Not True!

Today in the online magazine Slate I read this:

“Current evidence shows that the average U.S. diet has a larger environmental impact in terms of increased [greenhouse gas] emissions, land use, water use, and energy use,” reads the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report. “This is because the current U.S. population intake of animal-based foods is higher and plant-based foods are lower.” The chapter goes on to conclude that Americans should eat a diet that “is higher in plant-based foods” and “lower in animal-based foods.” Translation: Eat less meat.

We should not eat less meat, unless we want to grow ever fatter and ever sicker. Over the last few days I have said on these pages, over and over, that we need to eat meat and fat instead of carbohydrate. There is not enough meat and fat in fruits and vegetables to allow us to keep our proper distance from carbohydrates. If we take the advice above we will continue to get our energy from carbs, which will keep on putting more and more fat on us. Why are they recommending we keep getting fatter? According to the ‘science’ coming down to us from on high, growing meat for our ever-expanding meat appetite is causing our national carbon emissions to go up, thus leading to melting arctic ice, etc.

However:

Livestock is responsible for 14.5 percent of the world’s human-caused emissions, nearly half of that coming from the resources needed to grow and ship the corn and soy that most of the animals eat, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. (bold not in original)

So, I can contribute a great deal to lowering the national carbon footprint if I stop eating meat OR IF I STOP EATING CONFINEMENT MEATS. I am getting my meats from two local meat lockers. I take the meat on the hoof from a local heritage pork producer and from a friend that hobby farms cattle, to my local meat processor, where they cut up the meat any way I like. These animals are foraging naturally for their entire lives. Zero BTUs of energy are consumed bringing these happy animals corn or soy. God provides the grass for the cattle. The hogs eat whatever hogs eat, but its not corn or soy.

There is a very simple solution to corn fed meats and the environmental damage–remove the subsidy on corn prices that farmers get for farming it. If feeding corn and soy cost the feed lot what it should, based on the amount of land, energy, and water that is required to raise those crops, then suddenly it wouldn’t make economic sense to confine them or poison them with corn. (Feeding cattle corn for more than 180 days would be fatal.) Just don’t tell me that I should be feeding my kids and grandkids nothing but vegetables. That diet is new to the world, the effects on kids are untested. I also don’t think that eating vegetables instead of the animals that are created to eat vegetables makes much sense. Couldn’t I save even more energy if I ate soil directly and stood out in the sun all day? Or maybe even save another step and eat rocks and water? From the books I have read recently it is apparent to me that the advice to eat vegetables is not based on any biological science that has already been conducted. The advice to get most of our calories from carbs is based on pseudoscience and ‘conventional’ wisdom that is only about fifty years old. Someday, soon, when the medical bills start coming due, real science will finally win out, the grain subsidies will cease, and the advice will line up with reality. I am not waiting, you shouldn’t either.

Find a local meat source. Purchase a deep freeze. Learn how to cook your own meals. It’s just that easy.