Food

In the United States, the holiday-packed period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day is generally a time of tremendous excess when it comes to the consumption of food. Over-consumption is not just taken for granted by the bulk of the population, but is even glamorized. Relatives extol us to finish our turkey, along with the stuffing, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and all the other “trimmings.” But outside the “wealthy” countries, many is the person who would love to have just one U.S. citizen’s Thanksgiving Day portion to share with his or her entire family.

However, feeling guilty about eating a hearty holiday dinner won’t really do anything to feed the hungry, so what’s the answer (aside from avoiding gluttony)?

In other words, when it comes to food, what are the best ways of reconciling nature and technology, and providing adequate quantities of nutritious, enjoyable food for everyone on the planet?

Many would say that vegetarianism is the answer for the greatest number of humans, perhaps allowing the largest quantity of food to be produced with the least effort or environmental destruction. But that seems to fly in the face of the fact that human beings are inherently omnivores. And while philosophically the avoidance of eating any sentient life-forms (as opposed to plants) is laudable, one cannot dispute the fact that we humans cannot avoid the taking of innumerable lives on a daily basis.

We “disinfect” our kitchens and bathrooms, spray insecticides in and around our homes, unthinkingly drive through swarms of insects, etc. Yet many of us frown upon hunters as being “cruel” and prefer not to think of how the beef we eat was slaughtered. And even vegetarians (but not strict vegans) often wear leather shoes and belts.

It comes down to detachment from actual survival, I think. Most of those of us who live comfortable lives in cities or suburbia have lost touch with what we consume, buying it in stores where a typical food item is usually finely packaged and often bears little resemblance to the living organism it once was.

But those people worldwide who must raise animals for their own consumption sometimes also become attached to those creatures, and yet realize they must kill them to themselves survive. It’s not pretty, but it’s reality. And while the harvest of many vegetarian foods (like fruits and vegetables) may allow the parent plant to survive, certain other vegetarian food products (like potatoes and sweet potatoes) are harvested by killing the entire plant that is to be consumed.

In the future, though, we may be able to eat meat that has been grown in labs. Just think – there would be no need to raise animals in cramped, unnatural conditions only to painfully slaughter them at the end of their lives of incarceration. Using tissue culture techniques, humans may soon be able to grow only the meat we want, and not the entire, sentient animal. And we could even “design” the meat to be low in fat, or have other desirable qualities (see the Washington Post article, “Dilemma of a Carnivore” by William Saletan). And while some people may cringe at the thought of “creating life” this way, isn’t it better than torturing our fellow beings just for our own eating pleasure?

However, putting aside the philosophical intricacies of eating for the moment, what is the most sustainable and least ecologically-damaging way for humans to feed themselves?

Looking at the question this way, it seems that certain things now being done are definitely NOT the best way for humans to feed themselves. For example, the deforestation of large tracts of temperate and tropical woodland to allow for the grazing of beef cattle is a highly inefficient use of that intricate wonder of nature, the forest.

It has been convincingly shown that tropical forests in such areas as Central America can produce a larger biomass of meat in the form of iguanas (“tastes like chicken”) than in the form of cattle roving a deforested plain. Granted of course, most North Americans, for example, would probably prefer beef over iguana meat in their Big Macs (although maybe they wouldn’t know the difference if it were seasoned right). But more and more people are now eating chicken, which is much closer to reptile meat than beef. (And at least there’s no risk of contracting “bird flu” from iguanas.)

Perhaps more realistically acceptable, in terms of “north of the border” tastes, would be home-raised fish. Tilapia, for example, have been grown in apartments using aquaria with piped-in oxygen, enabling people in urban environments to have continued inexpensive access to fresh fish, the excess of which can also be sold. These fish can be bought as fingerlings and raised at the high density of one-half pound of fish per gallon of water, or greater, and if necessary can then be switched to tanks with cleaner water to improve the flavor of their flesh. In fact, Dr. Martin P. Schreibman of Brooklyn College has said “You could set a tank up in your basement and grow enough fish to pay your rent" since much of the tilapia sold is imported from South America and Asia, making domestically-raised fish less expensive and thus easy to sell.

And freshwater fish, either home-raised or farm-raised, may have to be the primary source of fish in the human diet of the future, because seafood species around the world are now declining at a precipitous rate. Contributing to this are several factors, including over-fishing and pollution, but also the tremendous waste of fish and other creatures which are caught and then spoil before they can be sold and/or consumed. Anyone who doubts this need only visit one of the myriad large fish markets in cities across the planet. There, various fishes, crustaceans, and mollusks are displayed for sale in the open air every day, and those which aren’t bought quickly spoil and become inedible. This waste is accepted as part of “doing business,” but is it really? Perhaps there’s a way to preserve a larger percentage of the catch, rather than merely accepting that much of it will always be wasted.

An article in the May 15th, 2003 issue of Nature magazine stated that only 10% of large fish are now left in the sea (“Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities” by Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, Nature, 5/15/2003). Scientists such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm of Dalhousie University have shown that most species of large ocean fishes such as swordfish, tuna and the like may be gone by the year 2048 if current overfishing continues. Cod, for example, may already be essentially wiped out.

Terrestrially-speaking, so-called “microlivestock” provide opportunities for people with even small yards to raise food animals. These are smaller-than-average breeds of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, and deer as well as naturally small creatures such as chickens and other fowl, rodents, reptiles and insects such as honeybees and even others.

An example is small breeds of cattle that have been developed to allow rural people with very small plots of land to still have fresh milk for their families. In fact, some of the small breeds, although not much larger than a dog such as a Great Dane, can produce nearly as much milk as their full-sized counterparts. For example, the miniature Brahman, selectively bred by Juan Manuel Berruecos Villalobos and his colleagues in Mexico, weighs one-fifth as much as a normal Brahman cow, yet provides two-thirds as much milk (from Microlivestock: Little-Known Small Animals with a Promising Economic Future, p.22, Office of International Affairs, 1991).

And if you’re one of the increasing number of people concerned about the harsh, unnatural conditions animals are subjected to in “factory farming,” then raising your own hens for egg production could be a way to keep eggs in your diet and still have a clear conscience. (And by the way, you don’t need noisy roosters around for the hens to lay; the eggs will just be sterile, which is probably a good thing anyway.) Likewise, if you wanted milk, you could keep your own small dairy cow and treat it like a pet.

Perhaps the ultimate microlivestock are insects, which are intentionally eaten by 80% of the world’s population and unintentionally by 100%. In Mexico, fried grasshoppers are sold in markets, and some restaurants offer tortillas served with red and white agave worms. And while many North Americans would frown upon the idea of eating insects, they don’t hesitate to consume bottom-feeding creatures such as lobsters, crabs and catfish. But many insects such as grasshoppers eat “clean” diets of fresh green plants. And in addition to stating all of this, William F. Lyon, in an Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet, has stated that if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would double the existing allowance for insects and insect parts in food crops, “U.S. farmers could significantly apply less pesticide each year.” He further states that “Most Americans don’t realize they are probably already eating a pound or two of insects each year. One cannot see them, since they have been ground up into tiny pieces in items such as strawberry jams, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, applesauce, frozen chopped broccoli, etc. Actually, these insect parts make some food products more nutritious.”

Muslims and strict Jews are generally both prohibited from consuming insects, but probably often do so anyway, if unwittingly. A common example of a food product derived from them is the reddish coloring known as cochineal, made from scale insects. It is added to certain sausages, poultry and other meat products, certain cheddar cheeses, and various other consumables, and has been used at least as far back as the Aztec and Maya people.

So who knows? Maybe those tiny, ubiquitous, extremely nutritious creatures we call insects can play a bigger part in the human diet of the future.

In the plant kingdom, a different food option for those fortunate enough to have an outside yard where they could grow it, is bamboo. It can be planted for its highly edible and fast-growing shoots (for humans or livestock), and also for its beauty and screening qualities.

And there are a number of varieties of bamboo that will grow well in temperate climates, so you don’t have to live in a warm area. Two species are native to the U.S.

One, Arundinaria gigantea (also called giant bamboo), grows as far north as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The other native species, A. tecta (switch cane), grows along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maryland southward. And bamboos in the genus Phyllostachus are considered particularly good for growing edible shoots in temperate areas, while there are many other types that will grow in warmer places.

Spirulina “algae” (actually cyanobacteria), the life-form whose metabolic transformation of carbon dioxide into oxygen billions of years ago helped create the atmosphere we now breathe, can possibly be grown on a small scale, at home, at least in tropical areas (see spirulinasource.com). Amazingly, in a symbiotic relationship, the chloroplasts within modern plants are actually cyanobacteria living inside the plant! The cyanobacteria (unknowingly, of course) manufacture food for the plant in exchange for a place to live.

Sometimes called a “superfood” and containing a wide variety of nutrients, spirulina has been considered as a crop to be grown in space stations of the future (where it also would presumably get all the sunlight it needs). It could possibly be a real “Soylent Green” type of food source for the future, without involving cannibalism as in the old movie of that name. Eating it as a major component of the diet on a long-term basis would probably become extremely monotonous and annoying, however, but it would probably keep you (physically) healthy. And it’s certainly not the easiest crop to grow on your own at home.

But whether growing spirulina or other types of food, in many cases one can obtain an agricultural discount on property taxes, thus reducing the cost of keeping the land you use to raise such edible plants (or animals).

Realistically, though, it’s probably not really possible for the modern family to produce all of its own food and thus be truly independent. But imagine the benefits of virtually every suburban (not to mention rural) family using its yard to produce a significant proportion of its food supply. It can only be of benefit to humanity.

On the large scale, the bulk of human food probably has to come from plant sources, since all forms of meat will likely always prove more expensive than plant foods, and the explosion in the human population has already created too-large a need for food to be satisfied by animal products anyway. Also, it is inherently inefficient to grow plant “feed” for animals which are then consumed by humans. Even more nonsensical is to take naturally low-fat, low-cholesterol foods and feed them to animals whose meat then becomes high in fat and cholesterol. It seems more logical to just grow plants directly for human consumption. Or, if meat must be had, to just culture animal tissue directly (in laboratory-like facilities), without having to raise and slaughter sentient beings.

As far as growing food plants is concerned, new developments may increase the amount of arable land on our planet while at the same time decreasing the effects of global warming. Albedo Technology International, founded by a Norwegian, Torfinn Johnsen, has developed a whitish “biomembrane” made from organic waste and water which when sprayed onto soil in hot, dry areas would help to hold water into the soil while at the same time cooling it by increasing the ground’s albedo (reflectivity of sunlight). Use of this technology could not only allow areas that are now desert to be used for farming, but would also make up for some of the heat increases that we’ve experienced due to the burning of fossil fuels (see Business 2.0, June 2006, Vol. 7, No. 5, p. 28, article by Patrick Baltatzis).

Jared Diamond has addressed the food issue by comparing the relative production efficiencies of various cultures, and concluding that both competition and cooperation are necessary for maximum production.

Diamond’s view regarding food is in some ways as opposite to that of the late Bucky Fuller. He seems to think there are too many people in the world for even advanced agriculture to keep up with.

And Diamond believes that the act of replacing the hunter-gatherer lifestyle with that of the farmer was the biggest mistake in human history. Its result, he says, was class creation, warfare, and oftentimes, starvation.

Why? Because in hunter-gatherer societies, population levels were lower, food was shared equally, and women were treated more like equals with men. Also, since there was no stored food, there could be no “rich” people or kings. Everyone was more or less on the same level, although respect was accorded to those with great skill in healing, hunting, or locating other food sources.

But the class distinctions arising from the implementation of agriculture seem to have also allowed certain people to become fat while others starved.

And even with the most effective modern agricultural techniques, obstacles to efficient food production still exist. Pests, diseases, and lack of water (sometimes causing or resulting from desertification) take their toll. Natural disasters and other emergencies, including human-created ones (like war) also reduce food output. In order to optimize production, we must come as close to eliminating these problems as possible.

One possible way to reduce the chances that a farmer’s entire crop could be wiped out could be to practice multi-species farming on a given plot of land. This would be preferable to growing a “monoculture” consisting of plants or animals of a single species, all of which can be affected by the same disease or change in environmental conditions. For example, if a farmer grows nothing but spinach, and a spinach-killing disease or insect infestation strikes, he or she may lose everything. But if the farmer grows a variety of crops (and, perhaps, animals) and something damages or kills one type, the other species present may remain unscathed, or at least survive.

Imagine, say, that a small-scale family farmer in a warm climate simultaneously grows bamboo and another crop, such as mangos or lychee-fruit, and also raises a mixture of microlivestock such as small cattle, chickens, and bees (for their honey, wax, etc.). If one of these doesn’t work out, or the market for it temporarily dries up, the farmer can still fall back on the others.

And aside from the issue of production, the elimination of hunger requires that we find ways to minimize the confiscation of food from the poor by those in power, something that happens far too frequently in developing countries. Perhaps increased self-sufficiency in food production could help, using some of the techniques we’ve discussed, like the use of microlivestock, multi-species crops, etc. After all, even in totalitarian countries, it’s probably easier for government forces to confiscate centrally-sold or -distributed food than to take foodstuffs from individual subsistence farmers.

And finally, of course, we must consider the benefits of birth control in preventing unnecessary future hunger. Diamond (among many others) believes that overpopulation is perhaps the greatest cause of human hunger. Many of those who oppose birth control may themselves have access to plenty of food for themselves and their progeny, and thus face little danger from unbridled procreation. But the children of starving parents are almost certainly doomed to also starve themselves. How can that in any way be preferable to the use of birth control?

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