Bittman on why Americans should eat at least 50% less meat
.jpg)
As a noob foodie, I've been trying to learn who is and isn't worth listening to. One common voice that routinely explains complex food issues in a digestible way (no pun intended), is Mark Bittman.
Bittman is a world renowned foodie, journalist and published authoritarian on all things gourmet. Known for his straightforward approach, Bittman tells us how it is in weekly New York Times column, The Minimalist, recipes or talks. On a recent splurge of TED.com talks, I found a dynamite one of Bittman discussing the pitfalls of the American diet and how that's contributed to the current status of the planet.
More specifically, Bittman discusses how Americans' diet consists of too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, and too little home cooking.
While I cannot do his descriptions and mannerisms justice, I can sum up the main points as to why Americans eat too much meat.
Don't we need to eat meat to be big and strong? According to Bittman, no. He says that there's no good reason for eating as much meat as we do; later, he adds that the average omnivore eats twice as much protein as the USDA recommends--which sums up to be a half pound of meet per week, which is what most eat per day.
We don't eat animal products for sufficient nutrition, we eat them for an odd form of malnutrition -- and it's killing us.
After addressing that every scientist acknowledges global warming to be real, Bittman notes that after energy production, livestock is the second biggest contributor to atmosphere-altering gases. Nearly one fifth of all greenhouse gas is generated by livestock production.
To suggest that Americans eat 50% less meat, it's not enough of a cut, but it's a start. It would seem absurd, but that's exactly what should happen. And what progressive people, forward-thinking people should be doing and advocating - along with the corresponding increase consumption of plants.
I've been writing about food, more or less omnivorously, one might even say indiscriminately would for 30 years. During that time, I've eaten and recommended eating just about everything. I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure. But I do think that for the benefit of everyone that the time has come to stop raising animals industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly.
I'm with Bittman when he says that we have to take matters into our own hands; not only by advocating a better diet for everyone - that's the hard part - but by improving our own. So less meat, less junk, more plants. This means different things for different diets; however, one thing is readily apparent: eating less meat and a more balanced diet - comparable to our ancestors 100 years ago - would improve our planet.
This should be both scary and reassuring to omnivores. Scary in that it requires an evaluation of the way they eat, but reassuring in that it doesn't demand a life overhaul of change and elimination.
Bittman makes some other excellent and less vegetarian-friendly points about the history of the way we ate a century ago compared to now in the 20 min video. If you want to hear the talk straight out of the horse's mouth, see Bittman's video after the jump.
