eat less meat or face food shortage

The Commons international development committee said farmers should rear more animals on grass because livestock is land and energy intensive and grain should be saved for humans.

This is what it said in this Daily Mail article. This is what I have been saying all along. The farmers seem to be up in arms about this statement. Nobody is saying that we shouldn't use land that can't be used to grow grain or other crops to grow grass for cattle or sheep. We're saying that we shouldn't import vast quantities of maize and soya to feed cattle, pigs and chickens. We should be eating more grain and pulses ourselves.

The article also said:-

The committee raised concerns about the impact of biofuels – derived from plants such as sugar cane and maize – on the environment and on food prices.

Vast swathes of agricultural land are set aside to grow fuel crops, pushing up the price of staple goods. By law, at least 5 per cent of petrol and diesel sold on British forecourts must be biofuel.

The MPs called on ministers to consider using domestic stockpiles of food to protect against price hikes.

As well as claiming grain should be fed to humans instead of animals, vegetarians and green activists tell steak lovers livestock farming is a major source of harmful greenhouse gases.

At the end of the article it mentions the Cranfield University research that seems to show that meat substitutes are not better than meat. I've looked at this research and it doesn't seem to make sense. It seems to be saying that if British people eat more soya, chickpeas and lentils then, because they are grown abroad, more land abroad has to be cultivated. So maybe forests abroad will have to be cut down to grow soya etc.

This seems to me to be complete nonsense. What we are saying is that vast quantitites or maize and soya are grown abroad and used to feed farm animals. If we eat less meat, then most of the maize and soya that is grown abroad will be available for human consumption. We could use that land for other crops too, such as chickpeas and lentils, and also farm less intensively. No extra land would be needed.

I'm annoyed with farmers and Cranfield University with trying to muddy the waters here. This is an issue of the global food supply and personal health. It's as if they want people to believe that when British people go to the supermarket and buy meat it will come from an animal that will have grazed on a Welsh hillside or something. The reality is that most farm animals are fed on maize and soya grown in tropical countries. If we used that soya for tofu instead of feeding animals then we would need LESS cultivated land and not MORE.

Another recent Daily Mail article says that recent research shows that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters. That doesn't necessarily mean that vegetarianism causes good health because it is a correlation not cause-and-effect, but it makes the vested interests of the farming lobby seem even more immoral in their attempts to make people believe that British meat is all natural and healthy.

In any case, the Cranfield University 'research' is talking about the value of meat substitutes. People don't need to replace meat with a substitute. They don't need as much protein as they think they do. I could agree with the statement below, found here.

Donal Murphy-Bokern, one of the (Cranfield University) study authors and the former farming and food science co-ordinator at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “For some people, tofu and other meat substitutes symbolise environmental friendliness but they are not necessarily the badge of merit people claim. Simply eating more bread, pasta and potatoes instead of meat is more environmentally friendly.”

can vegetarianism be unhealthy?

There was a very interesting article in the Independent newspaper on Thursday (21/02/13) titled From vegetarian to confirmed carnivore where John Nicholson stated that when he was eating a low-fat wholefood vegan diet he felt ill. He became obese and had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), diarrhea, fatigue and headaches. His partner, who shared his way of eating, had depression and mood swings.

They decided to ditch the wheat, rice and potatoes and eat lots of meat, butter, cream, lard and goose fat. He felt better straight away and lost lots of weight. His cholesterol levels went down. This seems on the face of it to contradict everything that I have been saying on this blog, about people eating less meat and more starchy foods and vegetables. However, I think I can understand what is happening here.

John seems to have gone from one extreme to another. From veganism to eating lots of meat and animal fat. When people make radical changes in the way that they eat, often excluding whole food groups, they often gain weight or lose weight without trying. They may be getting more calories or fewer without knowing.

The placebo effect might explain some of why John started to feel a lot better straight away. I don't want to dismiss what he says though. It is possible that John had an iron or zinc deficiency which was rectified as soon as he started eating meat, especially as his first meat was ox liver. It might even be that he wasn't getting enough protein, although it's not that difficult to get enought protein on a vegan diet. Another possibility is that he was suffering from an allergy to wheat.

If he had been eating soya products, that might have caused problems. Soya contains phytic acid which reduces our ability to absorb iron and zinc and trypsin inhibitors which reduce our ability to digest protein. This might not be a problem with traditional foods like miso, tofu or tempeh, but might be more of a problem with other ways of eating soya.

John seems to have moved to what is in effect the Atkins diet. In the Atkins diet people do not try to control calories but eat as much meat and animal fat as they like. The main thing they are trying to avoid is carbohydrate. It is a low-carbohydrate diet. When you digest carbohydrate, glucose enters the bloodstream. If you have too much glucose in your bloodstream your body needs to remove the excess or it will cause problems. Your pancreas secretes the hormone insulin which tells the body to remove some glucose.

In most people insulin and glucose levels rise and fall. Too much of this causes problems though. Obesity is only one problem that can happen when we have big rises and falls of insulin and glucose. Obesity can give rise to other problems. It is now recognised that this is one of the biggest causes of ill health.

People on the Atkins diet tend not to eat vast numbers of calories because the diet is less varied than a normal diet. They can easily get bored with it or even a bit nauseous contemplating the prospect of yet more meat and fat. It is often said that people crave fat, but a lot of the fat we eat is hidden. If you eat a slice of cake, you don't realise how much fat is in it because the flavour is masked by sugar or something acidic such as lemon. We eat so much fat not because we love it so much but because we don't know it is there.

I don't have a problem with the Atkins diet. It does seem to work at helping people to slim. I do wonder about the long-term effects of staying on the Atkins diet though. I'm not just worried about heart disease and strokes, reducing protein has been linked to increased longevity.

I wonder if it would work just as well if instead of meat they ate fish, and instead of eating butter and lard they ate avocados and olive oil. In Crete people traditionally got lots of their calories from olive oil and far from harming them it seems to have contributed to health and long life.

Also, there are some forms of carbohydrate that are better than others at not flooding your bloodstream with glucose. Starch is better than sugar, and the amylopectin form of starch is better than the amylose form. You can measure the effect that a food has on your blood glucose levels. A low glycemic index (GI) is better than a high glycemic index. Long-grain rice is better than short-grain rice. Brown rice is better than white rice. Pasta and porridge are good too. If you eat some low GI forms of starch it won't have too bad an effect on your blood glucose levels.

Vegetables can seem to have a high GI but really they are mostly OK. Baked potatoes are not good though. So I shall continue to eat my long-grain rice and pasta, together with my pulses and vegetables. I do eat meat, cheese, fish and eggs sometimes but not every day. What John Nicholson has said in no way invalidates what I have stated on this blog about the problems of trying to feed everyone on the planet with lots of meat. We can't feed 7, 8 or 9 billion people with a diet high in meat.

A good point that John makes is that not everbody is the same. People vary as to what sort of foods they thrive on. I think it is likely that some people digest starch more readily than others. If so, they are less likely to thrive on a high starch diet even if it is low GI.

In case people are thinking that they can just add butter and cream to their normal foods and get away with it, it doesn't work like that. If you want to eat lots of meat and fat and lose weight then you would have to go on an extremely low-carbohydrate diet, or you will just put on weight.