All vegetables and no meat makes Tian a Bittman...

I love a big, hearty medium-rare steak. I also love pork-chops, chicken wings, beef and broccoli, cheeseburgers, and many more meat-based (or even entirely meat) dishes. I always have and I always will. However, more recently New York Times writer Mark Bittman and a significant and embarrassing amount of weight gain over the past semester have pushed me to turn over a new leaf... with a fork.



As Bittman has written about and spoken about (see link or embedded video above) numerous times, Americans consume far more meat than recommended by the USDA, a relatively lax agribusiness favoring standard in the first place. In fact, Americans not only eat more than the recommended amount, they eat several times more! Americans eat so much meat that we are actually harming the environment with our meat consumption.

As anybody who has studied basic biology or ecology knows, only 10% of total biomass is passed through consumption. In other words, 10% of the energy in plants is passed on to animals (including us) eating those plants and 10% of that subsequent energy is passed on to animals eating those plant-consuming animals (again, including us... not to suggest that we are eating ourselves, but as omnivores we are eating other plant-consuming animals such cows. Whatever, I'm sure you get the point). Using cows as a specific example, we are only consuming 10% of the plant energy cows consume, plant energy we could have consumed directly - not necessarily in the form of cow feed, which despite popular belief actually contains no grass but mostly grains and formerly even processed not-fit-for-human-consumption meat (Mad Cow Disease anybody?), but other human-consumed crops. In fact, not only is much of our crop agriculture devoted to feeding ranch animals, but even if we ignore the fact that ranch animals must be fed by crops, ranches produce much fewer pounds of food per acre than crop fields. Obviously, agriculture would be much more efficient per acre if we were all vegetarians.

Nonetheless, humans are not herbivores and most of us (myself included) love meat. We want meat. Despite the popular belief that meat consumption is necessary for sufficient protein, the truth is we actually don't need to eat meat at all. We can get more than enough protein in our diets from beans, legumes, eggs (if you don't consider that a meat), cheese (if you're not vegan), etc. All of the above also contain much less saturated fat. But who cares? We don't eat meat because we have to, we eat meat because we want to. And even though crop fields are more efficient than ranches, as long as we have the resources to afford meat, why the hell shouldn't we eat meat?

Actually, we cannot afford to eat meat. At the very least, we cannot afford to eat meat like Americans. Planet Earth does not have the resources to support American meat consumption, but unfortunately for all of us, everybody wants to eat like an American. As incomes rise around the world, everybody is eating more like Americans, meaning more junk food, more snacks, more fast food, and more meat. This strain on our agriculture and economy is already becoming blatantly visible as food prices rise around the world. The recent hype surrounding corn ethanol fuel is only fueling this problem as more crops are diverted from food. This year the problem is particularly bad due to storms in Asia that have caused a worldwide shortage of rice crops. Indeed, if global warming is the source cause of these storms (and it probably is), then it is unlikely that this will be the only year that we encounter these crop shortages. This Boston Globe article even piles on dirt (or arable land to be more exact) to our list of environmental problems.

So I've going to try to become a vegetarian, or at least get as close as possible. Technically, the most economically shrewd idea would be to pig out as much as possible on meat now before it becomes expensive, but I don't think that's the environmentally ethical. As Bittman states, we need to rethink food and that's what I intend to do. Admittedly, I am not philosophically, animal-rightsy vegetarian so I would never berate someone else for eating meat and I would never blink twice if all I had to eat was meat. In fact, I would probably be the last person (ever) to advocate for animal rights, except in extreme cases. I actually find the violent tactics used by some animal rights vigilantes absolutely appalling and I find the way most animal rights activists wish to abolish the consumption of dog meat culturally arrogant and usually racist (potential future post idea!). Rather, I suppose I could be labeled as an environmentalist and anthropocentric vegetarian, but as this Salon article suggest, environmentalism is poorly marketed as "Love Earth" when it really should be "Love Ourselves".

Now I say I will try to become a vegetarian because I'm honestly not sure how long this is going to last. I think there are only so many bitter vegetable I can endure before I'm a Bittman. (Har har, get it? Like the name of the New York Times writer and "a bitter man"! Get the title of this post now? I just wish I could have tied Obama into this somehow...) As I mentioned before, I love meat but health and environmentalism have pushed me to renounce my dearest, yet I feel its only a matter of time before I succumb to desire. But then again, Bittman himself isn't a vegetarian! He just doesn't eat very much meat so maybe he knows something that I don't.