Low Meat, Faux Meat or No Meat – Should Retailers Really Reward Us for Buying Vegetarian Foods?

Posted on January 23, 2017 by bovidiva

All food have an environmental impact

There’s no doubt that eating more fruit and vegetables is a positive idea. Nationally we still don’t hit our 5-per-day and lifestyle diseases are major causes of premature death. However, as Sainsbury’s redesigns aisles to try and convince shoppers to swap meat for vegetables and plans to issue extra loyalty points to customers choosing vegetarian foods, are we in danger of applying myopic solutions to a seriously complex issue?

Most people in developed countries eat more than the recommended 70 g of meat per day. If (and this is debatable) the researchers who claim that meat consumption is linked to lifestyle disease are correct, then reducing the amount that we eat may be a positive step. However, much of the justification for cutting meat consumption appears to be on the basis of reducing environmental impacts.

So how do we ensure that we eat a diet with a low carbon footprint? It’s very simple. Drewnowski et al. (2015) showed that grains, syrups and sugars had the lowest carbon emissions per kg of food – considerably lower than meat and dairy products. So we simply reduce the proportion of meat and increase the quantity of sugar that we eat each day. Just replace meat products with Mars bars and golden syrup and we’ll save the planet, albeit in conjunction with a spike in type II diabetes and a significant protein deficit.

If Sainsbury’s is determined to reward consumers for making healthier choices, why not do so based on the proportion of fruit, vegetables, lean protein and dairy purchased vs. cakes, biscuits and crisps; rather than giving extra loyalty points for vegetarian products? After all, a snickers bar or a packet of oven chips are both vegetarian, but meat-free foods are not inherently healthy choices. Furthermore, where do fish and dairy fit into the new regime? Given the low nutritional value of soy and oat juices per unit of greenhouse gas emissions compared to dairy, the potential for child malnourishment is considerable if plant-based foods are mis-sold as being nutritionally-equivalent to animal products.

Bipolar “A is bad, B is good” panaceas do nothing to improve consumer knowledge of food production or environmental impacts. Strawberries may have a lower carbon footprint than beef, but cannot be grown on a rocky slope in Scotland. Pork may have a relatively high water footprint, but almonds use even more. Lettuce is a great source of fibre, but provides very little additional nutrients per kg compared to meat. In my experience as an ex-vegan, the majority of vegan restaurant dishes are largely reliant on pasta or rice to bulk out the vegetables. Is this really a healthier choice than lean meat and vegetables? Given that many young people have little or no interest in cooking, is the presence of spiralised courgettes or cauliflower rice at the end of the aisle going to engender a sudden interest in all things gastronomic?

Most people’s diets are led (to a greater or lesser extent) by the foods available in the local supermarket, therefore retailers have huge opportunities to educate, encourage and improve our food choices. It’s not clear why Sainsbury’s would choose to launch this initiative, but it appears to be a box-ticking exercise, designed to address a single minor issue while ignoring the bigger problem.

The Paradox of the Roasted Vegetable Sandwich – Do We Eat What We Preach?

Posted on September 16, 2015 by bovidiva

So here’s the question: who has been out to eat with friends, family or work colleagues, ordered what’s perceived as a virtuous (low-fat, high-fibre, gluten-free or vegetarian) meal in a restaurant, and then grabbed a Snickers bar on the way home? Or, when completing a survey, stated that you are highly concerned about animal welfare or environmental issues, then gone to the grocery store and chosen food simply based on price, taste and convenience?

I’d suggest that this is a situation common to most of us – the behaviours and image that we present to the world (including our carefully-posed selfies) do not always reveal our real personality. Which brings me to the paradox of the roasted vegetable sandwich.

Yesterday, a friend complained that as a consequence of being last in the lunch line at a conference, all that was left was a “soggy veggie sandwich.” Now I attend a lot of meetings and conferences, many of which serve sandwiches, and despite being a voracious meat eater, I’ll almost always choose the vegetarian sandwich. I love egg, hummus or roasted vegetables and really hate slimy catering mayonnaise tainting the deliciousness of roast beef or ham. Luckily for me, in my experience any sandwiches left after the initial rush are inevitably vegetarian or vegan.

Obviously my view may be biased in that I attend far more meetings with a farmer or agricultural industry audience than those attended by, say, Hollywood actors or animal rights activists. But given the number of untouched meatless sandwiches, are caterers overcatering for vegetarians and vegans in an attempt to be sensitive to diverse dietary requirements; or do survey results indicating that people intend to cut meat consumption vastly overestimate the extent to which this is actually happening? Do many people who claim to be vegetarian or vegan actually eat mostly plant-based foods (Hello Beyoncé!) with the occasional hamburger?

We are inundated with messages suggesting that meat is a socially-irresponsible choice. That Meatless Mondays are wildly popular and an increasing number of people are turning to vegetarian and vegan diets to improve their health, animal welfare or environmental impact. Indeed, one UK study of the sandwiches available in grocery stores and fast food restaurants showed that less than 3% were plant-based, and suggested that this was a significant problem for the (alleged) 35% of people who are willing to cut their meat consumption. Yet if over a third of the population were really determined to cut meat intake, wouldn’t that demand have filtered back to sandwich retailers?

Despite stated consumer interest in buying earth-friendly or high-welfare products, interest seldom translates into real-life buying behaviours. Those opposed to livestock farming often state that we could feed the world (political, social and infrastructural barriers not withstanding) if we all adopted a vegetarian or vegan diet, but it seems that we simply don’t want to.

Could we give up growing crops for animal feed and feed more people with tofu and Quorn? Absolutely. Yet there’s a huge gap between philosophical ideology and real world behaviour. Rather than bewailing the allegation that one-third of global grain crops are fed to livestock (ignoring the fact that a high proportion consists of human-inedible byproducts from cereal crops grown for human use), perhaps it’s time to celebrate the fact that two-thirds of global cereals are used to feed people, without being made to feel guilty for enjoying a roast beef sandwich (no mayo please).

I Can’t Brie-lieve It’s Nut Cheese

Posted on April 9, 2015 by bovidiva

Plastic food, anybody?

Am I missing something, or have words ceased to have any meaning? Take the phrase “nut cheese”. Seriously. Now stop giggling like a 12-year old and actually think about it. Would you buy some nut cheese for your grilled cheese sandwich? Fancy some nut cheese on your pizza? Actually, purely from a practical point of view, no, you wouldn’t. Nut cheeses don’t really melt, they are better for spreading on crackers. But, leaving the double entendres aside, why would we give Edam (sorry…) about nut cheese? Apparently it’s a product that’s made exactly like cheese, if you ignore the fact that (dairy)* milk doesn’t have to be ground with water to separate the solids before the cheesemaking begins. Oh, and the fact that nut cheese made from nuts. Which means that despite the name, it’s not actually cheese.

Why does the concept of nut “cheese” irritate me so? It’s not paranoia that everybody will become so enamoured by nut cheese that the dairy industry will cease to exist (could a non-melting, spreading cheese really compete with a hefty chunk of Wensleydale?); or the suspicion that it’s a dastardly plot to infiltrate nut cheese into our children’s diets and tempt them away from the wonderful world of extra strong Cheddar and ashed-rind goats cheese. It’s simply because it’s yet another fake food. Believe me, I get equally irritated by soy “milk”; orange-colored soft drinks masquerading as “juice” (ahem, Sunny-D); and burgers made of mashed tofu. Why? Because I don’t see the point of plastic fantastic meals. Yes, I’ve eaten vegan cheese, vegetarian sausages and tofu roasts. I ate them when I was vegan** and I felt hypocritical for doing so even then. No, they didn’t taste better than the “real” thing (although one soy ice-cream was amazingly good). No, I couldn’t believe I was tucking into a juicy hot dog when I was simply chewing on something with all the taste and texture of reconstituted shoe leather. No, they didn’t compensate for my brothers gleefully eating bacon sandwiches. They simply seemed like a poor imitation of the diet that I had previously enjoyed as an omnivore.

When I was vegan I loved vegetables, and I still do now as a happy omnivore. I may lose my beef-loving credentials for admitting this, but after presenting a webinar on beef sustainability yesterday, I prepared and ate an entirely vegan meal. Admittedly I didn’t notice that it was vegan until I was chatting with @MomattheMeatCounter afterwards, but more tellingly, I didn’t miss the meat. I love vegetables because they are fabulously diverse. They have a myriad of flavours and textures that no other foods can provide. I could happily eat that same vegan meal two or three times per week. Yet vegetables aren’t meat or dairy, they don’t provide the same flavours and nutrients, and I couldn’t go back to being vegan. Aside from anything else, I’d miss real bacon cheeseburgers.

Which brings me to my major issue with all faux meats and dairy products. If you’re determined to give up animal proteins for ethical reasons, then why eat an ersatz version? Why not celebrate the fabulousness of fruit and vegetables and cook creative plant-based meals rather than eating a make-believe version of an animal-based food? Why are these faux foods often championed by people who otherwise derive their careers from bleating about “natural” foods and telling us that if a third-grader can’t pronounce it, we shouldn’t eat it? Why are millions being invested in the promise of growing meat in labs or turning pea protein into faux eggs when we could simply eat peas instead?

Believe me, if I ever have the misfortune to become intolerant to gluten or dairy, I will be seeking real (and naturally gluten and dairy-free!) eggs at Easter rather than a faux chocolate egg with all the supposedly sinful ingredients removed***. Yet this treat was next to the regular chocolate eggs in the supermarket this weekend. A great thing for the small proportion of people who actually have dairy or gluten allergies, but also a clever Easter guilt-inducer to parents everywhere who are convinced that little Crispin and Arabella’s blood chemical levels will otherwise reach “toxic” limits akin to being given an intravenous infusion of the self-proclaimed Food Babe’s nemesis, Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Maybe I’m pedantic, overly irritable about the appropriation of words that are specific to certain foods. Perhaps my European roots run too deeply – after all, I come from a country that designates Stilton cheese as only being produced from milk from cows grazed in three specific counties. Yet it seems like a lazy excuse to suggest that if nut cheese isn’t called cheese it will languish uneaten in the supermarket for months because nobody will understand what it is. In a world where new words are invented every single day (please don’t get my Mother started on the validity of the word “webinar”) is it really conceivable to suggest that marketers can’t find an alternative to “cheese” or “milk” to describe plant-based foods? After all, nobody tries to call tofu “meat”…..yet. Perhaps that will be the next label on the faux food buffet table? I’m sorry, but I Camembert it.

*Even typing (dairy) as a modifier before milk raises my blood pressure a few points.

**I was a strict vegan for 12 months when I was 15. When I was 16 I resumed eating bacon as if pigs were going out of fashion. I still enjoy vegetarian or vegan meals, but I’ve never looked back.

***Yes, I have eaten milk-free milk chocolate – it could easily be used as a substitute for candle wax.

Is It Time We Stopped Shouting About The Dietary Guidelines?

Posted on March 2, 2015 by bovidiva

The recent report by the advisory committee to the USDA dietary guidelines has certainly caused a media stir in the past week or so. There’s a lot of nutritional common sense in the report – eat more fruit, veg, and dairy, reduce carbs and sweetened drinks/snacks, and moderate alcohol intake. Yet there’s a kicker – from both a health and a sustainability perspective, Americans should apparently be guided to consume less animal-based foods.

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When the report was released, my Twitter notifications, Facebook feed and email inbox exploded. Memes like the one to the left appeared on every (virtual) street corner, and the report was mentioned in every online newsletter, whether agricultural or mainstream media. It’s this press coverage rather than the content of the report, that really concerns me.

Individuals don’t pay a lot of attention to a government report on nutrition. Despite the fact that six updates to the guidelines have been released since their inception in 1980, we are all still eating too many Twinkies in front of the TV and super-sized takeout meals in the car, rather than chowing down on broccoli and lentil quinoa bake.

Yet people do pay attention to headlines like “Less meat, more veggies: big food is freaking out about the “nonsensical” new dietary guidelines” and others shown to the left. The media sub-text is that big bad food producers (so different from the lovely local farmer who sells heirloom breed poultry at $18/lb at the farmers market) are appalled by the release of this governmental bad science that’s keeping them from their quest to keep you unhealthily addicted to triple cheeseburgers washed down with a 500-calorie soda, and will do anything to suppress it.

This makes me wonder – at what point do we need quiet, stealthy change, rather than loud protests that attract the attention of people who would otherwise never have read about the guidelines? At what point does industry protesting seem like a modern version of “The lady doth protest too much“?

Rather than posting on Facebook or Twitter that the report is nonsense because the committee of nutritionists ventured into the bottomless pit that is sustainability; why don’t we instead extol the virtues of producing high-quality, nutritious, safe and affordable lean meat, and aim to reach the people who haven’t seen the hyperbolic headlines or read the guidelines simply because they’ve seen a lot of talk about them on Twitter? The old showbiz saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity certainly applies here – the extent of the reporting on the industry backlash against the report means they have probably been noted by far more people that they otherwise might.

The impact of the dietary guidelines recommendations upon purchasing programs is far higher than on individuals, and does give rise to concern. Globally, one in seven children don’t have enough food, and school lunches are often the only guaranteed source of high-quality protein available to children in impoverished families. I may be being overly sceptical, but I suspect that if meat consumption in schools is reduced, it’s unlikely to be replaced with a visually and gastronomically-appealing, nutritionally-complete vegetarian alternative.

Sustainability doesn’t just mean carbon, indeed, environmentally it extends far further than the land, water and energy use assessed by the dietary guidelines advisory committee into far bigger questions. These include the fact that we cannot grow human food crops on all types of land; water quality vs. quantity; the need to protect wildlife biodiversity in marginal and rangeland environments; the use of animal manures vs. inorganic fertilisers; environmental costs of sourcing replacements for animal by-products in manufacturing and other industries; and many other issues. Simply stating that meat-based diet X has a higher carbon footprint or land use than plant-based diet Y is not sufficient justification for 316 million people to reduce their consumption of a specific food. Indeed, despite the conclusions of the committee, data from the US EPA attributing only 2.1% of the national carbon footprint to meat production suggests that even if everybody reduced their intake of beef, lamb and pork, it would have a negligible effect on carbon emissions.

Could we all reduce our individual environmental impact? Absolutely. Yet as stated with regards to dietary change in the advisory report, it has to be done with consideration for our individual biological, medical and cultural requirements. As humans, we have biological and medical requirements for dietary protein, and some would even argue that grilling a 16-oz ribeye is a cultural event. I have every sympathy for the USDA committee*, who were faced with a Herculean task to fulfill, but in this case, they only succeeded in cutting off one head from the multi-craniumed Hydra – and it grew another 50 in its place.

*Many people have already commented on the suitability (or not) of the committee to evaluate diet sustainability, but to give them their due, they do appear to have looked beyond greenhouse gases to land, water and energy use. They are nutrition specialists, not sustainability experts, but it would be difficult (impossible) to find a committee comprising people who were all experts in nutrition, sustainability, economics, policy, behaviour and all the other facets of the report. Nonetheless, the sustainability recommendations appear to be based on a small number of papers, many of which are based on dietary information from other regions (Germany, UK, Italy) which will also have different levels of animal and crop production. As somebody who was born and bred in the UK before moving to the USA I find it difficult to believe that the average American’s diet uses substantially more land (for example) than the average UK person, as cited in the report.

Are Animals As Innocent As Vehement Vegans Vow?

Posted on February 23, 2015 by bovidiva

Another week, another argument with vegans. Reading this blog you could suppose that I spend all my time arguing with the no-meat brigade. Thankfully it’s not that common – it’s just that it always seems to inspire another blog post.

This time it was a particularly vehement vegan (VV?) who insisted that I was a rapist and murderer because I work in the animal science industry. It’s not the first time I’ve heard those claims – indeed, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a vegan argument flow chart out there (see below, click to enlarge), as all the conversations seem to follow the same pattern and use similar (if not identical) phrases.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that the power of my mighty tweets will help these hapless vegans see the light and immediately go out for a steak. I have absolutely no problem with anybody being vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, fruitarian, or whatever their dietary and ethical choices are. I respect those choices, even more so because I used to be a vegan myself (As a side-note, I was told by VV that it’s not possible to be an ex-vegan, so I obviously wasn’t a “real” vegan in the first place.) However, I do have an issue with being called a rapist* and murderer, particularly a murderer of “innocent animals”. So please, let’s stop the cute, fluffy, anthropomorphic nonsense. If somebody really thinks they know what it feels like to be a cow, maybe they need professional help, rather than arguments on twitter.

Yes, animals are killed to produce meat. If you have a problem with that then perhaps you should indeed consider being vegetarian or vegan. But are animals innocent? Not in the pure, clean-living, non-malicious sense of the word. Consider the billions of predatory animals who murder other (innocent?) animals every single day for food. Consider the penguin. Or more specifically, the penguin prostitute, who will offer sex to single male penguins in exchange for stones with which to build her nest. Consider the male mouse, lion, or hanuman langur (Old World monkey) who practice infanticide – killing entire litters of their mate’s offspring if they suspect that they are not the father. Consider homosexual necrophiliac ducks, who will repeatedly rape a dead male mallard. Even on the farm it’s not all peace and love – the top-ranking cow in the hierarchy gets first pick of the feed and the best mattress to lie on. Why? Because animals aren’t innocent. It’s a good marketing trick to show cute little baby animals that tug at our heartstrings and make us think twice about eating the cheeseburger, but animals are no more innocent than we are.

The ultimate vegan insult is one of “carnism” – literally the opposite of veganism (as in carn- or carne-, latin for meat), which includes the theory that that meat-eaters practice speciesism in considering themselves to be superior to animals. Yet by decrying the murder practiced by so many animal species, aren’t vegans the epitome of speciesism? On a higher plane by virtue of a cruelty-free life? Let’s get real. To quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Tho Nature, red in tooth and claw…” – a world where every life is sacred and cruelty does not exist is not a description of planet earth, and if it was, there’s every chance that we humans would have been wiped out eons ago.

*Cows are not raped. The definition of rape is “Unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.” and, as any dairy farmer will tell you, a cow will not stand to be served unless she is in heat (estrus). Trying to rape a dairy cow would be an exercise in futility.

Would Being Vegan Really Solve Climate Change? Not if We Don’t Kill the Cows.

Posted on September 23, 2014 by bovidiva

A friend of mine drew my attention to this NPR blogger, who makes the point that being “good” isn’t zero sum (a situation where what is gained by one side or cause, is lost by another). If you’re concerned about the environment, you can both recycle cans and buy a more climate-friendly car. If you are passionate about children’s education, you can volunteer in the classroom and financially support literary projects. In most cases, doing good is not an either/or.

Which made me think a little more about the definition of “good”. To that writer it meant being vegan or vegetarian, in the belief that such a diet would improve animal welfare and environmental impact. Yet this is exactly where the conflict arises for me – if we were all vegan or vegetarian, what would happen to the sheep, the cow, the pig and the chicken?

I posed that question to a vegan on Twitter recently and he, in all sincerity, answered that we, as a vegan population, would care for the animals, but would not enslave or control them. Imagine the beautiful utopia where we all have time to calve a cow or throw some grain to feral pigs before we set off to work, expecting nothing in return. Or in a more realistic scenario, we’d have more meat than we knew what to do with simply through car accidents if we suddenly let loose the USA’s 87.7 million cattle (never mind the 62.1 million pigs, 5.2 millon sheep and 9+ billion chickens).

Anti-animal agriculture activists often purport that a cow can live for 20+ years in her “natural” state compared to a farmed animal – so being a data nerd, I did the maths*. Let’s assume that 1) cows first calve at two years of age and that 90% of cows (38.3 million of them in the US at present) have a calf every year**; 2) 85% of those calves survive (mortality would go up due to predation, assuming we wouldn’t shoot wolves, coyotes etc.); and 3) each cow or bull lives for 20 years. Admittedly that doesn’t account for the cattle that would die from starvation through lack of available grazing in 5, 10 or 20 years time, but being good vegans, we’d feed them, right?

Within five years we’d have 602 million cattle in the USA, within 20 years we’d have 3.7 billion – a 40-fold increase on our current national herd. That’s 40x more cattle belching methane, drinking water and producing waste, every single day, all as a result of our changing our diet in an attempt to reduce environmental impact.

It’s a nice, simplistic, oft-suggested argument that we shouldn’t eat meat or dairy products in order to save the planet, yet the conflict between veganism, animal welfare, and environmental impact is clear. Climate change will be solved by us turning vegan? Not unless we reconcile ourselves to killing animals without eating them.

*I’m British, and as such, cannot use the American term “math” as opposed to the British “maths”
**90% is the US average for cow-calf herds, in which few hormones or other reproductive aids are used