Let me preface this entire piece with this: I do not want to belittle or devalue anyone’s choice to not eat meat. Whatever your motivations are for choosing to keep it from your diet, kudos. By writing this, I only wish to illuminate some info that I’ve found, read fairly extensively upon, generally agree with, and have found to be helpful in my own life. With that said, I might read something tomorrow that completely changes my point of view rendering what I’ve written here useless. But probably not.
Ok. Here we go.
So you want to change your diet because you’ve read that it is a way little old you can help out with this whole environmental destruction/catastrophe/apocalypse thing, otherwise (more benignly ) called “climate change.” Well let’s talk about how swapping your Whopper for an Impossible Burger might not be the best way to go about it.
1. Meat substitutes are often derivatives of industrially farmed soy or other legumes or cereal grains.
The key here is ***"industrially"***. It took a really long time and a lot of money to develop the Impossible Burger. And to make that affordable for you to purchase, it has to now be produced in an economy of scale and fall in line with our already established structure of not paying the true value of food (a phenomenon that is as old as capitalism itself and is one of the cornerstones that undergirds modern, global capitalism...if you want more info on that, read the highly entertaining and enlightening A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things).
Industrially produced anything—food being one of them—by today's standards (usually), is not great for any of us, let along our supposedly beloved planet, for a few reasons. Wendell Berry likens modern industrial farming to mining. He explains that farming has basically evolved (or devolved, I might add) into an extractive industry. Comically colossal amounts of fossil fuels are necessary to power machines to breakthrough what little remains of the irreparably compacted top soil to plant genetically identical mono crops which are then bathed in pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer (fertilizer runoff is one cause of those pesky algae blooms we get in the Gulf of Mexico and small ponds near big farm fields). Yum.
Then lets talk about the massive expenditure of water for this mutant crop (water that has been poisoned by the application of the aforementioned chemicals). Healthy soil acts like a sponge, unhealthy soil does not (and our soils are NOT healthy because of modern farming practice—mono-cropping chiefly to blame), so more and more of our crops need increasingly massive amounts of water (often irrigated from far off sources via damning which dries up precious, down-river water tables necessary for maintaining local ecology at their sources, an issue that will only get worse as the climate continues to get hotter causing longer and longer droughts further depleting already taxed water tables) to reap the yields necessary to maintain the volume to satisfy the economy of scale that will keep the commoditized grain affordable to turn into fake meat.
That's before it gets to the production facility. So let's get that basically synthetic grain from field-to-silo-to-maybe another holding facility-to-production. Lots of trucks, trains, maybe a barge or two, and then to the facility! This should read: a metric fuck load of fuel expended which equals another couple metric fuck loads of carbon into the atmosphere; the key word here being CARBON, which we all know is the major buzzword in contemporary environmentalism. Yeah it's bad, but it is only one piece of the fucked up puzzle. Anywho, I digress. Back to fake meat.
Ok so now we are in production. The soy and other cereal grains come together with some pretty unsavory characters (Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E), Zinc Gluconate, Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Sodium Ascorbate (Vitamin C), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12).
All that comes together to form your “burger.”
I don’t even know what half of that shit is. As Michael Pollan says in An Eater’s Manifesto, “Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable or more than five in number.”
It’s bad for you and it’s bad for the earth (so it’s bad for you TWICE).
Point: Don’t replace one destructive big business with another.
2. Ok so you're not sold on eating meat, but you sure as hell don't want to eat that shit that I just described.
Great.
You can be vegetarian (probably vegan, too...I've just never gone that far) and have a balanced, healthy diet, and even enjoy eating, too! The point is to not substitute your old behavior and habits with quick fixes. Avoid the Ctrl+h (find and replace) method of diet based (or any type of) “environmentalism.” To make a meaningful change, it takes a change in behavior.
Substitutes like tofu or seitan can be an ok alternative, but check the ingredients list. That little parcel of soy goop wrapped in plastic probably has some funny looking additives from places like we talked about earlier that have been molded in a similar manner to our Impossible Burger into the form that you now hold in your hand. In my experience, you have to do your homework when sourcing tofu and seitan just like you would any type of meat.
Seek out whole foods that are as local as you can afford. Unfortunately, we live in a supposedly enlightened, developed, and modern society where food deserts are a reality. Rural areas, inner cities, mainly geographically manifesting in communities with significant populations of color or low-income individuals (poor whites), fall prey to these deserts, so what I am talking about pretty much doesn't work in those cases because of literally zero means to access and little to no means to purchase whole foods. This is a tangental issue that could and should be its own independent post. I don’t mean to just blow this off.
You might find that you live in one of these deserts where whole, local food is not a reality for even part of the year.
But at least try. Strive for it if nothing else. Whole, nutrient rich food is sacred and is a right.
Which brings me to my next point.
There is a misconception that eating well is a privileged act. In some cases it can be (like in food deserts), but history shows us time and again the story of the poor sustenance farmer who eats well. That is a glorified and grandiose example that some might argue requires application of rose-colored glasses to look nostalgically back to a past that never existed (another post needed here, too, about the reality of the history of sustenance farming), sure, but my point is that eating well—eating with an environmental conscious— is attainable. As Michael Pollan says, “Pay more, eat less." Re-focus your values and allot more of your income (as in redistribute your personal wealth) to eating well. It’s a powerful gesture, one that will pay off for you and for all of us.
It sounds counter intuitive, but paying more for whole food makes sense when you break it down. Less food with higher nutrient value will do the body good, better than more food with fewer nutrients. And less food in general (if you come from a place of relative privilege, not from a place of poverty) can lead to a healthier life overall. And it keeps money in local pockets.
Change your behavior. Learn to cook what’s locally available depending on the season. It keeps life interesting and it will connect you to your home.
3. You’re going to keep eating meat.
Cool. So am I.
This is something I have struggled with and go back and fourth on frequently. There’s been many a dinner at my sister’s farm where she has cooked a beautiful piece of meat butchered from my brother-in-law’s own cow, and I would protest eating it even despite the fact that it was about as local as you can get. I based my dissent on the the grounds that eating meat, no matter it’s origin, perpetuates the overall demand for meat. Whether you are purchasing dumpster-ground-chuck from Walmart or a NY strip butchered from a cow you met this morning, you are still participating in the market for meat which, I think in theory, drives a macro demand for red meat that comes from cows. WHICH=bad for the earth. Maybe. This is a hard one to pin down still. It is inarguable that industrially farming grains to feed industrially raised livestock has measurable, detrimental impact on our earth (and in turn our health). That much is true. But does that mean we completely eliminate any type of animal husbandry, specifically the bovine kind? That’s a tricky question.
More and more, we are discovering the benefits of regenerative agriculture and raising of livestock. That means raising plants and animals for human consumption in a manner that more closely aligns with the natural rhythm of the wild world. Rather than shaping an ecosystem to fit our needs, we shape our needs to fit in within the already existing ecosystem. This is nothing new to generations of farmers all over the world, but has been all but lost (and is under attack currently as industrial farming continues to expand globally) in contemporary times.
Raising animals and plants suited for a specific environment in a way that acknowledges the already existing ecosystem there has been proven to not only enrich that ecosystem, but also aid in repairing it. So no industrially farmed cereal grains meant for livestock feed to be fed to large-scale, industrial herds, but instead local grass and forests grazed upon in a revolving manner by small, “human scale” herds that maintain the integrity and health of the ecosystem.
That’s pretty counter to the dominant way of doing things currently. Right now, we shape the ecosystem to meet our needs—removing, restructuring and often destroying what already exists. We don’t raise cows suited for the environment in which they are currently “grown” (sounds gross, but that’s pretty much how we get industrially raised beef). Black Angus, which originates in Scotland, probably shouldn’t be raised in the largely desert southwest.
Integral to this paradigm shift from current agricultural conventions to regenerative practice is a draw down in the demand for red meat. We have to eat less red meat overall, and completely stop purchasing and producing any type of red meat in an industrial manner (stop buying your meat at Walmart). Congruent to that, small (or even small-ish) local farms that raise their cattle in a regenerative manner cannot and should not be expected to meet the current demand for cheap meat that exists because of industrial production.
We need to eat less meat (I think I said that earlier, I’ll probably say it again later).
If it’s suddenly mandated that I can no longer eat meat, ok, so be it. But right now, I am going to keep doing it, partly as a form of protest. I will pay a lot more to eat meat once in a while to drive the demand for meat that was at no point a part of an industrial complex.
So if you feel me on this, keep eating meat, but keep it local and “human scale” (not industrially produced). Know where it comes from. If a forest had to come down for the herd you’re eating from to exist, don’t eat it.
Meet the farmer. Hell, meet your cow that you’re going to eat. That shit might change your mind all together—if everyone had a meet and greet between their t-bone and themselves, we probably would have a lot fewer meat eaters in general.
Be wary of “grass fed.” Know what that means. A lot of times, grass fed does not mean grass fed. For instance, Whole Foods has a policy in sourcing their meat that only requires cattle to be grass fed for 2/3 of their life. They might start on grass, end on grass, but in between guess what—grain!
Dig deep to know where you are getting your bovine protein.
Eat it just once and a while, and find other forms of whole, plant-based protein. We eat WAAAAAY too much red meat (I’ve mentioned this before I think), just one of many symptoms of the “need for cheapness.” I like to think of Yvonne Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, when I eat meat. In an interview once, in talking about eating meat, Chouinard said he eats a little bit at a time when he does eat it; “I don’t need a 16 oz porterhouse.” Let’s all be like Yvonne.
4. Most of this can be applied to any type of animal protein in any form; chicken, chicken eggs, cow milk, cow cheese, goats, goat milk, goat cheese, hogs, lambs and fish (but really…fish is a whole other topic.)
Know what you’re eating. Don’t fall prey to corporations’ marketing schemes selling you quick-fix-meat-substitutes. This will only replace one problem with another.
At this point, environmentally speaking, we’ve all got blood on our hands (if you are living in our western, consumer society, you’re culpable in climate destruction), but there is a possibility of forging ahead honestly and ethically. Be mindful, patient, and fervently inquisitive at every step of the way, and slowly maybe things will change.