Potatos… check. Green beans… check. Salad…. check. Big slab o beef…. check.
Growing up in a typical north american home with european ancestry, my parents aimed to provide us with “balanced” meals. However, if you were to evaluate each portion of the food types on the plate in terms of greenhouse gases… the meat tips the scale.
This is hard – I know – because food for many is about personal identity. It is often cultural, nostagic, and an assertion of our wealth and independance from our berry picking, buffalo chasing past. 
Meat free Monday is not saying we should never eat meat… but that perhaps we should eat less, given that vegetables are better for us anyways, and meat production at current levels is unsustainable. Here are some stats:
- Estimates of world GHGs from livestock range from 20-50 per cent (yeah, estimates are shaky due to questionable reporting, but they are significant none the less)
- It takes about 8kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef. FYI: people can eat grain too.
- The demand for grain to feed livestock makes it less accessible to the poor as price goes up. In effect, the rich get fatter…
- Paul McCartney is pretty cool, and he doesn’t eat meat on Mondays.
From my sphere to yours, here’s to Earth on a Platter.
HB
