[lit-ideas] Some stats
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2011 05:34:44 -0700 (PDT)
Here are some statistics regarding our food supply, quoting from the October
issue of Nutrition Action, published by CSPI (Center for Science in the Public
Interest). Quoting from an interview with Robert Lawrence, currently with
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore; before that with
the Harvard Medical School. Excerpted:
"... In the United States, we now produce 9 billion animals for food every
year: about 100 million hogs, 35 million head of cattle, and slightly more
than 8 billion broiler chickens. That's one million broilers per hour, 24
hours a day, 365 days a year.
... It takes about 7 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef, and about 6.5
pounds of grain to produce a pound of pork. Even poultry, which is the most
efficient animal, requires about 2.6 pounds of grain to produce one pound of
meat.
... To grow the grain to produce one pound of beef requires 840 gallons of
water.
... Water tables throughout the country are declining. Take the Ogallala
aquifer under the Great Plains. It supplies about 30 percent of the nation's
ground water used for irrigation, and it is being pumped down several feet a
year.
... Our industrial agriculture system produces about one ton of animal waste
solids--what's left of their excrement after the water has been removed--for
every single person in this country. That's 40 times as much waste as humans
produce. Animal waste, which was once a rich source organic fertilizer, has
now become a major polluter of surface water, soil, and air.
... in the mid-1950's there were more than 25 different commodities--things
like potatoes, cherries, popcorn, oats, and plums--that were commercially
viable in Iowa, meaning that they were grown in Iowa and either sold within the
state or shipped out of state. Today, Iowa is reduced to essentially four:
corn, soybeans, hogs, and cattle.
... for example, the grain grown in the Midwest is shipped a thousand miles to
the eastern shore of Maryland to feed the 500 to 600 million broilers that are
produced on the Delmarva peninsula each year.
... we have come to rely more and more on fossil fuels to produce synthetic
fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides [an understatement].
... The food industry has used our evolutionary preference for fat and sugar
very effectively by formulating processed foods that are high in fats, sugars,
and salt."
They don't mention the cruelty to the animals, and the environmental
consequences are serious and unsustainable. Among everything quoted above, the
extremely unnatural, anti-natural, system of factory farming animals makes the
animals physically sick and they need to be treated with antibiotics which is a
major contributor to antibiotic resistance. The listeria contamination of the
cantaloupes is just a tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, all this factory
farming leaves vegetarians and vegans just as susceptible to the bacterial
consequences of factory farming, but eating only or mostly plants does have
major health benefits in all other areas.
I've been a vegetarian for over 25 years, a vegan for about the last 10 and
don't understand the fascination with meat, especially since factory farmed
meat is about as far from nature as is plastic. Chickens are the worst.
They're a facsimile of chicken. Michael Pollan in fact says today's food isn't
food. He calls it foodish. President Clinton is now a vegan for health
reasons (sitting at death's door after a quadruple bypass does concentrate the
mind). Just a note of caution in the unlikely event anyone is contemplating
veganism (a most wonderful way to live, and so easy), be sure to take
*sublingual* B12 every day, extremely important, since it's not found in any
vegan foods and a deficiency in it can cause irreversible nerve damage.
Another note, studies have shown that people who take multiple vitamins
actually die sooner than people who don't. That doesn't apply to B12 and
vegans, and possibly to some other nutrients like vitamin
D.
Regarding manipulation by the food industry, David Kessler, former commissioner
of the FDA, and quite possibly the last good one, wrote a book called The End
of Overeating, about how we are pawns, puppets, of the food industry, which is
as corrupt as Monsanto in peddling their wares, no matter how sick they make
us, true Orwellian masters; for example, cattle can't eat corn, it makes them
deathly sick, yet the meat industry sells "corn fed beef" as if it's top of the
line beef, when in fact it's sick beef. (That example isn't from Kessler, it's
from Michael Pollan, but it's all the same). Here's a link to David
Kessler's web site:
http://www.theendofovereatingbook.com/ps/?keycode=098269&ctt_id=32499501&ctt_adnw=Google&ctt_kw=david%20kessler&ctt_ch=ps&ctt_entity=kw&ctt_adid=3416243189&ctt_nwtype=search&ctt_cli=2^9744^43083^706957
Andy
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