Because of my background in sustainable agriculture, I think the choices we make about eating are some of the most powerful means through which we can live our values. I believe the idea of “better living through chemistry” is a myth—particularly when applied to food and health. Food should come from family farms, not from factories.
With that in mind, this week I stumbled onto several great articles that helped to reaffirm some of my dietary choices and to rethink others. I hope you learn as much as I did.
1. Audubon Magazine had a great article this week on eating meat to save the environment. Sound counterintuitive I know, but perhaps the conventional wisdom about animal foods is only half correct. That’s because much of livestock’s emissions come as a result of dismantling the natural farm system and replacing it with confinement systems (CAFOs). In an industrial CAFO, manure is managed in man-made lagoons, where it produces millions of tons of methane and nitrous oxide every year. On pasture however, cattle can boost soil’s ability to sequester carbon. In fact, highly managed, intensive grazing can shift cattle’s carbon count so dramatically that the animals actually help reduce greenhouse gases significantly. But for these benefits to be realized, we need to choose grass-fed meats whenever we eat meat.
2. An article in Grist this week informed me that not all of the healthy choices I make in my kitchen are environmentally sustainable. Palm oil, while an excellent source of saturated fat for high-heat cooking and baking, is simply terrible for Asian rainforests. The palm oil industry is responsible for burning down vast tracts of the Malaysian and Indonesian rain forest, threatening orangutans and many other important species. Consequently, there will be no more palm oil in my kitchen, nor will I choose packaged foods and personal care products that contain palm oil or palm kernel oil either.
3. Norman Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” died this week. While he is often hailed as saving millions in Mexico and India from famine and starvation with his development of hybrid seeds and industrial farming practices, farmer Tom Philpott at Grist has a compelling argument that the short term rewards of industrial farming have cost us enormously in the long run, leading to less food security worldwide than ever before. Check it out.
4. And speaking of farming, can “Slow Money” help remake America’s food industry to be socially and environmentally sustainable? An article in Time Magazine asks this very question. The Slow Money Alliance brings the tenets of the Slow Food movement (buying local) to finance—exploring investment vehicles that re-circulate within the local economy, minimize environmental impact, stress diversity over monoculture, and earn decent returns. The Slow Money Alliance wants to give investors a stake in “restorative economy,” building the food and ecological infrastructure on a community to community basis. This means healthier environments, economies and people!
5. Finally, one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan, argues in the New York Times Op-Ed this week that our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. He goes on to state that our government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup. It’s a brilliant article that I think everyone would be wise to read.
Have a great, green week!
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