Without realizing it I've been sliding towards a vegetarian lifestyle.
This will only drive me further down that path.
This will only drive me further down that path.
I only noticed that I tend to take in less meat these days because of not trusting how it's treated. Videos like this don't inspire me to eat it... http://kottke.org/13/03/how-our-food-gets-to-the-table
I live in Japan and generally avoid buying any food from the US. My beef comes from Australia and vegetables mostly from Western Japan (as far from Fukushima as possible).
It's not cheap but it's better than supporting Monsanto and factory farms in general.
Or just eat pastas, lentil based dishes, vegetable curries, soups, or even supplement meat with texturized vegetable protein for faux meat pies, bolognese etc. I'm a meat eater and can't tell the difference.
The vegetarians I know don't eat tofu very often, and would rather eat tofu potentially produced by a notorious company than eat an animal.
Didn't down-vote you BTW, just thought I'd chime in because I know a few veggos, including my wife. It's not bad food I can assure you.
Our production of "vegetarian food" grew up with the idea of having animals as part of rotation, but with the decline in demand for most meat varieties, economics do not allow those animals to be part of the cycle anymore.
Vegetarianism may be a solution for the long term society, but it seems like we have a lot of technical challenges to overcome in the meantime. Right now it looks like we are just trading one problem for another.
That doesn't sound right:
https://www.google.com/search?q=meat+consumption&hl=en&#...
If anything, where there's been a slight reduction in one area of consumption (e.g. beef) there's been an increase in another (poultry) with an overall rise in meat consumption.
> economics do not allow those animals to be part of the cycle anymore
Given the incredible size of modern farms, using animals as a source of fertilizer is no longer practical. Meat consumption isn't really part of the equation - livestock require food themselves, so you'd need to grow huge sums just to feed the animals as well as produce enough grain/vegetables for human consumption. If you can artificially produce fertilizer then you remove this bottleneck.
Smaller farms would allow animals to be part of the rotation.
Second, the majority of soy is used to feed food animals (even grass-fed, which generally does not count how the animals are "finished").
Fourth, free range is a joke. Sure there are some farmers that give their animals a decent life. But labels like free range and cage free are not well regulated and give you no real guarantee of anything. Please do some research on what is actually involved in these kinds of claims, which are essentially marketing.
Finally, jayfuerstenberg said he/she was moving closer to vegetarianism due to the mistreatment of animals. Don't reply to that by saying vegetarianism is not the answer because it is in this case.