A Note About Veganism

As a follow-up to my post about vegetarianism, I should say a bit about veganism.

For those who don't know, there are various "levels" of vegetarianism. When I say, "vegetarian," I'm generally referring to a person who chooses not to eat meat of any kind, but may eat dairy and eggs. The technical term for this lifestyle is lacto-ovo vegetarianism. (That's what I am.) Some people - let's call them semi-vegetarians - choose to abstain from only some kinds of meat. Pescetarians, for example, eat fish but no other meats. Some people choose to eat fish and poultry but no mammal meat. Some people go beyond meat and reduce or eliminate their consumption of other animal products. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy, but no eggs. Ovo-vegetarians eat eggs but no dairy.

And then there's vegans. Vegans eat no animal products - no dairy, eggs, or even honey. That cuts out milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, sour cream, many baked goods (cake, cookies, and sweet breads generally have eggs and/or milk in them), and most prepared or processed foods you can think of. Lots of vegans take their philosophy beyond the dinner table and also abstain from using animal products like wool, leather, fur, and silk.

I am not vegan. However, the principles behind my choice to become vegetarian (see previous post) would logically lead me to a vegan, not just vegetarian, diet. Why am I not vegan? Well, being vegan is really hard.

I tried it for a few days last week. A friend of mine has decided to spend the semester experimenting with different ways people eat. (You can check out her adventures doing so on her blog.) Her first experiment was a half week of vegetarianism followed by a half week of veganism. As a vegetarian with a long-standing interest in veganism, and in an effort to be a good friend, I decided to join her in her experiment.

Now, I'm used to imposing unusual diet restrictions on myself. I've already got the no-meat part covered, I hardly ever buy milk or cheese, I don't do a whole lot of baking, and I had just run out of eggs. I figured going totally vegan wouldn't be too hard for me. I hadn't taken into account the fact that I'm a college student, living in a college student environment.

In my experience, a fairly significant part of a college student's diet comes from free food or food that is socially offered and eaten. During my three days as a vegan (that's right, I didn't last very long), I was offered pizza twice, cookies at least 3 times, and other dairy/egg-containing dishes fairly consistently. Eating is often a social act, and it's difficult to make choices that might make things uncomfortable or inconvenient for others. Some people get offended when you refuse the food they offer. Others may feel burdened by having to work around just one person's odd dietary restrictions. I sometimes feel reluctant to bring up my dietary choices so as not to impose.

Should I, though? I mean, if the real point of my food choices is about improving the impact of said choices, shouldn't I be as vocal and forthright about them as I can? Obviously I am just one person, and unless my views and example provide motivation for others to rethink their own choices, the "global impact" I'm making will remain extremely small. (More on this later.) Refusing food that is offered me provides opportunities to educate others on the global impact of our choices.

That said, there must be a balance. I don't want to offend my friends, and... sometimes I just want to eat that muffin, dang it! However, when I read things like, "[O]n average 990 litres of water are required to produce one litre of milk"(UN Report, as quoted in this article), I think seriously about going totally vegan.

Despite my best intentions for this whole global impact eating thing, I don't think I'm ready for that yet. But what I am going to try is to make my purchasing choices totally vegan and stick to plain old vegetarian for social eating. 

For those of us not ready to give up all animal products yet, stay tuned for the next post, in which I'll talk about how to make your choice of animal products as positive-impact as possible. 

Why I'm Vegetarian

As a student at a fairly conservative university, I never know how people are going to react when I tell them I'm vegetarian. New acquaintances sometimes make automatic assumptions about my character and my political leanings. There's a certain facial expression that I've come to interpret as an unspoken, "Oh, so you're one of those crazy PETA animal rights extremists, eh?" (I'm actually not.) Some people get defensive, as if just by making a personal choice on how to eat I am condemning them and their choices. (Wrong again.) I usually try to give a succinct, inoffensive answer somewhere along the lines of, "I'm vegetarian because of the impact of the meat industry on our world - on human health, on the environment, and especially on global poverty and inequality." More often than not, that explanation piques people's curiosity and they ask, "What impacts?" This post is just a peek into the answer I wish I could give every time.

First, human health. Numerous studies have linked over-consumption of animal products with the main causes of death in America - heart disease, cancer, and other diet-related diseases. (I won't go into the details, but I especially recommend the book The China Study on this subject.)  The effects of hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals used in meat production are also well-documented. In fact, 80% of all antibiotics used in the United States are used for non-therapeutic livestock treatment. That means meat producers regularly feed their animals low levels of antibiotics when they're not sick to combat the effects of the unsanitary conditions in which they are raised. You better believe that residues from those antibiotics remain in the animals' bodies... and show up in your steak. Exposure to antibiotics through the meat we eat reduces the effectiveness of medicines that could otherwise improve our health.

But eating meat affects more than just the eater. I assume that most people reading this blog are well aware of the dangers of environmental degradation and climate change. Any elementary school child can tell you that cars are polluting our air and causing global warming. But did you know that livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of transportation - cars, trucks, trains, boats, airplanes, etc - combined? And it's not just about emissions. The large-scale livestock production demanded by Western meat-based diets requires massive amounts of land. Pasture-land creation is a major cause of deforestation. For example, 70% of former rainforest land in the Amazon region is now used for grazing. Not to mention the amount of farmland it takes to produce the grain required to feed all of these factory-farmed animals. A full third of the earth's arable land is used to produce feed, not to feed humans, but to feed animals destined for slaughter. The erosion and soil degradation on pastureland and monoculture feed crop lands (usually corn or soybeans) is immense. All that eroded soil (not to mention pesticides, fertilizers, animal excrement, and antibiotics) ends up blocking our rivers, causing floods, and contaminating our water supply while leaving once fertile farmland barren. With every bite of hamburger, we're eating away future generations' ability to feed themselves.

But we need not wait for future generations to see the meat industry's impact on world food security. (This is really what I care most about.) The high demand for meat in developed nations aggravates extreme poverty and world hunger by reallocating the world's food resources from subsistence and survival for the poorest to luxury and waste for the richest. The meat industry manufactures scarcity by using massive amounts of land to produce feed for animals instead of humans. Depending on the estimate, it takes between 14 and 17 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef. If we stopped dumping more than 836 million tons of grain down the drain of livestock production each year, that alone would be more than adequate to feed the 1.4 billion humans living in extreme poverty. And that's just the grain, not including the 240 million tons of soy produced every year, most of which is also fed to livestock. Demand for meat in rich countries drives consolidation of land both in those countries and in the developing world, depriving small farmers of their only means of subsistence, forcing them into urban slums, and aggravating income inequality, extreme poverty, and hunger. In this world of abundance, there is no reason humans should still be plagued by starvation. When you choose what's for dinner, you have more than just an animal's life in your hands.

Now, I have to add a caveat. I'm not a total vegetarian. There are certain kinds of meat that I have no qualms about eating. This summer while I was in Tennessee my family had some venison in the freezer. Our neighbor hunted the deer locally and prepared it himself. The whole process involved none of the global impact issues of agribusiness livestock production. So, after mulling it over for a little while, I ate it. And it was delicious. But as a general rule I don't go out of my way to find meat I feel ok eating. To be honest, I don't even miss it that much.

So, to my meat-eating friends - do I condemn you? No. Meat is not in itself evil, and I understand its appeal. I don't think it's a sin to eat meat, and if eaten sparingly it shouldn't cause any harm. But as a culture we've taken it way too far. I just want people to educate themselves about the impacts of their choice to eat meat (as well as other consumption choices) and then act in accordance with what they think is important. As for myself, that means being vegetarian.

Note: the majority of the info in this post comes from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's 2006 Report, "Livestock's Long Shadow." Numbers may be slightly old, but telling nevertheless. Other info comes from the following sources, which I highly recommend:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning#.UGD7Tq6enec

http://www.alternet.org/story/137737/13_breathtaking_effects_of_cutting_back_on_meat

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/article/why-go-veg-learn-about-becoming-a-vegetarian/

http://www.psr.org/chapters/oregon/safe-food/industrial-meat-system.html

Diet for a Small Planet, Francis Lappe

What is Global Impact Eating?

Ever heard of global impact eating? No? That may be because I've just coined the term.

When you sit down to a meal - or run out the door with a pop-tart, as the case may be - what goes through your mind? Do you know what you're eating? Do you know how it got to your plate? Do you understand how and where it was grown, who planted and picked it, and what conditions they worked in? Do you know how your food was processed, what additives got mixed in, or what parts of the plant were taken out and dumped? Do you know how many miles your food traveled from seed to store shelf or who actually got the money when you bought it? How many hands and lives did your food touch on the way to your mouth?

"Global impact eating," as I see it, is concerned with all these questions as a way to explore that last one: how does the way we eat affect the world we live in and the people that inhabit it? Eating may seem simple, but the effects of our food choices shape our world. By what we choose to consume, we can choose to pollute our planet, degrade our soil, deepen social inequality, perpetuate world hunger, increase our health care bills, or build communities, reconnect to the earth, revitalize our health, and better understand ourselves and our environment. Eating is serious business; it's high time we recognize its impact.

Want to change the world? Well, so do I. So I'm looking first at the end of my fork.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I know everything about the impacts of our food choices. That's the point of this blog. I'm a college student who knows a little and cares a lot, and I'm trying to inform myself so I can bring my choices in line with the world I want to create. I hope this blog can be a resource for others who care about the global impact of their choices. I'll be learning about and reporting on things like the growing food movements (sustainable agriculture, local food, food justice, fair trade, etc) and global food issues like hunger and food security/access and how our choices affect them. I'll review great books, documentaries, articles and resources about food impact. I'll share tips, tricks, and tasty recipes for how to improve the impact of your choices in fun ways. And I'll share all this information with a very personal twist. After all, I'm not writing a textbook here. This is my story of how I am learning to eat.

I'm excited for the adventure, and I want you to share the journey with me! If you're interested in what I write, please respond! I want this blog to be a home for great discussion. Nothing makes me happier than sharing ideas with other people who care so that we can all learn together. Even if you disagree completely, I want to hear your opinion! And I am always looking to reach and learn from people who care, so spread the word! :)