Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat

Stuff I already knew, but still an interesting watch!
 
I find it ironic that while developing european countries are just starting to convert to industrialized agriculture, the US of A wants to revert back to oldfashioned style agriculture...
 
We can't help it if we've already seen the future and realize that the past was better for all of us!
 
Iliketobenaked said:
what does this have to do with politics?
Click to expand...

Seemed the most appropriate forum to post it in. Politics and the global situation go hand in hand.

Remus said:
I find it ironic that while developing european countries are just starting to convert to industrialized agriculture, the US of A wants to revert back to oldfashioned style agriculture...
Click to expand...

It has very little to do with wants to and a great deal more to do with needs to.
 
I'm gravitating towards being a chickenarian (and some fish). I see a number of reasons for this:

- Chicken is easily my favorite meat. While I like my steak, I don't think I'll miss beef a lot. Pork has never done much for me.
- Chicken is a healthier meat in terms of nutrients / fat ratio.
- Chickens are far more efficient than cows and especially pigs. Per calorie, they use like 10 times less resources to grow than a pig. Which would help hugely with the land problem outlined in the video.
- Chickens are more ethical to eat, for two reasons: they're easier to keep happy. Give 'em some space and food and you won't hear many complaints from 'em. Secondly, the reason I would rather not eat pigs is not because they're alive, plants are alive too, but because they're quite intelligent and psychologically complex and hence quite consciously aware of their suffering. Chickens however, are capable of living for hours without their fucking head. The same goes for fish.
 
PvtRyan said:
I'm gravitating towards being a chickenarian (and some fish). I see a number of reasons for this:

- Chicken is easily my favorite meat. While I like my steak, I don't think I'll miss beef a lot. Pork has never done much for me.
- Chicken is a healthier meat in terms of nutrients / fat ratio.
- Chickens are far more efficient than cows and especially pigs. Per calorie, they use like 10 times less resources to grow than a pig. Which would help hugely with the land problem outlined in the video.
- Chickens are more ethical to eat, for two reasons: they're easier to keep happy. Give 'em some space and food and you won't hear many complaints from 'em. Secondly, the reason I would rather not eat pigs is not because they're alive, plants are alive too, but because they're quite intelligent and psychologically complex and hence quite consciously aware of their suffering. Chickens however, are capable of living for hours without their fucking head. The same goes for fish.
Click to expand...

http://www.chickenindustry.com/cfi/intelligence/
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens.asp

In any case, since I don't want to ruin kaday thread, I'll wait until it dies and resurrect it to say something about your mother or whatever. You know the usual.
 
I secretly love you Gray Fox.

Anyway, interesting read but not entirely convinced. I'll come back to it later.
 
Also to expand upon his remark regarding antibiotics.

We would have much more success with bacteria if we weren?t so profligate with
our best weapon against them: antibiotics. Remarkably, by one estimate some 70 percent
of the antibiotics used in the developed world are given to farm animals, often routinely in
stock feed, simply to promote growth or as a precaution against infection. Such
applications give bacteria every opportunity to evolve a resistance to them. It is an
opportunity that they have enthusiastically seized.

In 1952, penicillin was fully effective against all strains of staphylococcus bacteria, to such
an extent that by the early 1960s the U.S. surgeon general, William Stewart, felt confident
enough to declare: ?The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have
basically wiped out infection in the United States.? Even as he spoke, however, some 90
percent of those strains were in the process of developing immunity to penicillin. Soon one
of these new strains, called Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, began to show up
in hospitals. Only one type of antibiotic, vancomycin, remained effective against it, but in
1997 a hospital in Tokyo reported the appearance of a strain that could resist even that.
Within months it had spread to six other Japanese hospitals. All over, the microbes are
beginning to win the war again: in U.S. hospitals alone, some fourteen thousand people a
year die from infections they pick up there. As James Surowiecki has noted, given a choice
between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks or
antidepressants that people will take every day forever, drug companies not surprisingly
opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the
pharmaceutical industry hasn?t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.
Click to expand...


Source = A short history of nearly everything by Bill bryson
 
I must admit I found the talk both enlightening and quite depressing in many ways, but worth posting because albeit it might not be a situation we want to face, it is one we should (before we bury our heads into the sand once more). The same goes for the other post I made earlier about the story of stuff, which although its 20 minutes long is well worth viewing because it does have some startling facts in there.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=142910

Faced with what might seem almost insurmountable obstacles I think one has to operate on a personal level in response. Certainly I'm now thinking that if I do X and stick to it (such as reduce my meat intake/buy more local produce), then that might inspire my friends to do the same and that behavioral meme gets carried through. We are at the mercy of the supermarkets, but the markets are driven by demand. If there is a great demand for local produce, then the supermarkets will try and cater for it.

Of topic, but I'm wondering whether this forum should be renamed to 'Global affairs' or something similar, because Politics doesn't really cover it tbf.
 
interesting watch


it's quite funny i started a less meat diet more than a month ago.
i've eaten so much meat in the past it makes me want to puke.

vegetables can be really tasty if they are made correctly with a right amount of meat with it.
 
jverne said:
interesting watch


it's quite funny i started a less meat diet more than a month ago.
i've eaten so much meat in the past it makes me want to puke.

vegetables can be really tasty if they are made correctly with a right amount of meat with it.
Click to expand...

Best way to cook vegetables is with a Steamer BTW, that way you don't lose any of the vitamins like you do with boiling.
 
Kadayi said:
Best way to cook vegetables is with a Steamer BTW, that way you don't lose any of the vitamins like you do with boiling.
Click to expand...

fully agree, and they even stay nice and crisp if you don't overdo them
 
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