A report by a Stockholm-based non-profit says people should drastically cut fish, meat and dairy consumption and eat next to no sugar.
— The Canadian Press
Eat your vegetables.
— Your mother
I ate lunch today, for which I apologize. Part of my meal — the best part, if I am to be honest — died violently.
Some of the other ingredients were salted (mmm, salt) with enough preservatives to give my lunch the half-life of nuclear waste.
I take this last bit as good news: Should I keel over and croak, as my Stockholmies apparently believe is imminent (“Don’t buy any green bananas, Jack.” “Not going to be a problem, Erik”) the funeral home will be spared the expense of embalming fluid.
The Swedish report, published in the medical journal Lancet last week, says we should dramatically cut the amount of red meat and sugar we eat while upping our intake of whole grains, beans, fruits, twigs, grass clippings, drain sludge and anything with the taste and consistency of dryer lint. Or something like that.
Really, I kind of tuned it out because it was pretty much the same finger-wagging lecture your mother has been delivering since that time she caught you slipping brussels sprouts to the dog under the table when you were eight. In short, eat more healthily. Thanks, we get it. Now pass the bacon.
This is the standard reaction when people try to persuade people like me to trade food that tastes good for stuff that won’t kill us. It’s not like they’re telling us what we don’t already know.
Sometimes they even try to fool us into eating better, waiting until we’re finished the lasagna before revealing that it was made with eggplant, tofu or some other form of compost. It’s as though they expect the meat-eaters will convert on the spot: “I’ve been wasting my life on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding when I could have been eating steamed kale?!”
Such behaviour is flat-out reckless. Longtime readers might recall the time in 2001 when I accepted a challenge from the People for the Ethical Treatment to eat a meat-substitute Tofurky and ended up spending Christmas in Victoria General Hospital with a burst appendix a mere three weeks later. (The health authority refused to link the two events but that must be because they’re in the pocket of Big Quinoa.)
As it turns out, PETA was less interested in my health than that of the animals we eat. In 2008, the organization announced it would pay $1 million to the first scientist to develop laboratory-grown meat that tastes and smells like the real thing. “Although healthy and delicious vegetarian mock meats (made from plant protein and spices) abound, consumers who just can’t get enough cholesterol and saturated fat in their diet could indulge their cravings without harming animals,” it said in a news release, sounding just a wee bit passive-aggressive. (They made cholesterol and saturated fat sound like a bad thing.)
Which brings us back to the report out of Sweden (actually, it involved research from 16 countries). Its “planetary health diet” was devised not just with human well-being in mind, but global sustainability. Certain foods, mostly those involving livestock, leave a larger environmental footprint (hoofprint?) than others, it argues. That’s why North Americans should cut red meat consumption by 84 per cent.
What to eat instead? More “pulses.” Lordy, what I wouldn’t give for a good feed of pulses right now, deep fried and dunked in blue cheese dip. If only I knew what they were. Meanwhile, at the same time the planetary health diet was unveiled, the CBC carried a story about Alberta farmers high-fiving each other over increased beef sales to Japan.
Anyway, we now have another reason to feel guilty when chowing down on a greaseburger, hearing not just the “tsk-tsk” of your mother but the groan of Mother Earth clutching her heart. You lose a bit of your appetite when the restaurant server mutters “eco-terrorist” while dropping off your steak and David Suzuki gives you the finger from the next table.
Bon appetit.
