The Evergreen State College
Spring 2003
Choosing a place in the
food system: evolution &
culture
·
An ability to select
from a wide range of foods contributes to human survival while at the same time
offering a threat .
·
Hunger vs. fear of
poisoning. Unlike other animals, we possess few genetically determined
prerecognition traits (tasting bitter) that help us determine harmful food
sources.
·
Our genetic heritage
(physiology) allows us to choose widely in order to find nutrients
(carbohydrates, fats an protein) essential to survival.
·
Conventions and taboos
related to food can only exist in human culture because we enjoy an abundance
of both plant and animal food resources.
Vegetarianism: Choosing NOT to eat meat
·
Early Agricultural
practices set the stage. 15,000 BCE domestication of plants and animals secured
food supplies in Mid-east, Asia and Africa.
·
Involuntary
vegetarianism common only in larger settlement areas where wild meat was scarce
and where domesticated animals (dogs, pigs, sheep, goats and cattle),
especially pigs and dogs, competed with humans (at times) for food.
·
Maintaining domesticated
animals suggests abundant vegetation and success of crop systems.
·
Human systems of
dominance and power are revealed in cultural ideas surrounding food and the
ritual eating and slaughter of meat animals.
·
Human world views and
spiritual values connected to abundance of food and ability to eat well.
·
Early traditions about
not consuming meat and or sacrificing animals as meat for the gods evident in
religious practices across many cultures: Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hebrews,
Hindus, Buddhists, Christians. (example: Ovid’s poem “The Doctrines
of Pythagorus” praises a golden age when “no blood stained
men’s lips” and reveals his disgust with animal slaughter)
·
Moral and religious
doctrine eschewing slaughter common also in Medieval Christian
tradition—ideas of purity--and flowered again during the Renaissance and
into the 17th & 18th Centuries among religious
dissenters and among intellectuals.
Questions: What are some of ancient and current rituals
surrounding harvest and slaughter? Example: Samhain, fasting, Thanksgiving . .
.
Choosing Purity: Vegetarianism as a moral obligation
in contemporary society
Early-mid-19th
Century:
English and America religious
revival and moral quest for unadulterated food, informed by health problems
related to urban food-born illness and by horror over the slaughtering
practices of meat producers who supplied urban areas with large quantities of
meat.
·
Temperance: Sylvester Graham calls for raw food, hard mattresses
and cold showers. Influenced the Shakers, informed early mystics and
transcendentalists.
Progressive Era (1860s-1880s): Worry over loose morals, immigration
and sanitation and ill health. Focus, Native Americans, immigrants,
“lower classes”
·
19th Century
urban social movements: urban idealism and romantic notions of pastoral past,
rise of socialism and moral economy (meat costs money, extravagant); animal
welfare, antivivisectionism, animal cruelty legislation (1876), Humanitarian
League (1891)
·
Food Fads: Graham and
whole grains; Kellogg and cereals, nuts; Hay, don’t mix starches with
other food; Salisbury, lean meat and sparse vegetables.
20th Century:
·
Poverty, war and Great
Depression resulted in both voluntary and involuntary vegetaranism.
·
1960s peace movement and
protests against corporate control result in rise of new vegetarian movement
connected to ideas of equality and harmony.
Notions of equality,
individualism, cultural pluralism and secularism in America creates a
willingness to believe opinions that promote the perfectibility of human
nature. politically and socially we romanticize a perfect past. Ideas of a
“natural” diet assumes that at one time, the human body and the
human diet were perfectly coordinated and that our “fall,” has been
a deviation from the natural state.
Meat
Consumption present and future forecasts: see 1998 World Watch press Briefing “United
States leads World Meat Stampede” and Mara Miele, “Short
circuits: New trends in the
consumption of food and the changing status of meat.” International
Planning Studies 4(3), 1999.
·
World meat production
has surged nearly fivefold since 1950, growing from 44 million tons to 211
million tons in 1997. Per capita meat production stands at 36 kg, more than
double the 1950 level. Today, people share the Earth's natural resources with
nearly 1 billion pigs, 1.3 billion cows, 1.8 billion sheep and goats, and 13.5
billion chickens-over two chickens for each man, woman and child on the planet.
·
Rising affluence has
allowed people throughout the world to alter their diets to include more meat.
Over the last decade, per capita consumption of beef, pork and chicken has
doubled in the world's poorer nations-though it is still just one-third the
level in industrial nations.
·
This boom in meat
consumption has been accompanied by increased intake of all animal products,
such as dairy products and eggs, as well as seafood. Per capita consumption of
milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream and eggs have climbed to all-time highs. The
world fish harvest has soared from 21 million tons to 120 million tons since
mid-century, tripling the per capita consumption of seafood.
·
While meat consumption
is on the rise everywhere, the type of meat consumed varies widely across
cultures, with most nations focusing on a single type of meat. For example,
pork dominates meat intake in many European nations and China. Beef reigns in
Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. In South Africa and various East Asian nations,
chicken tops meat consumption. Mutton provides the meat for diets in countries
such as Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. And in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland,
mutton rivals beef as the principal source of meat. Only the United States
ranks high for all three major meats: beef, pork and chicken.
·
The fragile state of the
world's rangelands-which cover roughly twice the area of the world's
cropland-is of concern because these ecosystems are the source of nearly
one-quarter of the world's meat. In addition, hundreds of millions depend on
these lands not only for food, but also for their livelihood. In areas as
distant and diverse as southern Africa, the Middle East, Mongolia and Central
Asia, the livelihood of herder populations-and cultures that revolve around
animal husbandry-is threatened by the escalating demands on the world's
rangelands.
·
Once rangelands are
fully exploited, substantial future gains in beef production can come only from
feedlots. At that point, the competition with pork and poultry for feed grain
will intensify. Beef production requires nearly twice as much grain as pork and
nearly four times as much grain as poultry. (It takes 7 kilograms of grain to
produce one kilogram of beef: the conversion is 4 to 1 for pork and 2 to 1 for
chicken.) Since they are less grain-intensive, chicken and pork are more
cost-effective choices. As a result, while beef production has stagnated in
recent years, pork and chicken production have surged ahead.
Questions:
·
How does vegetarianism
address current meat consumption trends?
·
Does poverty and
involuntary vegetarianism contribute to the surging demand for meat?
·
Increased health
problems in countries with vegetarian culture and mostly vegetarian consumption
habits happen when their diet changes to industrial meat sources. How can this
be addressed?