Live Small and Prosper: Self-restraint is easy and we all need easy

I entitled a very popular recent post [especially to the persistent J, whoever he may be]
Live Small and Prosper: The latest reason for practicing restraint out-shadows all others.

I suggested that eating less meat results in many positive benefits and that the absolute best reason is:



“It takes less effort than leaving the car at home to conserve fuel (our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels is another reason grain prices are on the rise) and we need an easy way to practice restraint over and over and over again until we get really really good at it so we’ll be ready for the hard hard times when they come.”

I know I’m right too. You can quote me on it.



(I mean, if we can give up cheeseburgers we can certainly take public transit.)

A great comment soon followed.

Theresa said...

That J dude is persistent, if unimaginative. 



Going vegetarian is one of the best things I've done as a human, I think. It was one of the easiest changes to make too, and one with a lot of positive consequences for me and for the world. Way easier than driving less or not using any plastic. When I found out how much food could be going to humans instead of animals, how much I lowered my risk of colitis and colon cancer (which runs in our family), and how I didn't want to be responsible for the de-beaking, and otherwise and inhumane practices of factory farms, I was just so done with meat.

Being vegetarian has actually broadened my diet, not restrained it at all! May 5, 2008 7:00 PM


[Photo: "Where does our business as usual philosophy end?" G. Harrison]

I told theresa I’m still a flexitarian (semi-vegetarian) and feel better for it. And it’s easy.

And we need ‘easy’.

[Visit below for more easy-reading Monday Memoirs]

Live Small and Prosper: The latest reason for practicing restraint out-shadows all others

I said in my most recent column that a quick look at the four main reasons grain prices are on the rise will reveal that our personal fingerprints are all over them.

One reason, greater meat consumption globally, is directly related to the beef, chicken and pork found in our refrigerators and freezers and since summer is approaching and big BBQs sit on 99.99999% of the back decks in North America I thought it would be a good time for us to start showing some restraint in our eating habits.


[Over-consumption is like planting a tree in concrete - GH]

There are many good reasons:

The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people - more than the entire population of the planet. [The Virtuous Consumer by Leslie Garrett]

Eighty per cent of agricultural land in the US is used to raise animals for food. [Ibid]

Less meat on the plate equals more crops for people and/or more land for Mother Nature. [Me]

A vegetarian diet is credited for providing a longer life with reduced risk of such diseases as diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and some cancers. [The Virtuous Consumer - link to Leslie's personal website]

The animals live longer too and their numbers would decrease to more natural levels. [Me]

There is an even better reason to eat less meat.

It takes less effort than leaving the car at home to conserve fuel (our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels is another reason grain prices are on the rise) and we need an easy way to practice restraint over and over and over again until we get really really good at it so we’ll be ready for the hard hard times when they come.

I mean, if we can give up cheeseburgers we can certainly take public transit.

If we can say no to a tenderloin we can, with new internal fortitude, walk to the variety store for smokes and a bag of chips.

If we can eat fewer chicken wings and more beans and brussel sprouts - my gosh, hold onto your hats - we’ll find the strength to trade in the monster pickup for an electric scooter. Yowwzzah.

Practice does make perfect.

[Did you know that climate change will lead to fashion faupas? It surely will. Visit Four Mugs]

Book Review: Like to Eat? The Omnivore’s Dilemma a ‘must read’

I’m reading three books at the same time, four if I count the one I peek at during TV commercials that concerns Bob Dylan’s big song, Like a Rolling Stone, and though The Little Green Handbook by R. Neilsen is loaded with amazing facts, figures and charts [U.S. military budget is 42 % of gov’t spending and rising, education is less than 7%] I spend most of my time with my nose in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

I’m on page 219, slightly over halfway through the very readable text, and getting an alarming and long-overdue education about our continent’s over-reliance on corn and industrial-sized, fossil-fuel-driven farming practices that debase humans, animals and our ecological surroundings. [And it’s true. If factory farms had glass walls many of us would never eat beef, pork or chicken again.]

But I’m also learning about how farming can be a very innovative, rewarding and environmentally friendly vocation or life.


For example, author Michael Pollan spends time on a family farm that cultivates grasses, mainly dependent on free sunlight, that in turn support the healthy growth of a wide variety of animals and by-products.

Chickens team up with cows to manage the grass and replenish the soil, chickens and rabbits team up to provide a unique cash crop, turkeys keep grape vines in tip-top shape, pigs turn cow patties and grass into free, rich compost, and together with a farmer who knows more about plants and animals than 20 factory farmers put together forms an enterprise that rewards the land rather than kills it.

Read the following quote and tell me where the author was at the time - a factory farm or grass farm.

“Unfolding here before us, I realized, was a most impressive form of alchemy: cow patties in the process of being transformed into exceptionally tasty eggs.”

I recommend the book highly to anyone who wants to eat healthy food and leave the air, water and land in good condition for future generations.

[Check Recommended Reading in the right hand panel for a link to an even better book review and go to Motorcycle Miles to read a bit about my next adventure.]

More meaty quotes from The Omnivore’s Dilemma

I generally do my best reading while riding a recumbent bicycle in the basement.

My concentration is deep, pages fly by, I underline with jiggly lines many world famous quotes (well, they will be once everyone reads the same book and sees things the way I do), calories fall to the floor, beads of sweat form on my brow.

Not all of the beads are produced by the much-needed exercise.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan writes:

“When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen (make fertilizer from mountains of ammonium nitrate left over from WWll munition production in the U.S.), the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel.” (pg. 44)

Of course, being self-reliant is commendable in many ways but we supplant the sun at great personal and environmental cost.

The personal: Mountains of fertilizer turn into mountains of corn which, along with a mountain of antibiotics and truckloads of fat, feed millions of cows that become the meal of the day (in North America we eat a fifth of our meals in cars and feed a third of our children at a fast-food outlet every day) for an obese population.


The environmental: “The ultimate fate of the nitrates spread on cornfields (e.g. in Iowa) is to flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where their deadly fertility poisons the marine ecosystem... creating a dead zone as big as the state of new Jersey”. (pg. 47)

I’ve finished only 20 per cent of the book so I’ve many miles to pedal before more important lessons have been learned.

But I can almost guarantee I’ll be less beefy by the time I reach the last page.

Quotes from ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ keep beef off my plate

I should take a few steps back from the line re meatloaf in my last post because, I’m not kidding, I have been eating a lot less meat for quite some time.

Though I do eat meat on occasion (yup, I’m a flexitarian) it is hardly ever beef - due to the influence of several books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen and informative comments from friends.

Good ideas in some books and great ideas in others usually find a home inside my little round head.

For example, I will never forget the sardonic Scaramouche (from the book of the same name by Rafael Sabatini) who was "born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

I read the book twice while in my teens (all the way through too) and feel I am still much like him, though rather than mad I think the world is just a bit out of whack, slightly off kilter and in need of an extensive tune up. Now.

One of the three books I have on the go right now is affecting how I look at every meal I eat, and I eat a lot of them.


In The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan I am learning about the unsettling connections between oil, fertilizer, dead land, cheap corn, unnaturally fat cows, tons of antibiotics, truck loads of fat and doctors on factory farms who say things like:

“Hell, if you gave them (cattle) lots of grass and space, I wouldn’t have a job.”

It’s enough to make me take several more steps back from meatloaf.