Skip to main content

Flexitarianism

http://brainybetty.com/bwART2004/trapeze_artist.jpg


Hey folks!  I learnt a new word today!  I can now proudly proclaim myself to be a flexitarian.  Yes, I wish that meant I'm in training to be a trapeze artist.  Or that I'm a leading world expert on the chemical properties of stretchy materials.  All it actually means is that I don't eat meat that much.

Well, big deal.  That lumps me in with a majority of the world's population, many of whom have no choice about the matter.  So why the need for a fancy new word?  Because, it seems, that we in the prosperous West have come to regard having bacon for breakfast, chicken sandwiches for lunch and a steak for dinner as entirely normal.  But also because we in the prosperous West are starting to realise that might not be an entirely good idea.


You know about factory farming, of course.  The images of chickens crammed into tiny cages and pigs which never see the sunlight, which we push out of our minds when we reach for our plastic-wrapped package of sausages in the supermarket.  Of course we'd like to buy free-range and organic.  But ohmygoodnesslookattheprice!  Um, yes.  That's kind of the point.  Meat really shouldn't be that cheap.  The only way to make it so is by engaging in those intensive rearing practices.


But did you know about the environmental consequences?  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (their name in itself is a mouthful!) estimates that meat and dairy production is responsible for about 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  Moreover, this news report states that: "The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources."  Yup, all that cow poo has to go somewhere.



None of this is exactly new.  I'm sure I had a book about going green when I was a kid, that explained how many cow farts it would take to drown London (due to rising sea levels, you understand) or words to that effect.  But it finally seems to be seeping into public consciousness.  This month there are at least three initiatives to get us to eat less meat.

If you can hardly contemplate giving up your daily burger, ease yourself in gently with Meat Free Mondays, which encourages you to make just one day of the week meatless (that'll be Tuesday, then).

Reckon you could do a bit more than that?  National Vegetarian Week challenges you to "Dare to go veggie" from Monday 19 - Sunday 25 May.  Or if you want to go the whole, erm, hog, Friends of the Earth are currently in the middle of their Meat Free May campaign.  I haven't been doing the whole thing, but have enjoyed trying some new recipes from mumsnet - one vegetarian dish for every day of the month.  The shakshuka has a brilliant name and tastes pretty good too, and I'm looking forward to trying the olive and spinach pasta bake.

So, whether you're vegetarian, flexitarian or just plain omnivorous, give some meat-free food a try!  I look forward to gaining some new flexi friends.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Laid-back Lille and Bustling Brussels

After a night in a tiny AirBnB in Canterbury , where there were chocolates on the table and artwork on every inch of the walls, we boarded a ferry with an absolute minimum of fuss, enjoyed a smooth crossing of the channel, and were deposited in the decidedly unscenic surroundings of the port of Dunkirk two hours later. Once we got past the cranes and shipping containers, though, the countryside was flat but pleasant. We stopped at a small town called Cassel, reached by cobbled roads winding up a hill. On the summit was an old windmill and a topograph telling you the distances to various improbable places; St Omer may have been visible in the haze, but Manchester was surely over the horizon.  In Lille, we found our apartment, unpacked the luggage (one rucksack apiece), and set out to find food. Our first choice was fully booked, so we embarked on that kind of aimless wandering where everyone is hungry and no one wants to actually choose a restaurant. We reached a Lebanese place call...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...
Post a Comment
Read more