Middle Eastern restaurants seem to be all the rage in Paris, London, New York, and almost any other European or American city. We in the affluent West have taken a shine to pitas, hummus, falafel, kebabs, stuffed grape leaves, yogurt sauces, and vegetable stews with eggplant, pine nuts, olives, squash, peppers, and a variety of wonderful spices. Shifting toward a Middle Eastern diet would not only be a tasty thing to do, it would be good for our health and a benefit to the environment.
We in the U.S. consume a bit more than 3,800 calories a day per person of which a whopping 900 come from animal products. This figure is unadjusted for spoilage, waste, and loss in food preparation, meaning that the actual U.S. average daily calorie intake is more like 2,700. The recommended healthy calorie intake for a moderately active adult male is about 2,400 with no more than 10 percent coming from protein. Clearly, we Americans consume much more meat than we need and way too many calories. Nearly 24 percent of our calories come from meat protein alone, well above the 10 percent recommended amount. No wonder we face an epidemic of obesity. The developed countries of the world as a whole including N. America and Europe, don’t do much better in achieving a healthy diet, with an average daily calorie consumption of 3,600 of which 750 comes from animal products. Japan is the only affluent country in the world that comes anywhere near a healthy diet at 2,700 per capita daily calories consumed with 350 from meat products. Despite discouraging statistics on calorie intakes from most affluent countries of the world, we needn’t necessarily despair about solving the global obesity epidemic. A variety of time-tested, tasty global cuisines that are good for us are available from all over the world including Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. An abundance of calories and large intakes of animal-based protein isn’t essential to the pleasures of eating.
Consider what would happen if we in the U.S. adopted a Middle Eastern diet or one comparable to it. Our daily calorie consumption would drop to around 3,300 with about 300-400 coming from meat. Our calorie intake would then be on par with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which are fairly affluent, and a bit above Tunisia, a developing country. We Americans could accomplish parity with a Middle Eastern diet simply but cutting our meat consumption in half. Doing so would not only bring substantial health benefits, but would also amount to a huge favor for the environment.
The essential environmental problem with meat flows from the large amount of land and energy required to grow animal feed grains. To produce a gram of animal protein in the developed countries requires about 10 grams of vegetable protein. Because our extraordinary intake of animal protein in the U.S., we devoting half our farmland to animal protein production for just 24 percent of our calories. If we cut our meat consumption in half and move toward a “Middle Eastern” calorie standard, we could cut our agriculture land for animal products in half, reducing our total land devoted to agriculture by a fourth. This would leave a substantial chunk of land available for natural habitat restoration, renewable energy production, or other uses. Feed grains, especially corn, require a massive amount of fossil fuel energy to cultivate, not only to run farm equipment, but for producing the large volumes of nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides applied to fields and crops. A hectare of corn uses up the amount of energy equivalent to that in 230 gallons of gas, and emits an equivalent of 4 metric tons of CO2 annually. Cutting corn production by a quarter in this country (about half is currently devoted to animal feed) alone would reduce our CO2 emissions by approximately 30 million metric tons per year. Reductions in fertilizer runoff from Midwestern corn fields that end up in the Gulf of Mexico would lead to a lessening of the “dead zone” that appears there annually as a consequence of fertilizer-induced oxygen depletion.
To sum up, the citizens of North Africa and the Middle East use much less land and energy than we westerners do for food and have a healthier diet as a result. In short, their food production system is much more compact than our own both directly by using less land, and indirectly by absorbing less fossil fuel energy. Hopefully, this part of the world will remain with its wonderful cuisine, and think carefully how to export its products more extensively to the benefit of us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment