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But let's not oversimplify and despair. Gains
can be made. A healthy diet can be achieved by a variety of (preferably
home or locally-grown) vegetables, and grains, supplemented by a very minor
amount of milk, eggs, and meat. My wife and I currently consume about 6
- 8 eggs, a half-gallon of milk, and about 2 pounds of (various) meat per
week. This for a lifestyle of heavy manual labor. And currently,
what we can't grow comes from a supermarket. The biggest improvement came
from eliminating "processed" foods. Buy as near to natural as you can
find. Not perfect, not cheap, not as good as we will need to do, but
I'm encouraged by the progress. We are fitter, and our grocery bills are
smaller, than a year ago, and I'm convinced that the improvements we've
made can be implemented by nearly everyone.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2007 4:24
PM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The
looming food crisis
At 03:53 PM 8/31/2007, you wrote:
>Yes, there is a
place for various animals in a sustainable society, both
>food and work
animals, and right and wrong ways to handle them. Where Lappe
>hits hard
is the factory farms where cattle and poultry are crammed into
>tight
quarters, force fed unnatural grains and antibiotics, and sent sick
>to
slaughter. We can do without the stinking, gargantuan feedlots of
the
>midwest, and feed millions more people. If the ethanol switch
closes down
>some of them and makes beef cost more, fine with
me.
I'm not a vegetarian, so my comments were based on simple
economics.
I look at what beef costs right now in the grocery store and
wonder
how anyone can afford it. Since I won't buy supermarket beef
anyway,
and the man who was selling locally raised beef went out of
business,
our meat consumption has been drastically reduced. I use beans,
rice
and other complementary proteins, but I fear that many people are
substituting simple carbohydrates, worsening what is already an
epidemic of Type II diabetes (if it's correct to speak of a
completely
preventable disease as though it were somehow transmissible).
The
problems of contemporary food production and transportation are
so
interwoven that it's very difficult for the average person to step
outside
the system. I've been talking to a social services friend
about holding
cooking classes for people on public assistance, to
help them find ways to
get the most food for their limited dollars
(or food stamps).
Unfortunately, in spite of the obvious need for
something like this, she
says it's almost impossible to overcome the
temptation of brightly colored
boxes of pasta mixes and similar
starchy "foods" on the supermarket
shelves. It's going to have to all
come crashing down before any real
change takes place.
Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com
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