To Be Titled

Striving to be a good dad, a good husband, a good son/brother, a good political scientist, a good photographer, a good cook and a good homo universalis.

My Heretofore Implicit Thoughts on Meat Eating

I don’t eat a lot of meat—maybe once or twice a week. It has been a semi-deliberate change over a long time, but I never fully thought through my entire justification for it. (I used to cite my unpleasant experience of driving through a gigantic industrial ranch in Kettleman City, California, off I-5 as one of the key reasons.) Now I can rely on someone else who has put in the time to write down his thoughts on the issue, which almost perfectly captures what has until now been implicit and amorphous in my mind.

The author—Marco—works at Tumblr (the platform I’m using for this log) and he’s the programmer of a great web app-iPhone app combo Instapaper.

marco:

I’ve made a dramatic shift in my diet over the last few weeks: eating almost no meat. (update: thoughts on fish.)

There are plenty of good reasons not to eat meat, including:

  • The treatment of the animals is awful. The more you know about industrialized meat production, the less you want to support it. (And it’s not just for cows. Chickens and turkeys aren’t much better, and pigs are probably the worst.)
  • High-volume meat production creates a large environmental burden, usually as a result of having to feed the animals so much and figure out what to do with their waste.
  • Meat is more calorie-dense than many alternative foods, and red meat in particular is unhealthy to eat frequently. Non-meat-heavy diets can generally be much healthier.

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food makes a great argument for low-meat diets. (You should really read it regardless of your thoughts on meat. Do you eat? Then it’s relevant to you.)

Wait, so are you a vegetarian now?

No.

I’m not big on all-or-nothing obsessiveness. I’m not a recovering hamburger addict who will sink back into meat abuse if I ever have another taste again. All things in moderation.

The problem isn’t eating animals. It’s a lot of people eating a lot of animals. If demand was reduced to 25% or less of its current level, we’d see massive environmental and health improvements. Humane animal treatment is trickier, since you’re still killing and eating them, but it could be improved if less meat was needed and it could command a higher price. For instance, actual free-range (not the bullshit kind) and grass-fed animals would become more practical.

A few weeks ago, I decided to significantly reduce my meat consumption. To start, I went all-vegetarian for one week to force myself to broaden my horizons a bit (especially for office lunches) and try new non-meat options. It worked, and was much easier than I expected.

Now, I’ve lowered my overall meat consumption to approximately these levels that I intend to maintain:

  • Chicken or turkey: 1-2 meals per week.
  • Beef: 0-1 meal per month.
  • Pork: Almost never. Occasionally as a minor ingredient in something else.

With such a severe reduction, I’ll achieve most of the benefits of vegetarianism, but without many of the inconveniences. It’s still ridiculously easy to get good meals at restaurants or while traveling. I don’t even like tofu or giant mushrooms, and it’s still much easier than I expected to avoid meat most of the time and still eat healthy, satisfying, widely available meals.

Try it.

If a lot of people made this change, we could make a big difference on many important fronts.

Do the vegetarian week, then see how little meat you really need to eat. You may be pleasantly surprised at how easy and practical it is.

Making Baby Food at Home: Carrots, Squash and Peas

Making baby food at home is totally worth the effort, mostly because it takes very little effort to produce food of the quality that exceeds that of even good store-bought ones.

  1. Carrots (easy)
    1. Buy organic carrots, wash and cut into short pieces
    2. Buy one of these collapsible steamers
    3. Steam the carrots for ~ 20 minutes
    4. Purée the steamed carrots in a mini food processor with a bit of the water from the steaming
    5. Spoon the puréed carrots into an ice cube tray, freeze, pop out and store in an airtight container
  2. Squash (easy)
    1. Buy an organic squash
    2. Cut the squash into little wedges (about 1/6 of the whole). I made the acorn kind—butternut would be hard to cut and peel.
    3. Steam the squash wedges for ~20 minutes
    4. Peel the skin off the meat by scooping the meat with a spoon
    5. Purée with a bit of the water from steaming and follow the rest of the steps from the carrot recipe
  3. Peas (moderate)
    1. Buy a bag of organic frozen peas
    2. Steam the peas in a steamer for about 15 minutes (Most recipes call for boiling them, but I don’t think that’s necessary.)
    3. Purée the steamed peas in a mini food processor with some water from the steaming
    4. Push the puréed peas through a fine sieve to filter the hulls, which babies apparently can’t digest.
    5. Freeze and store the sieved purée the same way as above.

Dinner—Wednesday, July 23

Tried a new dish out of Mollie Katzen’s The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest:

  • Sweet and Sour Tofu with Cashews

I served it with mixed brown-white rice, and it was delicious. Two short notes: 1) The recipe calls for a 20-oz can of pineapple chunks. It took me several re-reading of the recipe before I realized that pineapple chunks themselves do not go into the dish, only the juice. 2) Despite pre-mixing the cornstarch with some of the liquid from the sauce, the cornstarch-liquid mixture congealed immediately upon pouring into the saucepan with the rest of the sauce.

Dinner—Sunday, July 20

We are definitely taking matters into our own hands with the lack of good Asian cuisine around here. For dinner tonight, we made the Vietnamese summer rolls that I was planning to make a few nights ago:

We also put in julienned cucumber, red cabbage and pan-fried tofu and chicken. The dipping sauce was delicious (made with 1/3 of the fish sauce in the recipe), and the peanut sauce was amazing!

Dinner—Thursday, July 17

Last night, we gave in and got take-outs from Khow Thai. It’s so uncanny how the owner of that place recognizes my voice every single time. Tonight, to satisfy S’s pseudo-cravings for Vietnamese food, I tried something new.

All in all, the meal turned out to be pretty impressive.

Dinner—Wednesday, July 2

The low-sodium diet continues. Chili is on the menu tonight:

It’s flabbergasting how much sodium is in canned tomatoes and beans! Dried beans are soaking at home right now, and I will crushing and dicing fresh tomatoes.

Dinner—Monday, June 30

Susanne needs to go on a low-sodium diet for the rest of the pregnancy. Here’s how we’re starting tonight: