I guess not many people even wonder where it comes from. From what I know, it is even worse in America that in Europe. Processed foods, industrial farming, all of this is part of our daily lives and many couldn’t spend a day without it (be it a chicken wing or a bag of crisps or buttercakes).
Until a few months ago, I didn’t think about it either. I did my grocery shopping, tried to care about eating enough vegetables and fruits, double-checked the price of meat so that it would fit my student budget. We had meat, fish or eggs at almost every meal, we bought prepared foods, we often ate at the school cafeteria or had supermarket-bento dinners. In April, when I came back to Japan after the earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima power plant issue, I did my shopping as usual, with just an additional look at the origin of the foods (which, by the way, is a great way to learn about the geography of a country, and some kanjis on the way).
But a few weeks ago, during the school holidays season, on a very ordinary day, I stumbled upon a tiny sentence by a fashion blogger, who basically said that she had stopped eating meat because she just couldn’t trust the food chain enough about that. She pointed to some vegan website with delicious-looking, animal-product-free recipes.
What? Don’t tell me YOU turned vegetarian? I’m not here to be lectured about saving animals!
Okay, so before you all flee (or maybe you’re already gone?), may I remind you that I have been educated in a Chinese-French environment. Peking duck, boeuf tartare, cheese, anyone? I love the taste of a good roasted chicken, or a steak, or even just hard-boiled eggs as snacks. Or, for the latter, loved.
But my subconscious has, well, subconsciously registered the numerous environmentally-friendly messages that are spread in so many media now. Movies like HOME, information about how we should eat less meat because it’s just not necessary for our bodies to eat that much.
So I’ve just been wondering. Because of the Fukushima crisis, I’ve been (kind of) careful about my food anyway, so now was a good time to get more information about it: how it’s produced, what chemicals are injected into it, etc. I mean, I’m not avoiding radioactivity just to turn around and eat hormones and antibiotics! And with a history of iron deficiency, I wanted to know how to optimize my daily intake. Plus the vegan recipes really looked delicious and nutritious and healthy.
Long story short, I read a book, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, an American who had the idea, when he learned he would be a father, that away from any consideration about eating dead animals (corpses) or moral principles, he just wanted to know what he was going to feed his son, and what values he would transmit to him though the food he will offer to his baby.
The terrible truth (but aren’t all truths kind of terrible?)
I hate to say it, but I felt pretty stupid afterwards. I’ve always been repelled by the veganism extremists, who sometimes fail to appear anything else but crazy (Frenchie note: I’m not sure of the grammar of this sentence). But I actually learned some stuffs, or just opened my eyes to it, thanks to that book.
It’s a great book, with its flaws, but these flaws are quickly overcome by the fact that, although most books dealing with “the meat issue” are either pro-veganism or totally crushing vegans, this one allows a slightly more objective point of view. It has its own agenda, for sure, and the author has finally decided to turn vegan; but the book offers some insight on the “family farms”, who have a solid will to make the animal life as good as possible, and who try to make everything until the slaughtering stage a “humane” process. One great resource for this sort of position is Farm Forward. They don’t want you to turn vegetarian or vegan; they’re just educating people in eating less, but better raised, animal meat.
It actually opened my eyes on the fact that fishing is at least a horrible as the rest of the intensive, industrial farming. It also opened my eyes on the fact that even though eating animal products don’t directly require killing animals, it does nevertheless involve some amount of torture and unnatural processes to, for example, make the layer chickens produce more eggs or to force the cow to produce more milk.
The environmental and health issue
Although most of my information was related to the US, I believe it’s important to take their situation into account and, even though it’s maybe not a generalized situation, it shows to what extremes the intensive farming industry can go.
Other that the simple consideration of animal welfare, there are many other issues. One burning issue nowadays is climate change. Another one is famine, as I mentioned at the beginning. A third one is the health issue.
It is known that raising animals is costly in terms of food and energy — the numbers vary, but basically it takes a lot of calories to produce just one calorie of meat. But the intensive farming industry shown in the many documents I’ve read also point out that it takes a lot of crop and cereals to feed these animals, because of the new agriculture processes: instead of letting them live on grass, the industry feeds the animals with cereals because it allows them to save on space (grass = space, cereal = small boxes OK), and probably time too because I guess it makes the animals grow bigger and faster?
In the US, it also seems that the land taken by this intensive farming are as good as dead in terms of urban and living environment. Ponds of animal manure, tons of carbon dioxide and other gases, plus the chemicals and medicine: that makes an explosive mix.
Of course, the medicine is more than necessary, because the animals raised that way just can’t survive without antibiotics. And hormones, to make them grow faster. And their genetic heritage is so twisted that most turkeys and chickens that we eat today can’t live more that a few weeks. They can’t even stand, sometimes, it seems.
So to sum it up: less intensive animal farming = maybe more crops for PEOPLE instead of suffering and ill animals? Maybe less antibiotic-resistant bacteria? Maybe less carbon dioxide and wasted energy? Maybe.
And I’m not even talking about eating less or better.
After reading the book, I admit I couldn’t eat meat for a week. And still today, almost a month after, I try to avoid meat when possible, and definitely stopped eating eggs as afternoon snacks.
But I’m not a vegetarian (yet), much less vegan. (I love my leather bags and shoes too much.) (Okay forget what I just wrote.)
Nonetheless, I think I understand the issue better now, and I totally understand people who decide to be vegetarian or vegan. To me, trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat is a step towards a better world: if I can decrease the meat demand, even by a tiny bit, well it might be worth it. It’s not a question of animal welfare only; it’s who we want to be, as a whole, as humanity. Is it really necessary for me to eat that badly cooked chicken, just for the sake of having some meat on the plate? And besides, if eating less meat means eating less radioactive beef, less antibiotics and less hormones, all the better!
I’m not ready to embrace veganism. But I’m thinking about the issue everyday now. Every time I see food. Every meal. Every mouthful. I’m eating. Millions of people are not. What can I do to help?
