What we eat doesn’t just affect our health—it affects the health of the planet. Two recent articles highlight serious food production problems and possible solutions.
Want to help improve the planet’s health? Eat less beef and more chicken. That’s the assessment of James Hamblin’s most recent piece for The Atlantic, “Meats: A Health Hierarchy.” He backs it up with some powerful numbers, like the fact that farming cattle produces about four times as much greenhouse gas as does poultry or fish. To explain the impact of this much greenhouse gas, Hamblin quotes Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group: “If every American stopped eating beef tomorrow and started eating chicken instead—which I don’t expect—that would be the equivalent of taking 26 million cars off the road.”
Greenhouse gases are just part of the problem. There is also the amount of resources that go into producing meat. According to Faber, more than half the water and grain consumed in the U.S. are consumed by the beef industry. Hamblin lays out a convincing argument for eating less beef, but stops short of advocating a vegetarian diet or even just giving up beef altogether for chicken. He also quotes Michael Pollan on the issue: “I don’t argue for a vegetarian utopia. I think meat has always been an important part of the human diet, and it’s very nutritious food. I think the problem is we eat too much of it.” You can read the entire article here.
Getting aquaculture right
A recent story on fish farming in National Geographic begins with a startling fact. The world now produces more farmed fish than beef. Growing demand for seafood is pushing many wild populations to the brink. In “Farming a Better Fish,” author Joel K. Bourne, Jr. states that aquaculture or fish farming currently produces “nearly half of all fish and shellfish consumed on Earth.”
This worries both environmentalists and consumers. Fish farming’s history is rife with stories of pollution and threats to both the environment and wild fish populations. But experts agree that aquaculture is not only here to stay, but must grow as an industry to help feed the planet. Bourne shows us some of the problems, but he also shares how some companies are getting it right. And because this is National Geographic, he does so in a visually stunning way. You can read the entire article here.
Both sound like excellent articles. Farming more fish sustainably is particularly important, I think. I’m not sure if much of the world will ever want to reduce its meat consumption, though (so many poor populations around the world immediately begin eating more meat once they become richer, which suggests there’s always going to be a demand), but certainly there are ways to raise it more humanely that produce better quality. BTW, I’m currently reading The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. This is the recent book that looks at the “research” that led some to declare saturated fat the devil, and says in fact the research was quite weak and didn’t necessarily show that at all. I’ve just started it, but thus far it’s an eye opener, and making a fairly persuasive case.
I’ve been eating beef only once or twice a month for the past couple of years. Not willing to give it up entirely (or pork or poultry or fish) but do have at least a couple of meatless meals a week. My original motivation was for my own health, but anything we can do for the environment, we need to do.