Beef. It's what's (not) for dinner!

Photo by federico stevanin

I've been posting a lot about food lately and that is mostly because I've been thinking about food a lot lately. Here is a quick snapshot of my food evolution:
1979-2003: omnivore, trying to eat healthy for the most part
2004-mid-2009: When I became pregnant for the first time I decided to only eat organic meat, eggs, and dairy and some organic produce. Mostly I was worried about the hormones while I was growing a human being :) If I could have afforded 100% organic I probably would have done that but I did the best I could within my budget. Since I was pregnant for about three of those five years that covered most of the time but I pretty much ate the same way when I wasn't pregnant during that time.
Mid-2009: Due to Finn's isovaleric acidemia and the fact that he'll be on a low-protein diet for his life, Grant and I decided to cut back on the meat in our diet. My personal goal was to either be fully vegetarian by the time he was old enough to notice, or at least cut back to one meal with meat a week.

I've been reading lots of things along the way that have shaped my opinion, most significantly "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, and "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. I also recommend "Food, Inc." which is practically a movie version of "Omnivore".

I've been so impacted by these books PLUS thinking about Finn's future (where it just seems less alienating for him to pick out, say, cashews from his stir-fry, rather than us eating steak and he just gets rice and broccoli) and have landed on a way of eating that feels right right now.

Here it is, for our whole family:
I consider myself pretty much a vegetarian but will eat meat about once a week. It's not a legalistic thing for me where I think, "I want chicken, but, no, I've already had meat this week." I am, however, making a conscious effort to decrease the meat in my family's diet. However I plan on only eating meat that hasn't been factory farmed (i.e. Purdue, Tyson, Laura's Lean Beef, Smithfield, etc.) and has been raised humanely (i.e. pastured, given a diet natural to its original diet, no hormones/antibiotics, blah, blah, blah).

I know this sounds obnoxious and I really don't want to be obnoxious or alienating. I completely respect your decision to eat however you want (maybe you even eat more narrowly than me?!) and I promise the way you choose to eat doesn't make me think or feel differently about you. All I can say is that I have this conviction and I have to do what I think is right for me and my family.

photo by Michelle Meiklejohn

So if I haven't lost you already may I please give you a brief explanation of why I've come to this decision? And if our dinner invitations dry up then please say yes when I invite you to dinner and let me show you that eating this way doesn't mean that I eat tofu!

1). It's healthy. There have been many studies correlating a plant-based diet to longevity, but one big one is The China Study. There's a book out by the same name by the researcher, T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. Here's a quick snippet:
“People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell.

In The China Study, Dr. Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and also its ability to reduce or reverse the risk or effects of these deadly illnesses.

2) This guy
Like I said, it just seems so weird for us to be eating meat every night and then poor Finn just gets vegetables and grains, but for some reason it seems more inclusive for us to eat plant-based protein that he doesn't eat. This reason is the easiest for me. I know that most of the time Finn will be surrounded by people eating meat but I just want his home life to be a place where he doesn't have to feel so different.

3) The environment
As I've mentioned before, we're part of a meat CSA so we get all of our meat from a wonderful family of farmers (ranchers?) who live about 60 miles from here. It makes me feel good to support local farmers but it also makes me glad to know I'm not contributing to the huge carbon foot print of trucks shipping meat cross-country.
Secondly, factory farms are a huge violator of the earth for many reasons, not the least of which is the animals', ahem...emissions. Farmed animals produce 130 times as much waste as humans with no infrastructure for getting rid of it (from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production). Obviously "animal waste" is natural but the amount produced by factory farms just can't be absorbed into fields and is running off into waterways and evaporating into the air. Communities living near factory farms are plagued with chronic nosebleeds, earaches, diarrhea, and burning lungs (Jennifer Lee, "Neighbors of Vast Hog Farms Say Foul Air Endangers Their Health," New York Times, May 11, 2003).

4) Ethics
If you know me well you know I'm not really an animal person so I don't worry that anyone will mistake me for the newest member of PETA but the way the animals are treated in these factory farms is just plain wrong. They spend their whole lives in terrible, terrible conditions and then die a pretty terrible death. If the cows can't walk into the slaughterhouse they are lifted up on a fork lift. Processors in chicken plants kick, stomp on, and rip the beaks off of live chickens as well as spit tobacco in the their eyes. These abuses are widespread and I'm only listing the mild ones here (yes, these are mild compared to many of the other ones).

Also, we think it is unethical for factory farms to sell chemically-altered, sick animals to people. People often speak about the cheap cost of factory farmed meat being the main reason to continue eating as they do. The fact is that cheap, factory farmed meat will cost a person much, much more the long run.

I could go on and on so I'll force myself to stop.

I don't want to end on a depressing note so I'll just offer a few suggestions if you, like me, are concerned about the things we eat. Try going meatless one day a week. You don't have to eat tofu! How about yummy homemade pizza with no meat? Once you get used to "Meatless Monday" try adding another meatless day. Your budget will thank you, too!
Join a CSA! You can find one in your area here. As my friend Christin reminded me today, Michael Pollan said, "You get to vote three times a day about how you're going to eat." So spend your money supporting meat you feel good about.

Thank you for sticking with this if you read the whole thing! As my wonderful midwife Susie said, "Your friends are just going to think you're getting more and more granola! First a home birth and now vegetarianism!" Oh well. Thanks for loving us anyway!