by coyote » Wed 25 Jan 2006, 17:46:00
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheTurtle', 'T')he fact is, ALL commercial agro-business is nasty and energy wasteful, both for those of us who eat meat and for those who don't.
Turtle, assume for the moment that it's twenty years after the Peak and agro-business is no more. No more horrible practices for meat or for veggies and grains. Now: what is the EROEI of each of those for human beings? It turns out that it's vastly higher for vegetables and grains. The reason is simple: each stage of the food chain is inefficient, so that it might take 10 or 20 pounds of edible vegetation to produce one single pound of meat. Analogous to losing energy when converting coal to electricity. You might say that as the electricity is higher quality energy, so the meat is higher quality food; and I wouldn't be able to argue. But when we're talking about supporting seven billion people on the planet, well, I think it's clear that the vegetation will do a better job.
Incidentally, for the Atkins worshippers:
In Major Diet Study, Carbohydrates Found Not Guilty$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]MedPage Today Action Points
Inform interested patients that in this study a diet low in fats and rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains is not associated with weight gain over a period of several years, at least among postmenopausal women.
Explain that this finding comes from a large-scale health intervention trial and runs counter to the idea that carbohydrates are responsible for obesity, as promoted by popular diet books and plans.
Also explain that altering dietary composition without caloric restriction will not result in weight loss. The only effective way to modify obesity is with adherence to a calorically restricted diet.
... The findings may finally put to rest the notion - propagated by popular diets such as the Atkins, Sugarbusters, and Zone plans - that carbohydrates are the root of all dietary evil. They were reported in the Jan. 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Barbara V. Howard, Ph.D., of the MedStar Research Institute here and other centers.
"This study shows that increasing carbohydrates doesn't necessarily lead to an increase in weight, so it goes counter to some of the recent enthusiasm for cutting down on carbs and increasing fat," said co-investigator Jacques Rossouw, M.D., a project officer of the Women's Health Initiative at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in an interview.
Eat your veggies.