10 ways to express your eating preferences around the world.

我食齋 (ngóh sihk jāai) – Cantonese

Je suis végétarien (male) (zhuh swee vay-zhay-tah-ree-a) / végétarienne (female) (zhuh swee vay-zhay-tah-ree-ehn) – French

Ich bin Vegetarier (ikh bin vay-gay-TAH-ree-er) –German

Eimai hortofagos (EE-may hor-to-FAH-gos) –Greek

Vegetarianus vagyok (veghetarianush vadiok) –Hungarian

Sono vegetariano (male) (SOH-noh veh-jeh-tah-RYAH-noh) / vegetariana (female) (SOH-noh veh-jeh-tah-RYAH-nah) –Italian

ベジタリアンです(Bejitarian desu) –Japanese

Я вегетарианец (male) (yah vee-gee-tuh-ree-YAHN-eets) / Я вегетарианка (female) (yah vee-gee-tuh-ree-YAHN-kah) – Russian

Yo soy vegetariano (male) (yo soy ve-heh-TAHR-eee-ahno) / vegetariana (yo soy ve-heh-TAHR-eee-ahna) (female) – Spanish

Toi an chay (toy ahn jay) – Vietnamese

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Image: Elmastudio

A delicious and creative brunch dish that’s perfect for the vegetarian crowd.

Sometimes you need a new spin on culinary classic, and this recipe for Creamy Grits with Crispy Leeks happens to be vegetarian and gluten free, perfect for when you have tired of the bacon and bread combination that is the darling of every breakfast joint du jour.

This week’s Sunday Brunch recipe comes to us from Herbivoracious, an excellent food blog run by Michael Natkin that is committed to intriguing vegetarian recipes. Natkin is also coming out with a new cookbook this spring, and if you’re looking for another addition to your brunch table, you might also want to try out his One-Bowl Banana Muffins.

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Breakfast for dinner doesn’t have to be just pancakes or eggs and toast. I grew up in the South, and was always appalled to watch folks mix together waffles, bacon, maple syrup and everything else on their plate. Thirty years later, I think that mixing sweet, savory and salty flavors is pure genius.

Today’s dish explores that idea, with creamy grits, crispy fried leeks, a leek jus with Morita peppers and honey, cilantro-Epazote pesto, an egg, sunny side up, and a bit of queso fresco. This would be more of a Southwestern spin on that Southern idea.

Grits are one of the great breakfast foods. If you have made polenta before, you’ve also made grits – there is no real difference, unless you are talking lye-processed hominy grits, which are much less common. Some folks argue about whether or one is coarser or finer, white or yellow but mainly it is a distinction without a definitive difference. Cornmeal is simply whisked into lots of boiling water, and then simmered until smooth, soft and creamy. If you like, you can replace some of the water with milk, and/or add cheese to enrich.

I handled the leeks in an interesting way here. We fry up a big batch of them until crispy. Some are reserved for the final dish, and the rest are then simmered with morita peppers, extracting all of that caramelized flavor to make the jus. I just recently learned about Moritas – they are smoked and dried red jalapenos. So basically chipotles, but not packed in adobo. You get the opportunity to get all the pepper flavor and smoke without the extraneous tomatoey flavors in the canned sauce. And let me tell you, breathing in deep from a bag of Morita peppers is a transporting experience. Wow.

The cilantro-Epazote pesto was a pure experiment. I thought maybe the Epazote flavor would be overpowering, and I would only be able to use a tiny bit as an accent. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the case. It was present and very appetizing, but not over the top.

Creamy Grits with Crispy Leeks, Leek Jus, and Cilantro-Epazote Pesto
Vegetarian and gluten-free; not vegan
Serves 2

• 3 cups water
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup stone-ground grits
• 2 tablespoons pepitas, toasted
• 1 handful cilantro leaves, cleaned
• 4 Epazote leaves
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 3 leeks, white parts only, halved lengthwise, cleaned thoroughly, sliced thinly
• 2 Morita peppers or other smoked pepper of your choice, briefly toasted in a dry skillet
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 organic eggs
• 2 ounces queso fresco or other cheese of your choice

Bring the 3 cups of water and 1 cup of milk to a boil. Whisk in the grits in a thin stream, stirring continuously. Add a couple big pinches of salt. Reduce to a simmer. Cook for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. You will notice a distinct change where they go from being “gritty” to creamy.  Add more water as necessary if they are getting dry before that happens. Anytime after they turn creamy, they are ready to serve. Taste and add salt as needed.

Meanwhile, combine the pepitas, cilantro, Epazote, 2 tablespoons of canola oil and a pinch of salt in a mini food processor, and process until it forms a coarse, pesto-like consistency. You might need a little more oil. Taste and adjust salt.

Heat a very large, preferably cast-iron skilet over a high flame. Add 1/4 cup of oil and heat for a moment. Add the leeks and a big pinch of salt and fry, turning only very occasionally, until they are mostly deep brown. Remove about two tablespoons of them two paper towels and season with salt. As they cool, the should become crisp.

Return the pan to a medium flame (with the rest of the leeks still in it), and deglaze the pan with 1 cup of water, scraping well to get all the flavorful bits. Add the Morita peppers and the honey and whisk. Reduce heat to a bare simmer and cook five minutes, adding more water if needed.

Using a fine sieve and pressing well, transfer the liquid to a very small saucepan and keep warm. Dispose of the solids. Reduce or add liquid as necessary to produce a thin jus with just a hint of body. Taste and adjust seasoning. We’d like a balance of savory from the leeks, salt, smoke and heat, and sweetness from the honey.

In the original skillet, add a little more oil and fry off two eggs. Cover so that the whites cook while the yolk remains runny. Or you could use poached eggs.

To serve, put a helping of the grits in each bowl and make a well. Fill the well with the poached egg. Top with the crispy leeks and pour a couple tablespoons of the jus around the edge. Add a tablespoon or so of the pesto and a small piece of queso fresco.

Sunday Brunch is an ongoing series featuring brunch recipes from some of our favorite food blogs around the web. New recipes every Sunday, so that you’re ensured a gourmet weekend. Bon appetit!

Image: Herbivoracious

Top five delicious and vegetarian friendly dishes in Long Beach, California.

Earlier this summer we ran a contest to find your favorite locavore picks. Reader Annabel Adams sent us her top five from Long Beach, California, and we couldn’t stop drooling over the vegan friendly list, so much so, that we had to choose it as our winner.

1. Grilled Veggie Rice Bowl at Kafe Neo
2. Fried Cauliflower at Magic Lamp 
3. Fried Potatoes at Open Sesame
4. Coconut Oatmeal at Roots Gourmet 
5. Teriyaki Tempeh Bowl at Zephyr Cafe 

Head on over to Foodspotting and start spotting – and testing – these dishes yourself!

In Foodspotting Friday we highlight one of Foodspotting’s – or our own – top picks from our Foodspotting guides. Be sure to check them out and tip us off to your own favorites in our Readers’ Picks guide. Want to start spotting food on your own? Join Foodspotting and take part in the food spotting revolution. It’s visual, it’s positive, it’s global and we are in love with it.

Image: Magic Lamp

ColumnHe’s smart and strong, beautiful and brave, kind-hearted and…carnivorous.

At the dawn of a relationship, any faux pas is sufficient grounds for termination – far better to wield a blunt axe than be blinded by short-lived charms. Certain obvious criteria warrant immediate demotion from maybe-boyfriend to totally-not-lustable such as: ignorant homophobic, racist, or sexist slip-ups; failure to exhibit kindness and humanity to baristas, waiters, and people otherwise employed in the service industry; too-liberal use of ‘emoticons’ in emails, gratuitous text messages, or other similar demands on your time and patience all come to mind. Not to be too specific.

But what if the fellow is smart and strong, beautiful and brave, and an all-around incredible, kind-hearted individual? It’s this juncture of clear, mutual attraction where questions of ethics and their long-term implications make dating a stickier, less cut-and-dried issue altogether. Namely, can a principled vegan woman find it within herself to fall for a meat-eating man? Marinate on that a minute.

Let’s say you unequivocally believe that meat is murder. Now, imagine somehow reconciling that firm, clear conviction with a well-mannered, scintillating conversationalist with whom you’re on a date with at a new French restaurant who, along with a tastefully-selected bottle of Bordeaux, just ordered the foie gras starter and veal main.

As a no-turning-back vegetarian since my teenage years, I’ve never taken a long-term lover whose moral and philosophical compass regarding animal rights and welfare didn’t approximate my own. Were any of these shy and smiling boys so inclined from the outset of our relationship? No, absolutely not. But they were uniformly intelligent, curious creatures with the good sense to reexamine their ethical presuppositions and accordingly recalibrate their practical, day-to-day affairs to reflect an evolving value system.

My mission to change the hearts and minds of carnivores one-guy-at-a-time? Accomplished. Well, perhaps not quite. After breaking up, all but one, lone ex-boyfriend shortly, summarily abandoned his conscientious ways in favor of fried chicken. Gross. Hey, what better way to work out some breakup angst than to stick a fork in it? Revenge, for some, may be a dish best served medium-rare.

Older-and-wiser is perhaps the surest and truest of clichés. Age endows us (or should endow us) with the willingness to hold a magnifying glass to our  own shortcomings, frankly examining how we all can be selfish and small, prideful and petty.

This is easier said than done. In the lofty words of essayist Brillat Savarin: “There can be no warm, rich home-life anywhere else if it does not exist at the table; and in the same way there can be no enduring family happiness, no real marriage, if  a man and woman cannot open themselves generously and without suspicion one to the other over a shared bowl of soup as well as a shared caress.”

Food, from an arugula plant photosynthesizing the sun’s energy, to the farm worker who harvests the leaves, to the intimacy of a couple collaborating in the kitchen to prepare a lavish green salad, is greater than a preference for taste. Its preparation and consumption is a radical, sensual act encompassing everything from environmental sustainability to immigrant labor rights. This is to say nothing of animal welfare.

As much as a man’s virtues and joie de vivre might make my heart sing, I simply cannot conceive of spending my life – much less creating a family – with someone who chooses to overlook the implications of his morning bacon and eggs.

Love isn’t the exclusive domain of romantic partnership. Love is a choice about how you will show up in the world. Love drives my opposition to the death-penalty in America; it governs my decision to ride a bicycle rather than drive a car; and it motivates me to extend equal consideration of interest to animals. I am an animal. I am also an animal who doesn’t eat other animals.

Female animal seeks male animal who doesn’t eat animals. (Must also possess athletic build, international sensibility, and fulfilling career that makes him happy.)

Worst personal ad of all time? Maybe. Or it’s honest and realistic: the foundation of a sustainable relationship based on a commitment to common values.

A man and woman who can companionably, conscientiously dine together – not to mention cook, host festive dinner parties for friends, and indulge in regular postprandial love-making – stay together. As Brillat Savarin said, “Happiness at the table leads to happiness in bed.” And, with that, Guten appetit.

Sex By Numbers is an ongoing look into the emotional and sexual lives of the modern day woman. Follow Abigail Wick weekly here for insight and inspiration as she explores the “sex” of women and the terrain they must travel.

Image: Bolshakov

Call it flexitarianism, conscious meat consumption, or low meat eating, lots of people are saving the flesh for special occasions and adopting a veg-centric diet. If you’ve been thinking about going vegetarian or vegan for the planet, but you really like meat and think you’ll miss it, or you’re worried that your nutrition will suffer, or you don’t want to subject your entire family to an extreme change, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be black and white.

On a personal note, I’ve been eating about 85 percent veg for a few years now and it works for me, my body, my budget, and my beliefs.

Conventional livestock production uses tons of grain, water, and petroleum. It’s extremely inefficient, has huge environmental impacts, and is cruel to animals. For a detailed picture, read the now-classic piece, The Meat Guzzler, by Mark Bittman of the New York Times.

On the other hand, abolishing meat entirely is a bad idea because livestock can be an important part of ecological farming (not to mention it’s a tough sell to a meat-loving public). Pasture-raised meat is better for the environment, animals, and us by far, but requires more land. If we’re going to produce meat more sustainably, we’re going to have to eat a lot less of it. That’s the challenge.

Because drastic lifestyle changes can be overwhelming, humans have a tendency to do nothing until they feel ready to make a leap, but tiny steps can actually make a difference and lead to a complete change in the end, if that’s where you decide you’re headed.

The first step is to change your mindset from thinking of meat as the center of the plate and shift your shopping and cooking habits. It starts at that all-important moment when you’re thinking of what to make for dinner. Train your brain to build the meal around grains, beans, and vegetables, instead of a pork chop. There are many ways to do this and none of them are difficult.

Let’s get started!

1. Take a Class

This story about an eco-conscious, low meat cooking teacher in Portland, Oregon Made me think there must be others all over the country. Check Craigslist and your community message boards.

2. Adopt a Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean Diet has been shown to be healthy for your body. It’s also low in meat, not to mention so delicious.

3. Participate in Meatless Mondays

Started by Johns Hopkin’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Meatless Mondays have taken the social web by storm. Why not make it Meatless Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays?

4. Take EcoSalon’s 5 Day Eat Low on the Food Chain Meal Challenge.

On the 6th day, roast a pasture-raised chicken, make a broth, and make it last.

5. Surf the Web

The 10 in 10 Diet is all the way veg, focuses on budget cooking, real, fresh foods, and has great tips for switching your thinking and shopping habits in the form of a funny robot video.

Low Meat is a new site that promises lots of goodies for readers.

6. Buy a Cookbook

There are heaps of cookbooks that are all or mostly veg, yet friendly to meat eaters.

The Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley has adaptable recipes for people that have to feed both vegetarians and carnivores or those, like me, who only want to eat meat once in awhile.

The Flexitarian Diet focuses on health and weight loss with recipes.

The Adaptable Feast by Ivy Manning includes recipes from a variety of traditions that have a “fork in the road” allowing for the accommodation of different diets.

There’s the James Beard Award-winning Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by almost-vegetarian Deborah Madison.

The upcoming book Licking Your Chops by rock star blogger Kim O’Donnel, who was one of the original proponents of Meatless Mondays, promises to be delicious.

7. Do the bulk of your shopping at the farmers’ market or join a CSA.

The easiest way to lower your meat consumption is to start with the freshest seasonal vegetables. The flavors are so vibrant and they are such a pleasure to cook with that it will be easy to make meat an afterthought.

Still on the fence? Here are 9 things you should probably know before becoming a vegetarian.

Up next week in The Green Plate: tips and tricks for shopping the farmers’ market.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Images: Moe, K.I.T., Martin Kingsley, NatalieMaynor, nblumhardt, Mecookie, gamene and MR+G.

As the ball dropped at midnight, did you resolve that this will be the year you try your hand at the cut back or eliminate meat from your diet? You’ve scoured the Internet for information, read books, planned menus, and now you’re ready to take the plunge. Lots of us have been there and so let us play big sister for a minute and share nine surprising and fun things you need to know about becoming a vegetarian.

You don’t have to live on tofu – Tofu is a protein-packed tasty and versatile ingredient in your vegetarian arsenal, but it’s not the only thing on the menu. In fact, there are several yummy options for getting your protein needs met, including veggie burgers, quinoa, and a whole parade of legumes to choose from.

Even if you’re not all-in, it still counts – If you’re drawn to the vegetarian philosophy, lifestyle, or menu but aren’t sure you can give up meat entirely, we’re giving you permission to just do what you can. Any reduction in meat intake is good for your health and great for the planet, so whether you start with Meatless Mondays, double up on vegetables at lunch, or just read a cookbook, any step at all is a good one.

People will annoy you sometimes – People mean well, but are apt to say the darndest things when they discover you’re a vegetarian. You’ll hear everything from “Are you sure you’re getting enough protein?” to “My friend’s sister’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s hair fell out from lack of iron.” Unless you really enjoy the thrill of a long debate about the merits of your new lifestyle, just be polite, arm yourself in advance with pleasant responses, then change the subject.

You’ll be smart and famous – Well, maybe not famous, but at least you’ll be in good company. Alicia Silverstone, Kristen Bell, and Alanis Morisette are among the many celebs who’ve sworn off meat. A recent study also shows that vegetarians are smarter and have higher IQs than their flesh-eating counterparts, although the jury’s still out on just how valid the results are.

You might turn your pets into vegetarians, too – Once you find the meatless method is very much to your liking, you may end up deciding to take Fluffy and Fido along for the ride. Whether you choose environmentally-responsible pet food or simply look for ways to green your pets’ environment, it’s quite possible you’ll find your new lifestyle impacts your pooch in the same positive ways it’s impacting yours.

The dinner parties you throw will still be awesome – A quick whirl through your library’s cookbook aisle or a 10-minute search on the Internet yields a huge batch of recipes that are so insanely good, your guests will never miss the meat. If you need instant ideas, here are 7 finger licking good recipes for meat eaters to get you started.

Your beauty routine might get caught up in the action – Once you cut meat from your diet, you may start looking for other ways to devoid your life of animal products. From organic deodorant and dental products to bath and body scrubs, your bathroom is a great place to start.

Your food budget might go down a little – The key to enjoying a vegetarian diet is to mix it up and keep things interesting. You don’t want to live on brown rice and broccoli, so try a wide variety of foods you’ve ignored in the past (daikon, anyone?) to see what grabs you. Buying what’s already in season is key to keeping costs down. Also be sure to invest in herbs, spices, and condiments to jazz up your meals and tease your tastebuds. The good news is, the upfront cost of stocking your larder (which evens out over the first few weeks) is nothing compared to the money you can save not buying those expensive cuts of meat.

You will learn to love your kitchen gadgets – Expect your pressure, slow, and rice cookers to become your best friends. If they’ve been collecting dust in the lower recesses of your kitchen cabinet, now’s the time to haul them out and put them to work. Vegetarian soups and chilis are out of this world when simmered on low all day, and you can cook your beans in a fraction of the time with a good pressure cooker. Make your rice cooker do double duty – use it to steam vegetables and make cakes.

Image: The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving can be either a gluttonous extravagance, or one of the greenest holiday feasts.

Here’s why: One of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses is livestock production. Turkey is faster growing than cows, so it’s more efficient from a resource input point of view. Plus, turkeys don’t emit methane.

Another big contributor to greenhouse gasses is food waste. After Thanksgiving, we tend to eat our leftovers, using every spare scrap of food.

Other than the turkey and the cranberries, most Thanksgiving dishes are seasonal, plant-based foods that can typically grow anywhere. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, pumpkins, apples. See what I mean?

From an energy use perspective, we tend to use our ovens to capacity at Thanksgiving, which is much better than cooking small amounts of food.

You can enjoy your Thanksgiving guilt-free as long as you don’t waste any food. And this recipe will help you with that task!

Two-in-One Mashed Potatoes

Serves 6-8

2 pounds russet potatoes
2 pounds garnet sweet potatoes
3 whole garlic cloves, peeled and cut in half
1 teaspoon mustard seeds, lightly crushed with a mortar and pestle
2 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1/2 cup half & half
1/2 cup creme fraiche (divided equally into two portions)
4 tablespoons butter, softened (divided equally into two portions)
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel the potatoes and sweet potatoes and cut them into 2-inch chunks. Bring two pots of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and the garlic to one pot and the sweet potatoes to the other. Boil both until tender.

Meanwhile, place the mustard seeds, cardamom pods and half & half in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for one minute. Turn off the heat and set aside.

When the potatoes and sweet potatoes are tender, drain them well and place them in separate bowls. Strain half of the half & half into each bowl and then add half of the creme fraiche and butter to each. Add some salt and pepper to each bowl and mash the potatoes and sweet potatoes well, keeping them separate. If you like smoother potatoes, you may run them through a ricer or food mill. Taste each mixture and adjust salt and pepper.

To serve, place them side by side in the serving bowl and swirl them together in a pretty pattern.

Use organic, locally grown ingredients whenever possible.

Recipe Copyright Vanessa Barrington 2009

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. This original post can be found here.

Image: Dr. Hemmert



I try to get to the farmers’ market every week. Recently, however, I wasn’t able to due to summer travels. I was therefore thankful when I headed to the Alemany Farmers’ Market this past weekend.

I wanted to shop for the coming week and loaded up to the point where I was dropping bags and my wallet every time I went in for something more. (I really need to work out a better technique.) Still, it was well worth it. I’d somehow managed to forget exactly how much more flavorful the freshest-of-the-fresh vegetables taste when they come straight from the farm.

This simple and fast quinoa recipe is a wonderful way to experience such market vegetables. It also happens to be extremely healthy, so you really can’t go wrong. The recipe works well as main dish for lunch or dinner or could work as a side dish too.

Quinoa with Farmers’ Market Vegetables:

Preparation and cooking time: ~30 minutes.

Serves 1-2.

Ingredients:

1 cup organic quinoa grain

1-2 teaspoons olive or grapeseed oil

1/2 onion, sliced

1 Tablespoon minced ginger

1/2 red pepper, sliced

2 baby carrots, sliced

1-2 zucchini’s, halved lengthwise and sliced

3-4 leaves rainbow chard or kale, stems removed and sliced small (or 1 cup baby spinach leaves)

1-2 stalks baby bok choy, leaves separated from the stems, all sliced

1 Tablespoon soy sauce (or tamari) + 1 to 2 Tablespoons water

Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon

2 fresh onions or scallions, minced (or 2-3 Tablespoons freshly chopped cilantro)

salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Rinse quinoa. Bring quinoa and 1 and 3/4 cups water to boil. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer 15-20 minutes, or until water is absorbed. Once cooked, remove from heat, and keep covered.

2. Prepare vegetables. Heat oil in frying pan. Add ginger and cook briefly for 30 seconds. Add onion and saute on medium-high heat for 3-5 minutes, until beginning to soften.

3. Add red pepper, carrots, chard and bok choy stems, cooking for about 5-6 minutes.

4. Add zucchini. Cook  2-3 minutes.

5. Add bok choy leaves, along with the soy sauce and water, and cook 1 more minute, stirring vegetables well, adding a dash of salt and pepper. Remove from heat.

6. Fluff-up the quinoa, stirring in the fresh onions and lemon juice until evenly distributed, adding kosher salt and freshly ground pepper- while mixing- to taste.

7. Serve quinoa with vegetables on top.

Oh, he’s just so smug.

And no, I’m not jealous of his abs, or the fact that Old Spice’s the Man Your Man Could Smell Like (née Isaiah Mustafa) has led something of a charmed life: The Tennessee Titans signed him to their practice squad, then sent him to play football in Barcelona; he owned a restaurant on Melrose; and he accidentally won $47,000 on The Weakest Link from a question where he mixed up Dr. Viktor Frankenstein and the comic book character Dr. Doom to fortuitous results. Then he got the Old Spice gig. And now he’s popping up everywhere, extolling his plants-only diet.

Mustafa is a vegan, you see, which means I feel even worse about myself. A few days ago, he appeared on the Tonight Show and shared his special diet with Jay Leno (which meant that I was annoyed by both the guest and the host for a change, rather than irritated solely by “Big Jaw”).

“I’m lucky to workout with Tony Horton of P90x fame,” said Mustafa. “He’s got me on this diet right now that’s absolutely ridiculous. There are five things you can’t do.” (Insert eye roll.) “There’s no alcohol; no caffeine; no processed sugars; nothing with a face – no animals or animal byproducts.” Life is so hard.

Oh yes, he goes on.

“But here’s the tough one: no gluten.”

The tough one? Who are you trying to impress, Isaiah? I know gluten’s hard to avoid and all, but to dismiss booze, coffee and meat like they’re tertiary characters in a daily diet is pretentious beyond belief. Also, every vegan I’ve ever met looks like the Crypt Keeper; so how does this fella pull off the beefcake bit without consuming, well, beef and cake?

Bring back Bruce Campbell’s avant-garde Old Spice spots. Now that’s a guy we can look up to.

In other news, Zooey Deschanel’s no longer a vegan, citing food allergies. I’ll take her word before Mustafa’s:

“Sometimes you just need a little something, a little meat.”

Yes, ma’am.

One man’s quest for vegetarianism and a cleaner planet

Millions of gallons of oil are spreading across the Gulf of Mexico, killing wildlife and threatening coastal communities. This environmental disaster makes it clear that there are costs associated with our dependency on fossil fuel. These costs are usually well-hidden and often seem out of our hands. We assume these are challenges for businesses and governments to take on, but too large and unseemly for one person to make a real impact.

I am reminded of The New York Times’ 2008 article, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” in which the author Mark Bittman compares oil to meat.

He writes, “Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally – like oil – meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.”

Bittman’s piece compares the amount of fossil fuels needed to produce a meat meal versus fossil fuels needed for a plant-based meal and illustrates that the meat meal requires 16 times more!

Although the negative consequences of excessive oil and meat consumption are usually tucked away, a growing bed of evidence is making these issues harder and harder to ignore. In 2006, the United Nations‘ Food and Agriculture Organization released a report called “Livestock’s Long Shadow.” The report states that animal agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and “emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”

It didn’t take long for industry to challenge that report in attempts to debunk the conclusion that animal agriculture contributes more to climate change than transportation. In April of this year, James McWilliams wrote a piece for The Atlantic challenging the rash of media reports that jumped on this industry-led PR campaign. McWilliams rightly concluded, “No matter what the exact figure, the environmental case against industrial meat production remains powerfully convincing.”

Now, the United Nations’ Environment Programme has published a new report called “Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Production and Consumption: Priority Products and Materials.” It identifies the largest contributors to environmental impacts and pressures, citing “food” and “agricultural materials, especially animal products” as priority areas of concern. Referring to this report, The Guardian newspaper published an article under the heading “UN Urges Global Move to Meat and Dairy-Free Diet,” that states, “A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change.”

There are many things in this world that are out of our control and where we may feel helpless to make a difference. But, that’s not the case with food. We can each exercise a large degree of control over what we eat, and by making food choices that are consistent with our own values and interests, we can make the world a better place. Choosing to eat plants instead of animals lightens our environmental footprint, including our dependency on oil, and it improves and saves lives, both human and non-human. Of that, we can be certain.

Editor’s note: Article by Gene Baur. Originally published by our friends at Tonic.com. Tonic is a digital media company and news source dedicated to promoting the good that happens each day around the world. Tonic tells the stories of people and organizations who are working to make a difference, by inspiring good in themselves and others. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Tonic on Twitter, too!

Image: flikr