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WHY IT’S ONLY RATIONAL TO RATION MEAT
Submitted by KAT on Fri, 09/21/2007 - 3:04pm.
One of the more novel cookbooks in our collection is a little World War II vintage number called Cooking Without Meat. Published in 1943, it begins:
WHEN THERE IS NO MEAT
Doing with little meat, one of the necessities of wartime, means a drastic change in the eating habits of most North Americans, a change many resent and most cooks deplore. For it is true that the average meal (luncheon or dinner) is planned around the meat dish. Not only that, but the rest of the meal usually receives less attention, both in preparation and eating, and is often practically obscured in meat gravy with the result that even the flavor of vegetables is masked by the odor and savor of meat.
Not surprising, then, that meatless meals are a problem. The cook is left without the customary high spot in her menu, and foods that before received little attention must now stand on their own merits. This is not all tragedy, however. Other foods worthy of acquaintance have distinctive and subtle flavors which frequently go unnoticed in competition with the dominating taste of meat. And still other delectable foods are seldom served in meat-eating households, a privation no lover of good food would knowingly endure.
So if steaks and chops have left your table and a new cooking era confronts you, set out with anticipation to explore a new realm of gastronomic wonders. There are many pleasant surprises ahead for you and your family.
Faced with the complexities and restrictions of a rationed larder, you may be inclined to be skeptical about the joys of war-time cooking. Naturally, it means considerable readjustment, but it can be a game, a battle of wits. By accepting your limitations as a challenge, you will find increased satisfaction in the preparation of palatable meals.
Back then, life during wartime meant enduring all kinds of shortages. Ironically, it was the post-World War II surplus of petro-chemicals that fueled the rise of industrial agriculture in America, as Michael Pollan explains in The Omnivore’s Dilemma:
The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when the huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over to making chemical fertilizer. After the war the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America’s forests with the surplus chemical, to help out the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: Spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on poison gases developed for the war) is the product of the government’s effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As the Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, “We’re still eating the leftovers of World War II.”
So, thanks to our military-industrial-fueled food chain, food rationing is a thing of the past (although we’re reportedly running low on bullets.) America’s positively marinating in meat. A food shortage is inconceivable in a land that produces enough food to supply every man, woman and child with 3900 calories a day—nearly double what the average person actually needs.
Whether you regard this uber-efficient system of food production as a plus or a minus depends on whether you’re a multinational conglomerate that profits from this glut, or just a no-name glutton. What’s clear, though, is that the average American actually ate better during the supposed deprivations of World War II than most of us do now; between cutting back on meat, and harvesting all those fresh, homegrown veggies from their victory gardens, Americans had a far healthier diet then--and, not coincidentally, a lower incidence of disease.
Now we’re importing our meat-centric diet, and the diseases it breeds, to the rest of the world, resulting in what the World Health Organization has dubbed the “globesity” epidemic. Excessive meat consumption is exacerbating global warming, too, because livestock production turns out to be a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.
And as global warming worsens weather conditions such as droughts and floods, food production all over the world is in jeopardy. But just as we’ve figured out that we affluent nations need to eat less meat, meat consumption is skyrocketing in newly prosperous developing nations, to the consternation of climate change experts. A recent article in the venerable British medical journal the Lancet makes “the case for restricting production and consumption of red meat:”
Given the projected increases in global livestock production and in associated greenhouse-gas emissions if policies do not change, urgent attention needs to be paid to finding ways of reducing the demand for animal products and the energy intensity of their production…
…the prime objective must be to reduce consumption of animal products in high-income countries, and thus lower the ceiling consumption level to which low-income and middle-income countries would then converge…
… the urgent task of curtailing global greenhouse-gas emissions necessitates action on all major fronts. For the world's higher-income populations, greenhouse-gas emissions from meat-eating warrant the same scrutiny as do those from driving and flying, especially in view of the great warming potential of methane in the short-to-medium term.
Of course, being a medical journal, the Lancet also emphasizes the many health benefits of eating less red meat. But it’s kind of a moot point, because if we can’t reign in our greenhouse gas emissions, our collective goose is cooked, anyway. Uncle Sam’s asleep at the wheel—and he wouldn’t dream of asking us to curb our carbon footprint, anyway, whether by carpooling, say, or skipping the steak. Because, you know, that would be un-American.
But that’s no excuse for the rest of us to remain in a carbon-induced coma. Nature is asking us, nicely, to change our wasteful ways before it’s too late. So you can choose to change now, or you can have change thrust upon you later, when we’ve reached the point of no return. To paraphrase a 70’s margarine mantra, it’s not nice to fuel Mother Nature.
When you look to take this blog live I hope that will consider that having a one sided conversation is akin to what our friends on the RT do.
Where the hell is the balance?
I'm so glad you got to go to farm country for the first time in your life but some of us liberals have been on the farm our entire life.
Maybe just Maybe there is another side of this debate other than the writings of people you like.
OG,
I have been reading EL almost every day for the last three months and I find the commentary incredibly helpful and insightful. I don't understand your point(s)? What debate are you refering to? What's the other side? If you have another side, state it. I believe that's the reason good blogs have the ability to leave comments. Every blog I read has a point of view and the readers can express their own through comments. Please make your case for or against whatever it is you are for or against.
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