Can My Diet Change the World?

I've been spending a considerable amount of time considering whether I should change my diet. For the most part, I think I'm a pretty healthy eater. I haven't stepped into a McDonald's or a Burger King in nearly ten years and I limit my visits to Taco Bell to about 3 times a year. For the average American, I'd say I'm doing pretty well. The things I'm thinking about changing are the amount of meat I consume and the distance my food had to travel to get to my plate.

I've read a couple things recently that got my wheels spinning. The first was the amount of meat we consume compared to what we used to consume. It's really astonishing. I for one eat about 16 ounces of meat a day. I'll generally eat a sandwich at lunch with 5 or 6 ounces of meet and then at dinner will eat a piece of chicken, fish, pork or red meat that weighs in at 8 to 12 ounces. I think I need about half that much. The second was how much cost is associated with food production that is outside of the actual production of food. Most of the cost associated with a cheeseburger is from the transportation costs, not the farmers.

Now before my ultra conservative readers get the panties in a wad, I'm not against killing animals. I'm all for it. Meat is good and in general, good for you. But the problem is, there is a huge separation between how our meet is prepared and how we visualize our meat being prepared. Take for example the average 12 ounce steak I buy from the commissary. We like to believe that some farmer and his family raised that cow from birth, maybe even gave it a cute name like 'Betsy' and when the time came; they butchered the cow and sold it to the local butcher who then sold it to the commissary. But what really happens is some huge corporate farm manned by enormous machines and illegal immigrants processed as much cattle as possible, filling them with steroids and antibiotics while feeding the cows from a huge trough. When the time came, the cattle were crammed into a huge processing plant and inexpertly butchered. That meat was vacuumed sealed and loaded onto a freezer truck. That truck was moved onto a ship or boat and then made its way to Germany. I dropped a couple of bucks on it, heated it up on the grill and called it a day.

I'm in no way considering not eating meat. I just couldn't do it. Maybe red meat, but I just can't resist chicken or pork. But I am considering buying local meat. It will cost me and it will take some getting used to eating grain fed cattle again. No more marbled slabs of goodness. But on the other hand, I'll know that my meat didn't have to be shipped from god knows where and produced by god knows who.

And it's not just meat. I'm thinking about doing the same for fruits, vegetables, cheeses and bread. All of which are available locally and haven't been as commercialized as most American food has. The vegetables will be tricky because they don't grow that many in Germany, but I think if I just focus on those vegetables grow in Europe, I'll be doing OK.

I'm thinking next Monday will be a good time to give it a shot. My breakfast won't change much since my bowl of oatmeal is pretty straight forward (well I guess it should be a German oatmeal) followed by my mid morning snack of oranges from Spain or yogurt for Germany. Lunch will change drastically from my turkey sandwich, to some combination of vegetables and baguette and maybe some cheese. Dinner will go from a whole chicken breast to a half breast with an additional vegetable to compensate.