Meat

I was watching a conservative comedian's news talk show last night.  Some of you might know it as the Colbert Report.  Mr. Colbert invited a guest, Mark Bittman, on to his show.  Mr. Bittman is a journalist-turned-chef who writes environmentally conscious books/cookbooks, such as Food Matters:  A Guide to Conscious Eating, to help humans lesson their impact on the environment (which begs the question: How many trees were killed to print this book?  Huh, Mr. Bittman?  Huh?).  In the interview, Mr. Bittman threw out a statistic.  It was this:

-Humans, on average, eat 3 pounds of food a day.

-1/2 pound of the food eaten is meat.

-1 and 1/2 pounds of the food eaten is made from other animal products.

-That's a total of 2/3 of our food coming from animals.

-"Industrialized livestock" are contributing to 1/5 of the greenhouse gasses produced every year.

-We each eat an average of 30 whole animals a year (I actually eat a lot more, but they are just the small dumb ones, so they don't count).

Mr. Bittman suggests that if we all choose to eat less meat, it will eventually lead to a reduction of greenhouse gasses.

I feel really torn.  I have a deep desire to save the earth.  We pay to recycle.  We bought the most fuel efficient minivan on the market (yes, there is one...sort of).  I don't drive much.  I only bake in the winter.  We have switched all of our light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs.  We use environmentally friendly laundry detergent...and so on and so forth.  I feel as if we are really trying to be more environmentally conscious and reduce our carbon print.

Now...

...asking me to give up electricity, gas, and convenience is one thing.  

But...

...asking me to give up my daily bacon and cheese burrito and meat baby is going too far.  

(Thanks to my husband's co-workers who send him these articles)