My wife is reading a book (live green grow rich or something like that) that said that eliminating beef from one's diet does more for the planet to reduce CO2 production than switching from an SUV to a Prius (which is what I did 4 1/2 years ago). We've approached this going green thing in baby steps for some time now..transitioning to CFL bulbs, insulating the water heaters, programmable thermostat, 2nd hybrid for my wife's car, etc. The next baby step I've agreed to might be the most painful for me of all....I'm going to eliminate meat from my diet one day per week...Wednesday will be the day. I am not and will never be a vegetarian...but I do care about doing the right thing and believe that a lot of people making small changes can make a difference. So here's my next little change. Anyone else wanna join me or have similar stories?
I'm sure you remember the many discussions on the energy/resource impact that beef production has that I've been a part of I just watched a TED.com video on how animal production is the second largest CO2 producer in the world. Just one day a week of not eating meat will help, Evan... Thank you
Cows eat much more than you do and the amount of vegatative material required to make 1lb of beef is much higher than what you would consume to maintain a healthy weight. The basic laws of thermodynamics are in effect here. I realize you may know this but in case other readers do not here is a rough crash course on trophic levels. Ecological and Environmental Learning Services An ecological pyramid is constructed based on one of three types of data acquired from each feeding level - the number of organisms, the amount of biomass or the amount of energy. Each feeding (trophic) level passes @10% of its stored energy to the next level. Therefore, if the producers had 10,000 units (calories) of available energy, the herbivores would receive 1000 units, the primary carnivores 100 units and the secondary carnivores 10 units. [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Why the arrows keep shrinking between different feeding (trophic) levels [/FONT] 1. The mouse receives energy from the food it eats. 2. The mouse's cells extract the food's energy so it can be used for the mouse's survival needs (e.g., growth, acquiring food, escaping enemies). The process is not 100% efficient and a lot of energy is lost as heat. The mouse can use this heat to help keep its body temperature at a normal level during cold weather. 3. Some of the energy that is in the food is lost in the mouse's waste (feces). 4. The remaining energy is stored in the mouse's body and is available to the organism that preys on it. About 90% of the energy acquired in the mouse's food is used or lost by the mouse and only 10% is available to predators.
Already did that. Tried vegetarian for a few years about 20 years ago. Couldn't really do it. I had to have pepperoni on my pizza and I just couldn't give up pizza for the rest of my life. I eat a lot of chicken, some fish and beans, cheese, etc. But I don't eat a lot of red meat. Or ham, pork, bacon, etc. The only time I have pork is if my Mother makes a pork dish when I go over there for dinner on Sundays. The same goes for lamb only it's even less. Maybe once or twice a year. In addition to red meat at my parents I might have it 1-2 times more during the week. Then chicken at least once or twice. Meat no more than 5 times a week. This includes breakfast (which I usually skip but when I do have it it's fruit or carbs) and lunch. I have some lovely recipes for vegetable dishes; lentil and macaroni soup, broccoli and macaroni soup, spinach feta quiche, cheese enchiladas, green lasagne, etc.
If you have the option available contract with your electric utility for 100% non-fossil electricity. It costs more but it's worth it. Kinda like a Prius.
I've kind of had in my mind to start learning to cook with Tofu for a while. I've had a handful of really excellent tofu dishes (usually spicy asian things), Alton Brown did a Good Eats episode w/tofu once and made some stuff that sounded good. So maybe this will be a good opportunity to expand my cooking skills.
Just send me your Big Green Egg and make a clean break. I was 100% vegan for about 5 years when in college and grad school. Then I got a job requiring worldwide travel and that was the end of it. Well, that night during my first month when my hosts took me to a steak house and I ordered a plate of steamed broccoli. Years later, I still hear about that night from some people in the industry. Hey, if it makes you feel better, do it. I never underestimate the placebo effect. Honestly, I felt good being vegan, but maybe most of that was being in my 20's, too.
I'm transitioning to a vegan diet, but it's been slow. I've eliminated milk from my diet and I'm working on cheese. Meat will be the last to go. I'm doing it to try to rid myself of Rheumatoid Arthritis. We already to one vegetarian dish a week (been doing that for a while, no problems there). The real trick is eating correctly, getting enough protein and avoiding refined carbohydrates (the root of all evil). I think that I'll end up putting a lot of soy protein power in my food so that things are skewed to the carb end of the spectrum. Any body know of a non-flavoured soy protein powder? I use the vanilla stuff for my morning smoothies, but for things like chilli, I'd like to avoid the vanilla flavah. Costco soymilk kicks arse, BTW. It's got a carb/protein ratio similar to regular milk. Wish it had more fat (and less polyunsaturated fat), but it's tasty stuff. It also has all the B12 you need.
My only suggestion is that not all meat is equal, and that you can significantly reduce fossil-fuel inputs to your diet just by avoiding grain-fed beef. We switched to local-grown grass-fed beef (bought by the side, from a farmer a couple of counties away, stored in the freezer) and we're never going back to grocery-store beef. It tastes vastly better, it's better for you, certainly better for the animal, and uses far less fossil fuel. Ecological and health issues aside, it's worth it for the taste alone. Other than that, if you can ignore the animal cruelty issues, the fossil fuel inputs to commercially-raised chicken are estimated at about 1/10th of the input for grain-fed beef. This paper from Cornell U (Table 13, page 21) lists estimated fossil fuel inputs for various types of animal protein. Keep in mind that there's a lot of uncertainty about these estimates, and that these are for production only (not production-storage-transport-preparation). So you might search for some other estimates before you make fine-tune things. But that table shows the gist of it. Grain-fed beef requires about 10x as much fossil fuel input as chicken, per edible calorie: http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/ENERGY_SSR.pdf That document also gives estimates for selected plant foods and for grass-fed beef. Their estimate of energy requirements for grass-fed beef is much higher than I've seen elsewhere, and I'm pretty sure that varies with climate. From what I've read, the energy inputs are vastly lower in well-watered mild-climate areas (e.g., Virginia) where the animals stay in pasture nearly year round. Basically, it costs no fossil fuel to let animals graze. But arid and cold-climate areas require more inputs for the gathering and processing of hay and silage. My point being that the fossil-fuel advantage of local grassfed beef will vary depending on where you live. A decent summary of the health benefits can be seen here: Nutritional Benefits of Grassfarming - Eat Wild What they found there for grass-fed meat, they've found elsewhere for crops raised with organic as opposed to chemical fertilizer. Bottom line is that factory-farmed food really does appear to have fewer nutrients. For meat, that means more fat and a much worse mix of fats, for grain-fed as opposed to pasture-raised animals. So, in terms of total impact, it would be better to be vegan or vegetarian but you can make a serious dent in your fossil fuel use just by substituting away from the most energy-intensive meats.
I shall (humbly? not!) recommend my tofu blog for recipes: What do you do with Tofu? Not the most comprehensive source, but some of the links to other blogs will also yield some great recipes and ideas.
Nice post Chogan, Indeed I'm aware of the grass/grain beef issue. There is a physician couple where my wife and I work that have a partnership with someone and are raising 'organic' beef..pure grass fed. They have a couple hundred head. Our intention is to enquire with them about buying a half a beef from them...local and grass fed. We may permit chicken/fish on our Wed. meat-free day, but we're going to try to mostly eliminate meat all together....it may need to wait until after our Scotland trip next week, but it seems like a good place to start. --evan Thanks for the Tofu link Ray Vynn
I tried to do that the just the other day with Dominion Virginia Power and couldn't figure out how on their web site. It used to be right there in front of you but it looks like they've hidden it. I didn't have time to really dig for it so I need to go back and look again. As for going vegetarian, I have weird eating habits and am perfectly happy going for days on end with no meat in my diet. There's been many a Thanksgiving when I filled my plate with potatoes and vegetables and didn't even bother with turkey. I do love cheeseburgers (with fries! lots of fries) but for weight-control reasons I limit those to once per month at most. The biggest weakness in my diet is dairy, especially cheese. You can make me go vegetarian but don't ever try to make me go vegan.
If you're worried about weight, the potatoes and fries are FAR more of a concern than a burger (esp if you ditch that flimsy, highly refined flour bun). I hear you about the cheese. That's one thing that I've mostly cut out but that I do miss. That and a nice tall glass of 1% Milk. Though soy milk has been a pretty darn good replacement, I have to say.
we switched from ground beef to ground turkey some time ago. that was a fairly easy way to eliminate a lot of our red meat consumption. of course, they don't make turkey steaks so if you're a steak person that won't do the trick! we probably only eat meat once or twice a week in the first place.
Well the problem is that I can't have a burger without fries. Just can't be done. Of course fries go with so many other things, too. (In fact they're great by themselves!) I was eating them way too frequently at lunch so I went fry-free this past February (actually started January 31 and it was a leap-year so I went a full 30 days without them) and now my rule is maximum of two meals with fries per month, weekends only. So far I'm sticking to it and I don't even miss them. I think I might have to look into soy milk. Does it come in boxes that don't require refrigeration? Since I live alone and I don't drink milk that often, I wind up throwing too much away. But a bowl of healthy cereal can be a great post-bike-ride recovery meal, so it would be good to have small portions of milk on hand. (I tried mixing a cup of yogurt with cereal but didn't like it.) oh and p.s. thanks Rae Vynn for that tofu blog.
Yup. If you buy it at costco you can by it in 12 carton cases (each carton is a quart). A case was $11.75 last time I checked. Unless you're planning to use very small quantites, don't by it at the grocery store. Products like Soy Dream have double the sugar of the Kirkland Brand (14g vs 7g) for the vanilla flavour. Also, at the grocery store a quart costs about $2.50! Once you open a carton you need to refridgerate it and it's set to keep for about 7-10 days. I don't know what happens when it goes bad. I drink about a quart a day, so it's not an issue for me. I did the cerearl/yogurt combo when I was at basic. It's a great way to stuff a lot of food down your neck in a short period of time.
I signed up for wind power last year, and yeah, the VA Power site makes it essentially impossible to figure out how to do that. Maybe they've cleaned it up since I looked, but ... I doubt it. Looked like VA Power was satisfying the letter of the law and that was it. When I bought mine, PEPCO Energy Services was the intermediary selling the wind power. And the PEPCO site was very user-friendly. Maybe VA Power offers better cheaper options at this point, but last year, wind (or a few other options) power via PEPCO was it. Here's the link: Pepco Energy Services - Products And Services - Residential Services I just looked their site again, and there must be some strong demand for wind power these days. I think I signed up last year for about about $0.10/kwh (which is just the energy cost, to which VA Power adds the delivery etc. charges that amount to about another $0.05). It worked out to be about a nickel more per KWH than the standard VA Power rate. But for current contracts they want $0.133 per KWH.
