Foodzilla
Stop reading health advise. Right now. I am completely fed up with the contradictory information: suffice to say that there are peoples who live or have lived on every sort of diet imaginable for generations and not come down with horrible diseases or deficiencies. There are those that eat tons of calories, tons of red meat, tons of saturated fats, what have you. And there are those that eat only vegetables. Are the French, those lovers of butter and cream, sick and overweight compared to the Cretans, famed for their Mediterranean diet? The only thing anyone can agree on is to avoid processed, industrialized foods, and stick to whole, natural foods. The people dropping like bloated flies are the modern Americans and their cultural colonies, who sit around getting their so-called nutrients from isolated chemicals stuck together in a jelly-mould.
So for heaven’s sake, eat what you want, just make it food! (And yes, I really need to read Pollan’s latest book.)
Except… vegetarianism feels right. I don’t like the idea of animals dying for my appetite. Healthy and natural or not, are humans so superior to other animals that their lives and deaths mean nothing except the satisfaction of our taste buds? Because what nutrients they provide can honestly be found elsewhere. And don’t think dairy escapes guilt-free, either: mothers need to be pregnant to give milk, and the babies for which the milk was intended have to go somewhere. The dinner table would be a good place to look.
If you’re okay with killing animals, at least consider that factory-farm-raised animals, even those labeled free-range and organic, are treated horribly and fed unhealthfully. This translates to unhealthy meat, dairy, and eggs, which then have to be fortified with the same isolated nutrients that are used to pass off processed edibles as real food.
The reason it’s so hard to figure out what’s healthy and what’s not, is that all the chemicals in food act in concert. Some help and some hinder the digestion of other chemicals, making any fuss over a single nutrient just plain silly. And imagine the folly of trying to study the effects these complex interactions on the infinitely more complex human body. No wonder the health professionals are so confused! But of course they’re not confused: each one of them thinks they know what is best for our bodies. So stop letting them swing your diet from extreme to extreme like a spastic monkey. Keep a clear head, a kind heart, and a pantry stocked with whole foods, and I don’t think you can go too wrong.
(My source for a lot of this information is Vegetarian Food for Thought.)
April 16th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Sarah,
Visit a smaller farm before you condemn the entire industry. From my experience, there are farms where the animals eat the food grown on the farms. My grandfather had a dairy farm on which I worked when I was in high school. The animals where treated with great care because those animals where a big investment for my grandfather.
As far as the milking went… When a calf was born, the milk produced by the mother in the beginning was fed to the calf. Just like in humans, the first milk has a lot of extra nutrients the calf needs plus I don’t think people would drink it. The farmer weans the calf but keeps milking the cow.
I know not all farms are the same and you are correct that there are big farms owned by big corporations that treat the animals poorly. But, generalizations are dangerous.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:38 am
Ed,
Yes, I know small farms are much better. You just have to make sure you visit before you buy, because there’s nothing on a store package that will tell you how the animals were treated. Perhaps you can trust farmer’s markets and co-ops. I only meant to condemn industrialized farm practices (”factory-farm-raised animals”). I don’t think I’m ready to pass judgement on all omnivores quite yet!
That said, unless I am mistaken (and I hope I am), a milk cow’s calf has to go somewhere once it’s weaned, correct? At one calf a year, the population would easily overrun a small farm, so I understand the utility of selling or raising at least the male calves for slaughter.
But since I don’t feel comfortable having other animals killed for my sake, the only conscionable thing for me to do is avoid dairy at the same time as meat. A similar logic goes for eggs: one always needs more hens than roosters, so the excess males are disposed of (though I suppose they could be kept as pets).
Not everyone has a problem with this knowledge, but I think it is important to face up to what you consume and eat with a clear conscious (not blissful ignorance). Please let me know if I have erroneous information: can you milk a cow — or a goat or a sheep — without extraneous killing?