Remember Food?

Today, I wrote a guest post entitled Local Food: Six Reasons Your Kids Will Love It for Food With Kid Appeal: Discover Healthy Foods Your Kids Will Eat.

Sound interesting? Go check it out and support a like minded blog!

(Quick aside: I’ve added a “Share This” link at the bottom of each post which allows you to share interesting content from The Reluctant Eater by emailing, and posting to Facebook and other sites with just a few quick clicks. Try it out with your favorite post!)

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So, as you may have noticed, The Reluctant Eater has a new look! There are still a few minor touchups that haven’t been finished, and some of the formatting of older posts may be a bit off. If you see anything askew, or have suggestions / feedback (good or bad), please don’t hesitate to contact me by email ryan@thereluctanteater.com or via IM by clicking on the “Chat with Ryan Wanger” link along the side of each page, which you will only be able to do when I’m logged in!

There are a few subtle reasons for the switch, but one of the most important is the comments section. Going forward, you will be asked to leave your email address and optionally your website. Email addresses will never be published or shared, and although occasionally I like to thank and/or follow up with people who comment, the best reason for requiring email address is to help prevent spam. More importantly is the ability to leave your website address, so readers who enjoy your comment can click through back to your website, which should help foster a wider community beyond me talking at you!

I’ve also added a third column to the right, to help incorporate both advertising and useful links to help navigate around the site (and subscribe via email or RSS). It’s much cleaner than the really long sidebar in the old design. The old design still exists for the time being, but no new posts will be published there. Don’t worry, if you are already subscribed, you don’t have to make any changes.

If you’ve been reading and enjoying The Reluctant Eater thus far, now is a great time to subscribe. I created a page about the benefits of subscribing, and the difference between email and RSS. Of course, everything is free!

I appreciate all of my readers, and want to reward your continued support. Look for more enhancements in the near future!

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Last month, Wired Magazine published an article entitled The Future of Food: How Science Will Solve the Next Global Crisis. The article (a series of stat based graphics) did little in the way of convincing the reader that science will actually solve the growing food crisis, other than the vague implication that it must, if we are to keep up with increasing demand.

Here are a few of the statistics that stuck a chord with The Reluctant Eater:

• Of the corn grown in this country:
  • 41.1 billion pounds is turned into sweeteners (2/3 of which is HFCS)
  • 333.2 billion pounds becomes animal feed
  • 5.8 billion pounds are eaten by people as corn (we only eat around 2.8% of the corn we produce…2/3 of that is as cereals)

• Quoted from the article: “Spend $2.87 on a Big Mac (the national average) and $0.54 goes to energy. In return you are responsible for producing 4.83 pounds of greenhouse gasses.” (the biggest drain is storage, which accounts for roughly 1/3 of the gasses, and 1/4 of the cost)
• It takes 8235 gallons of water to keep a milking cow and it’s equipment clean and hydrated for a year
• It takes 6 tons of grain and hay to turn a steer into beef

Interestingly, the data itself seemed to offer non-science solutions to several of the problems. If we aren’t producing enough food (which is not necessarily the case, we’re just allocating much of it towards animals), clearly more food will need to be grown in Africa and South America, both of whom only produce food on roughly 15% of their available farmland. By contrast, the US & Europe use around 50%, while India and China use over 70%.

In terms of decreasing the environmental impact, it seems like we should be heading away from science, or rather, use traditional “science” to create more sustainable, local sources of food. Everywhere but India and Russia, food imports more than doubled for every major worldwide food producing regions, and in some cases were 5 or 6 times higher than just 30 years ago. What has changed so much in the last 30 years that we cannot feed ourselves more locally?

My prediction? Food prices will continue to rise worldwide, forcing people to change their consumption habits, which will be reflected primarily in decreased consumption of meat, and more emphasis on local food production.

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TRE: What is your current relationship with food?

TRE: Why did you make the switch?

TRE: Did you just go cold-turkey one day, or was it a gradual process?

TRE: Do you miss the things you used to eat? How much of an adjustment was it for you?

TRE: How has your body responded? Do you feel different? Are there nutrition supplement considerations?

TRE: You’ve attended a few Vegan meetups recently, how did you find that group and what has it been like?

TRE: You heard it here first ladies - JVonD is available! It’s funny, most of the people I have interviewed don’t often get involved in food related conversations, even though it’s a subject everyone can relate to! But I understand where you are coming from, I don’t usually have those conversations either. Maybe there is a way we can make it happen without being preachy?

You seem to be pretty involved in the local scene, what other stuff do you do (besides eat!)?

TRE: Interesting…it’s easy to assume that “bar-fly” and “people who care about what they eat” are two mutually exclusive categories! Do you see veganism growing at the same pace as the organic movement, or are they separate?

TRE: Interesting. I’d never thought of organic vs vegan being a matter of being interested in self vs others. Do be careful about generalizing to everyone though…before I started eating locally & organic, I had cut out probably 80% of the meat in my diet mostly for “be good to the planet” reasons.

I’d heard that people often GAIN a lot of weight when they become vegans, and you mentioned that your diet is horrible. How specifically is it horrible? And is that the way it has to be for vegans?

TRE: Hm, good question. I haven’t stopped eating meat because 1) There are plenty of places you can buy meat raised responsibly (with no cruelty and little environmental impact). The ethics of eating another animal doesn’t bother me…everything we eat is a living thing. 2) My wife isn’t interested in being a vegetarian. We used to eat separately, but we ate crap. Cutting back on all that processed food (which has huge negative health and environmental impacts) seems to me like a better compromise. Reason #2 is weak, but basically it explains why we occasionally have meat in the house. Regardless of that, I would probably still eat some meat if that was what was served at a party or friends house.

I realize that we could do the same without any meat, and maybe that will happen someday, but idea that everything has to be so black and white is too big of a roadblock. If we “allow” people to start changing their consumption habits little by little in the right direction, it will have a greater net impact than criticizing them for not “going all the way” (not to imply you are criticizing).

In the end, the short answer is that, while I am against the systematic animal cruelty of the industrial food machine, I am not against eating animals that have been raised responsibly. Again, maybe that will change someday, but right now my convictions are not strong enough to make me eat zero meat.

I’m curious, what’s your reaction to my explanation?

TRE: Thanks for sharing so openly, I really appreciate it. It’s definitely made me think even more about the food choices I’m making. Do you have any last bits of advice or wisdom for our readers?

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