A Summary of NO MEAT Month

So, I kind of made it through the month of September without incorporating meat into my diet. I know some people think I cheated since I ate eggs and they debate that they are meat, but until they get their Registered Dietitian's licensure, they can basically suck it. I am going to break this into a few categories as there is so much concept in this process that needs to be somewhat organized.

The Math ~ These facts can stand on their own. They do not need to be supported by any nutrition information whatsoever, it's all math and science. HA!

In order to produce one pound of edible meat (without bone, etc.), approximately 5,000 gallons of water must be used. Therefore, you could say that you could either shower for a year or eat a pound of meat. If I were to eat an average of three servings of meat a day (not counting fish, obviously), that would be nine ounces of meat. Therefore over 30 days, that would be approximately 17 pounds of meat, which equals 85,000 gallons of water, or 17 years of showering. Compare it to 25 gallons for the production of one pound of grain. Replace my 17 pounds of meat with 17 pounds of grain and you only net 425 gallons of water in production. In a water conscious world (which is what we should be living in, forget oil), meat consumption should plummet. Don't even get me started on the the CO2 savings here. People, get educated! It's in the numbers.

Here's another number: 149 lbs. (67.7 kg.). This is my weight at the beginning of September. Having recently fractured my skull, I gained a few pounds not being able to work out and I maintain that a quick way to shed some of that weight is to drop meat from your diet. People assume that being turned into a carboholic will keep that weight on, but that did not seem to be the case. I went from eating pasta once every 2-3 weeks to sometimes twice a day. I still don't really like potatoes or bread, but because I was making things for Andrew, I had quite a bit myself. And we went through a straight liter of olive oil in 30 days. And I lost almost 6 pounds (4% of body weight), and trust that I have been doing about nada in the exercise department. There are pants being brought out of storage.

What Worked?

• It was a Godsend that this month was a great harvest month for the Greenmarket in the New York Metro area. There is literally no reason that you should be without vegetable choices since they are all around the city and have plenty of options. Luckily, I am schooled in doing more than making salads, although I have to say, those were some good heirloom-type salads I had.
• Debbie Meyer Green Bags! These things work on the simplest concept that the bags are treated to wick away that pesky ethylene, a chemical compound which hastens the ripening of fruits and vegetables. These bags allow your vegetables to last so much longer! Totally worth it and at your local Tarjay.
  
• Cooking Light has long been one of my favourite magazines for recipes. I am much more visual a learner than any other sort, so their having photographs to accompany their recipes is a huge help! I am letting my subscription go as it is a waste of paper seeing as their site has all their recipes in their database. I know that website aren't run on unicorn farts and rainbows, but still...less wasteful. I look something up at least once a week on there...pickles, potato salad, you name it.
• I may have fell more in love with Morningstar Farms fake meat (analogs). I know they are a company pretending to be small and cute and organic when they are really just a subsidiary of Kellogg Company, but they do have some tasty stuff that fills in the gaps where meat would have otherwise likely been the option du jour. Given better selections of meat analogs, I would hope to find a less corporate producer. Drop another scoop in the moral chore bucket.
  
• Andrew also gave up meat this month. His agenda was not the same as mine, but it is easier when the kid you are sharing the table with is not heffing back a slab of ribs or two dozen ribs. Trust.
  

What Didn't Work?

• I think the first big problem with NO MEAT month for me was that it coincided with the beginning of the fall semester for grad school and for the rugby season. I just did not often make the effort due to a lack of time or a lack of energy to make as many meals as I really should have. And then once I ran out of Easy Mac....
  
• My worm box died while I was on vacation. This made me feel kind of like a total wastoid for just throwing out my organic waste and once again made me want to move to San Francisco where the municipal garbage service picks up compost materials for you. Geez, Bloomberg, why don't you get on it.
  
• My friends are kind of dicks. I think that it is largely American hubris that people think their ways of living are superior to other people's or that they should be shooting off their opinions on anything. I do often pass judgment on what people eat as a function of being an R.D. but at the same time, it is likely solicited. Let's just say, there are people I think less of now with their "But meat is good, " and their "You're such a hippie." No, I am just brighter, more principled, and better educated than you.
  
• Living in the ghetto is in no way food friendly. The "grocery" stores here maintain very little edible produce (even less edible meat to be honest) and are only good for packaged basic foods. Tragic. We wonder why diabetes is rampant...even outside of personal accountablity. But I guess I would never invest in this neighborhood given the chance either to be honest. Damn.
• Vegetables are actually more expensive than meat. This is such a mindfuck of a concept. They take far less cost of production, water, labor, etc. This is truly sad and wrong.
• Companies need to be more straightforward in their packaging. When I pick up a can of vegetable soup...I want it to be all vegetables. I don't want to have it already in the pan heating and then read the label and find a meat composite somewhere down the line of the ingredient list. Bad Progresso, bad!!
  

What did I miss?

• Maruchan Instant Lunch Chicken Ramen cups
• hot wings (Largely, with Poon at the Lion's Head. I should have taken rugby and football seasons into account here, clearly.)
  
• PD II's ribs (Doubtful would I miss any other ribs or any other rib sauce.)
• shrimp (Now not to be eaten since they are on the don't buy list. Thanks Monterrey Bay Aquarium!!)
• sushi (Sweet lord in heaven did I have a problem with this. Maybe it was my body trying to react to the mercury shortage in my system? Although sweet potato tempura rolls are acceptable, I guess.)

In summary, I will resume eating sustainably farmed/fished animal sources. Yes, this will mean a little more work on my part, more questions asked, etc. I will likely have one serving a week of the following: poultry, red meat, fish. Andrew has decided he will bring back fish, occasional poultry, and no red meat. Every few months we will go back to lactoovovegetarian status for a month or two to detox ourselves and feel less like all the other self-centered people polluting the earth so they can have a cheap cheeseburger.

~beth who thinks people should eat to live rather than eat to pollute...

30 Days, NO MEAT!!

For the month of September, Andrew and I are going to go without meat (including fish). No, we have not become hippies, but we have decided that it just isn't necessary and we will try thirty days without it.

For me personally, it is just the fact that eating meat takes so much water to produce. So really, I would rather have water to drink than meat to eat and I think that Americans are very uneducated and disgustingly selfish and need to stop whining about gas and take note of water and how to use less. Not to mention that the methane fartprint of livestock alone... Everyone needs a wake up call about meat in general.

Also, it is nutritionally unnecessary in the human diet. So I will be putting up recipes, photos, websites, and musings on the process this month. If nothing else, the weight loss alone should be obvious, which should be interesting.

And then there's the math on water. If both of us give up an estimated two 3-ounce servings of meat a day, or 11.25 pounds this month, we will in theory save 112,500 gallons of water (5,000 gallons to make one pound of edible meat).

Anyveggie, we'll see how this goes.... Until further news, here is a gorgeous photo of Stitch Mittens. Please to enjoy!


~beth

Feeling Small And Helpless? Read This.

I am finding it hard to generally function on a daily basis (not because I am staring down this ineffectual R.D. exam), but instead because I feel like the choices I am making are not impacting the world, or more specifically, the environment. I'm in no way a dirty hippie, but I grew up on a nonworking farm where we did not waste water or food or electricity, where we grew a majority of what we ate, and we composted and recycled. Now I live in the city where people lap the block in their cars for status in a city with a subway, there is a litter of water and other bottles on each corner, and chicken bones regularly crunch under your feet if you don't look down when you walk down my block. A stark comparison, yes, but it does at least make me feel like I should be doing more to make up for it. This, of course, makes me want give a wake up call to everyone around me, but apparently American society at large does not care so much.

So here's is a topic from an organic nutrition standpoint that the average person might want to check out and ultimately the to help make a dent. You cannot live without it...

Water! Yes, we all know we need water to live, but if any of you heard any statistics this past March 22, aka World Water Day, you might tighten up that two shower a day policy, turn the water off when brushing your teeth, and generally stop watering/washing everything in sight. One of the biggest consumer impacts you could make would be to stop buying so much bottled water. The other day I was picking up some necessities at my local Tarjay and the woman in front of me in line was going on and on about how the case of "baby" water bottles she was purchasing was the cutest thing she'd ever seen. Really? That's the capstone? She's right, those bottles are probably way cuter than all those African kids with the swollen malnutrition bellies and flies on their faces who have no water at all. Well played, Tarjay lady. Yes, I did see her loading her plastic shrine into an SUV five minutes later, but I digress.

Here are some facts about her precious bottled water: "A person can live weeks without food, but only days without water. A person needs 4 to 5 gallons of water per day to survive. The average American individual uses 100 to 176 gallons of water at home each day, and the average African family uses about 5 gallons of water each day." Yes, we concede the body needs water, but does it need that mountain of plastic that seems to go along with it? Due to our addiction to bottled water, 38 billion bottles a year end up in landfills. I guess they're not so cute when they're empty, huh? Get a reusable bottle and find something other than the fact that your water came from Fiji to get psyched about already. And just because you have access does not mean you should abuse it, and in that vein, that you always will have access. Take the minute and a half to figure out how much you're using, then make an active decision to use less.

Another huge consumer impact is made when you choose not to purchase meat. Fast food companies and meat lobbyists pay billions of dollars a year to keep y'all yearning for meat, but frankly, it shouldn't be what's always for dinner. Digestive purposes aside, the fact that it takes the farmed animal industry approximately 5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat and only 25 pounds to produce one pound of wheat is a hard one to stomach. You don't even have to think animals are cute or that they feel pain or have feelings to wrap your brain around that one. That means you could in theory, eat one pound of meat or have a year's worth of showers. And then if you push one step further and take into account that it averages approximately 13 pounds of wheat or grain to produce one pound of edible beef (not bone), your mind might explode. I know what I'd pick...a lot less meat in my diet.

Even if you cannot give up meat completely, you certainly can choose to eat less of it, just think how logically thirst-quenching it could be. That would be way more water you could drink from your tap instead of from a plastic bottle. Because if you are still going to choose to eat anything it is going to have to be farmed on land not filled with plastic bottles... See, this is how all the dots can be connected and I can make myself feel once again as though my personal choices have an impact, as would everyone else's. Enough for now, my high horse and I are thirsty.

~beth

Maruchan Instant Lunch Can Cure Anything That Ails You, I Swear

Anytime anyone is sick or hung over or generally just feeling like ass, I always tell them the same thing. They should immediately get a liter or two of water, a handful of vitamin C, and a chicken flavored ramen soup cup. It will literally cure anything that ails you, at least conditions within reason.

The water will take away dehydration as a factor. Dehydration can cause lethargy, dry mouth, decreased urine output, thirst, muscle weakness, dizziness, and headaches. All of these symptoms can make whatever else is wrong with you feel about a million times worse. If your stomach can handle it, push the water. If your stomach cannot handle it, have fluids like ginger ale or Pedialyte which will be easier on your stomach but still hydrate you adequately. I know that Pedialyte is for kids, but I don't care, it comes in sippy bottles. You could put diesel fuel in a sippy bottle and there is a good chance I would give it a swig. But I digress...

Vitamin C is thought by many to be a cure all of sorts. It is a water soluble vitamin which means that you cannot technically overdose yourself on it. Various studies have shown that taking small doses of the vitamin throughout the day is the key to increased absorption rather than taking one megadose. For example, take four to five 250 mg doses of vitamin C at different times rather than one large 1000 mg dose in the morning. And as always, there are a large number of foods loaded with vitamin C, but if you are feeling like crap, odds are your appetite is really not that good. More later on vitamin C….

And now, the holy grail to my hangover, the chicken ramen soup cup. Sadly, I am a purist and will only consume the finest of all of the ramen soup cups, the Maruchan Instant Lunch brand. Don’t be bringing me any of those silly other brands. You fetch me that nasty Nissan on my deathbed and it’s not getting eaten. Sadly, the cure granted from this “food” I love is only anecdotal. While the sodium content is off the charts for what I would tell humans to consume in a day let alone a meal…in theory when you’re sick it helps you hold fluid, can be tasty on your dulled taste buds, and soothes the stomach. It is high in saturated fat and carbohydrates, but you can always argue the carbohydrates help replete your energy. Frankly, it is warm and tastes good and makes me feel less crappy.

So, that’s my key to not feeling as crappy as you were an hour before you sent someone to the store to fetch you this stuff. That and sleep…lots of glorious sleep.

*This post is dedicated to my lovely NY "wife" (above) who is feeling like ass today. If she hadn't eaten the last of my tasty tasty Maruchan Instant Lunch cups on Saturday night in a fit of drunkenness, I would totally fetch her one. ~ beth