Pseudo-Vegetarian

Fortunately these days, survival -- at least the aspect of it that pertains to sustenance -- is idiot proof, although to most palates not very appetizing.

If one of my father's most overworked, and hardly original, as I recently discovered online, quips about my mother -- "Why don't you go onto the kitchen?" he would reply to her anniversary wish to be taken somewhere she had never been before -- belied her enviable culinary skills, its applicability to me is painfully undeniable.

Of course, haunted by her congenital Jewish guilt, she graciously shoulders the blame for my ineptitude, claiming to have barred my two siblings and me from her private workplace from birth to autonomy, and thereby condemning us to an adulthood of either dependence or deprivation.

But if one can learn to read, swim, speak in public, and manage a multi-million dollar business, surely competence at cooking shouldn't be so elusive. Witness the sumptuous Passover dinner prepared by none other than my brother -- a product of the same upbringing as me -- a few nights ago at his handsomely renovated and decorated historic home perched atop Daniels Hill in Downtown Lynchburg: matzah ball soup, baked chicken with red gravy, steamed asparagus, and your choice of Paula Deen mashed potato casserole or sweet potato bake laced with cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

If this is the start of a new tradition, it's just in time, as our eighty-seven-year-old matriarch may be weary of hosting these family holiday gatherings.

While I maintain that one's cooking proficiency is dependent on his possessing at least a modicum of manual dexterity, that argument deteriorates into a rather lame excuse when I acknowledge that my brother's hand-eye coordination is probably no more than marginally better than mine -- good enough for him to master the art of sailing, but too rudimentary to generate even a passable golf or tennis swing.

Nevertheless, challenged as I am by i-pod shuffles, lawn mower ignition, car-top carrier assembly, electronics routing, and vitamin bottle seals, and habitually too clumsy to transfer food from pot to plate to mouth without soiling countertop or shirt, how could I ever be expected with any level of competence or comfort to dice onions and peppers, measure seasonings, whip up eggs, flour, and butter, and calculate time and temperature such that a perfected, complete composition emerges -- even if I had the desire?

Which I don't. And "since one man's meat is another man's poison" -- not just metaphorically, but in my case also ironically and literally, as will be revealed in good time -- I'd much rather read a book, slog through one of these blogs, run five miles, or rearrange the display in one of my furniture stores than attempt to prepare a respectable meal (or trim the shrubbery or water the flowers, which I don't do either).

While I enjoy quality as well as anyone, I find my friends' and fellow travelers' fixation on identifying the preeminent place to dine in a given situation, regardless of inconvenience or price, a superfluous and wasteful exercise. "What (or where) I eat is not all that important to me," I blurted out a few weeks ago seated among a group of furniture executives at a very fine Dallas restaurant, two of whom promptly set me straight. One pulled out his cell phone, and flashed photos of two of his most recent delectable creations, expounding upon each with a thousand-word reconstruction of the recipe, while the other gently reprimanded, "You would appreciate food more if you were able to do that."

It's the eternal conundrum: which came first? And even I will concede that "not cooking" as the causal factor leading to "not caring" makes more sense that the obverse.

The embarrassing truth is that I can't deny both a sensual satisfaction in my own dismal diet and a pathetic pride in my minimal self-sufficiency, dependent as they are on the modern wonders of processing, packaging, preservation, and microwaves and on a frightening lack of variety.

At least for breakfast I've diversified into a second brand of dry cereal, Special K, to alternate with the Kellogg's Complete Bran Flakes I seized upon years ago as a purported source of fiber, always flavored with lactose-free Silk Soymilk which, when recommended by my physician, I immediately acquired a taste for. I used to tease myself with instant oatmeal once a week and scrambled eggs on Sunday, but sadly both have fallen victim to laziness and impatience. A banana and occasionally half of a toasted everything bagel (with Smart Balance, never cream cheese, although I don't know which is worse) complete the menu.

As for coffee drinking, therein lies a tale replete with ironies. Having scorned the bean for five decades, during which time I regularly brewed a wake-up cup for my wife, I am now moderately addicted, yet missing the Cuisinart she absconded with when she sought greener pastures. It probably doesn't matter, since I prefer to savor my only bold and black cup of the day in the quietude of my office or car, purchased from either the Downtown White Hart Cafe or the nearest Starbucks.

If breakfast sounds boring, consider that for lunch, with the exception of a volunteer board meeting or an infrequent social rendezvous, I have brown-bagged a peanut butter (Jiff Extra Crunchy) and jam (Smucker's Blackberry) sandwich on whole wheat bread and a bag of carrots every working day for at least the past twelve years. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, aboard plane, train, or automobile, the ingredients preserve well enough even for a forty-eight or seventy-two hour supply should my schedule take me away from my home stash. And far from wearing out its proverbial welcome, after an extended vacation feasting on midday soups, salads, and tortilla wraps, nothing whets my taste buds more than the sight of old faithful.

But even I couldn't stomach the same meager offering the two or three nights a week I'm left to my own resources for dinner -- when JSG doesn't invite me to her house for grilled salmon, shrimp fettucine, or pesto pasta, or when we don't take pot luck at one of Lynchburg's finest, most often Oakwood Country Club, where the conviviality is intoxicating and Chef Mena never disappoints.

My home rule of thumb is never spend more than fifteen minutes total (maybe twenty, if pizza is involved) in preparation and ingestion. During the course of two weeks, exhibiting a monotony and mindless brand loyalty typical of my compulsive behavior, I will rotate through Morningstar veggie burger and chicken-flavored patties (on toasted buns with condiments), California Kitchen margherita pizza, Amy's vegetarian lasagna or enchilada, Green Giant broccoli and cheese or spinach, Bird's Eye skillet garlic shrimp -- all frozen -- Knorr's rice sides, Annie's mac and cheese, and Bumble Bee solid white albacore with mayonnaise and sour pickles. For snacking or a side dish, a few forkfuls of Kroger cole slaw, potato salad, or cottage cheese straight from the container and an occasional apple are serviceable enough.

In a more ambitious past, I used to bake some fresh fish or boil up some spaghetti, but long ago concluded that neither was worth the energy nor more palatable than any of the above.

I don't keep any ice cream or cookies in the house, although I have been known to sample some of AEG's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough when passing through her mother's kitchen. All resolve collapses, however, when I wander within sniffing distance of the grocery snack aisle and inevitably succumb to the baneful lure of crunchy corn chips, which I can consume by the bushel, with or without salsa, since it's a little too messy even for me to dip, read, and recline simultaneously in my bedroom lounge chair. I prefer Frito-Lay Santitas, which at two dollars more than the Kroger brand for two bags a week won't unduly tax me. After all, look what I'm saving on store-bought pizza as compared to carry-out.

Astute observers may have detected a provocative theme in this depressing recitation: a noticeable absence of meat. While I admit that a thick filet or juicy sirloin burger is surely more healthy than all the salt, preservatives, and whatever else poses as food with which I am daily poisoning my body, I continue to adhere stubbornly but not exclusively to the pseudo-vegetarian lifestyle which my daughter introduced to me fifteen years ago when she recommended a classic volume on the subject: Diet for a New America, by John Robbins.

Let's just put it this way: I'm not a crusader, like the out-of-town friend of mine who, having recently embraced veganism and waxed ad nauseum on its merits at every meal during our three-day encounter. When someone serves me meat and I'm hungry, I eat it; if there are options, I try to avoid it, although too often gluttony trumps will-power.

This past weekend, for example, temptation ran rampant at the Zeta Psi Fraternity in Charlottesville, where JSG's two sons are brothers (and the most cool, according to the pledge class vote), and where the alumni/parents annual solidarity rally featured fattened pig, fowl, and cow silently screaming for consumption.

Having to mingle among total strangers for hours didn't help the self-control of an inveterate introvert who shuns small talk and dissipates his nervous energy by attacking buffets with a vengeance. I couldn't resist grabbing two heaping barbecue sandwiches (and copious helpings of collard greens and macaroni and cheese) on Friday night and handfuls of chicken fingers (and potato chips) at the following afternoon's poor excuse (other than the Bloody Marys) for a tailgate -- a shameful and needless display of overindulgence (and carnivorousness) which I commanded myself to suppress at the next feeding frenzy. And indeed I managed to fill my plate and stomach quite nicely with a garden salad garnished with fresh fruit, pasta with artichokes and spinach, broccoli spears, and wild rice.

I'm back on the meat-less wagon again, hopefully until the regionally-renowned New Vistas School Feast one month hence, where the homegrown, slow-roasted, tenderized four-legged fare, exquisitely seasoned, wrapped, sliced, and diced by an incongruous band of cookin' fools -- of which I am the fool part -- is not to be missed.

Is it plausible that a single book could persuade a person who subsisted for years on a ridiculous regimen of hot dogs and hamburgers to forswear the sweet, salty, succulent pleasures of protein-rich edible flesh? Why not? Michael Lewis's Moneyball converted me from Chicago Cubs to Oakland A's fandom in a slim two-hundred-and-fifty pages; although it took over a thousand, Robert Caro's scathing biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, spawned a curious affection for New York City; and Last Train to Memphis, Peter Guralnik's impassioned chronicle of the rise of Elvis Presley, inspired an even more unlikely love affair between the immortal King and a tone-deaf skeptic.

A New American Diet, says Robbins, will mitigate animal mistreatment, improve individual health, and conserve natural resources.

Whether or not one is as conscious of animal suffering and intelligence as Robbins is, his indictment of the "farming" conditions in which this food group is "manufactured" is chilling.

Today's chicken factories are huge, windowless warehouses, where eighty thousand birds are stacked five each in 16-by-18 cages from floor to ceiling in a controlled environment -- including twenty-four-hours-a-day intensive lighting -- designed to maximize production. (Robbins, pp. 54-55) Babies (females of the species, that is; males are disposed of at birth by the thousands) arrive fresh from incubators or mechanized hatcheries with their life expectancy compressed from fifteen years to two if they are "layers" -- bred for their eggs -- and to two months if they are "broilers" -- bred for their legs, thighs, and breasts.

Driven berserk by lack of space and by frustration of their primal need for a social order, the chicks peck viciously trying to kill or eat each other, a vice remedied by snipping their beaks, which seriously impairs their ability to eat and drink. (Robbins, pp. 56-57) Toes are similarly excised to prevent their entanglement in wire mesh. (Robbins, p. 61)

Virtually all poultry raised in the United States are fed antibiotic-infused diets selected to increase broiler weight or egg laying as cheaply as possible. Almost all suffer from bone and muscle weakness, skin irritation, bodily deformities, and a multitude of diseases, including cancer -- hardly a concern of their plant managers. As Fred Haley, president of a 225,000-hen Georgia farm put it: "The object of producing eggs is to make money. When we forget this objective, we have forgotten what it is all about." (Robbins, pp. 66-67)

Pigs fare no better -- crammed as they are by the thousands into seven-foot-square individual cages in crowded industrial complexes where automated systems deliver what passes for nutriment and large pits beneath slatted floors catch urine and feces. All day long they breathe poisonous ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide exuded by their excreta. With no room to move about, they don't burn up calories, and thus gain weight faster and more profitably. (Robbins, pp. 80-83) Tails, which are usually nipped at first, are cut off to prevent the crazed beasts from cannibalizing one another.

They are routinely fed recycled solid waste -- including their own manure -- which contains high levels of toxic arsenic, lead, and copper, and water channeled from dung pits back through oxidation ditches. It's not suprising that eighty percent contract pneumonia by the time of slaughter, or that millions die prematurely every year from dysentery, cholera, abscesses, trichinosis, and pseudo-rabies. (Robbins, pp. 93-94)

A cow's misery begins when it is herded aboard a cattle truck post-auction for transport to its own fattening farm or milk factory. Starved of food and water for up to seventy-two hours, many will die from exposure to extreme heat or cold, from suffocation, or, unless inoculated by the drug chloramphenicol, from a form of pneumonia known as "shipping fever." Chloramphenicol may be used in humans in rare instances as an antibiotic of last resort, but for a significant percentage can cause aplastic anemia, a fatal blood disorder. (Robbins, pp. 105-106)

Arriving at their destination exhausted, depleted, and ill, the bulls will be transformed into fat-producing steers by removing their testicles either by using pliers or by restricting the blood supply with a ring until they drop off. Now deficient in natural hormones, they will be injected with synthetics, which may leave carcinogenic residues. Most will be de-horned so they will not injure each other in their overcrowded pens, where each is confined to fourteen square feet of living space. (Robbins, pp. 107-109) On huge feedlots they are stuffed with sawdust, shredded newspaper, plastic hay, inedible tallow and grease, poultry litter, and cardboard scraps. (Robbins, p. 110)

Cows bred exclusively and continuously for milk production yield three times as much as their bucolic, foraging ancestors, yet at a cost of a life expectancy shrunk from twenty years to four. (Robbins, p. 111)

Veal calves are subjected to the most egregious and grotesque abuses. Newborns are removed from their mothers at birth and placed in tiny 22" by 54" stalls, where they are essentially immobilized for the four months required to pile three-hundred-fifty pounds on their stunted, frail frames and fed an iron-deficient, anemia-inducing diet designed to preserve their pinkish-white tenderness. Deprived of water, they will engorge themselves on a liquid mixture of government surplus skim milk and fat. Susceptible to pnuemonic and enteric diseases, they will be dosed with nitrofurazone, a known carcinogen, and the aforementioned chloramphenicol. (Robbins, pp. 113-117)

In order to fulfill a meat-loving nation's insatiable appetite, every day in the United States nine million chickens, turkeys, pigs, calves, and cows perish at the hands of their masters. Their throats are slit, and then "their bodies are hooked behind the tendons of their rear legs and swung up into the air on overhead tracks . . . Once bled, their hooves are clipped off with a gigantic pair of hydraulic pincers. They are then beheaded, skinned . . . and finally eviscerated."  (Robbins, pp. 134, 137)

If the conventional wisdom is -- or was at the time of his writng (1987) -- that such butchery is necessary for human health and happiness, Robbins amasses a plethora of contradictory evidence.

Despite its sophisticated medical technology and temperate climate, the United States -- one of the highest consumers of animal products in the world -- has one of the lowest life expectancies of industialized nations. Three cultures with the longest life spans -- the Ecuadorian Vilcambas, the Himalyan Hunzas, and the Abkhasians of the Black Sea -- are either totally vegetarian or close to it. Active well into their eighties, their elderly show no signs of the degenerative diseases so prevalent among our own. (Robbins, pp. 154-155)

According to Robbins, persistent concerns that vegetarians may not ingest enough protein are unfounded.

Citing biochemist and nutrient researcher Roger Williams, Robbins concludes that a person's daily protein requirement ranges from a low estimate of two-and-a-half percent of his calorie intake to a high estimate of over eight percent. Even at ten percent, a diet of beans, fresh vegetables, and brown rice meets these needs. While not very appetizing, eating exclusively wheat, oatmeal, pumpkin, or cabbage would also be sufficient. (Robbins, pp. 174-176)

Robbins enlists Nathan Piritkin, to whose Longevity Centers thousands of seniors made pilgrimage, as further authority. "I don't know any nutrition expert," writes Piritkin, who "can plan a diet of natural foods resulting in protein deficiency, so long as it's not deficient in calories." (Robbins, p. 185)

High-protein diets have been shown to correlate to calcium loss and bone density deterioration, or osteoporosis. In any given population, the greater the intake of protein, the more common and severe will be the osteoporosis -- as demonstrated by native Eskimos, who consume 250 to 400 grams a day from fish, walrus, and whale, and have the highest rates in the world. (Robbins, pp. 193-194)

In 1964, President Eisenhower's heart specialist, Dr. Paul Dudley White went to visit the Hunzas to see for himself if they were indeed living in good health to exceedingly old ages. His blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and electrocardiogram studies revealed not a trace of coronary heart disease, even in ninety-year-old men. In a published report, he suggested a causal link between the Hunza's vegetarian diet and his findings. (Robbins, p. 215)

Atherosclerosis is the process by which arteries accumulate fatty and waxy deposits on their inner walls; when these plaques rupture into the arteries, they may form clots and blockages, and cause heart attacks.  (Robbins, p. 205)

By 1987, the evidence was clear. "Diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol raise the level of cholesterol in the blood, produce atherosclerosis, and lead directly to heart disease and strokes. Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol lower the level of cholesterol in the blood, decrease atherosclerosis, and lower the likelihood of heart disease and strokes." (Robbins, p. 208)

Cholesterol is not found in any plant food, not in grains, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruits, legumes, or vegetable oils. Our entire intake of cholesterol is derived from meat, fish, dairy products, and eggs, with the last containing the highest content in milligrams per 100-gram portion, 550, compared to seventy for beefsteak and sixty for chicken. (Robbins, pp. 210-211)

The purveyors of these products, desperate to further the illusion that they are beneficial and to bolster their market share, regularly sponsor multi-million-dollar public relations campaigns, reassuring the public that the egg is "incredible and edible," that beef is "nutrition you can sink your teeth into," and that "milk does a body good." (Robbins, p. 220)

Underwritten by generous subsidies from milk producers, the National Dairy Council has become the nation's de facto nutrition educator, indoctrinating teachers and cafeteria personnel with its biases and supplying educational materials at extremely low prices. One of  its typical messages encourages children to "drink milk at every meal and enjoy foods like cheese, ice cream, and cream of tomato soup with a pat of butter on top." (Robbins, p. 231)

Turning his attention to the nation's second leading cause of death, Robbins cites a 1984 report in Advances in Cancer Research, which concluded that "none of the risk factors for cancer is . . . more significant than diet and nutrition," and quotes Dr. Gio B. Gori, National Cancer Institute official, who testified before Congress that the factors principally responsible for a dietary imbalance leading to cardiovascular disease and cancer were "meat and fat intake." (Robbins, pp. 251-252)

The more fat people consume, the greater is their risk for colon cancer, at least according to statistics which showed (in 1975) deaths per 50,000 males from the disease rising from fewer than 2.5 for populations consuming fewer than 50 grams of fat per day to more than 12.5 for populations (U. S. and Canada) consuming 150 grams per day. (Robbins, p. 255)

Lack of fiber in a person's diet is another high-risk factor for colon cancer -- and high-fat meat, eggs, and dairy products provide no fiber whatsoever. Solid animal fats take longer to pass through the intestines, allowing them to absorb more of the toxins the body is trying to eliminate. Fiber accelerates the transit time, and, in addition, helps to dilute, bind, and deactivate many carcinogens. (Robbins, pp. 254-256)

In a 1977 study which monitored the habits of 122,000 women for several decades, Dr. Takeshi Hirayama and his colleagues at the National Cancer Research Institute in Tokyo found that those who consumed meat, eggs, and butter and cheese daily had four, three, and two times greater risks respectively of getting breast cancer than those who ate little or no meat. Hirayama also identified similar correlations between vegetarian diets and later menarche (onset of menses) -- at age seventeen compared to age thirteen -- and between later menarche and lower incidence of breast cancer. (Robbins, pp. 264-266)

Low-fat high-fiber diets can improve the lifestyle of diabetics, both by reducing their vulnerability to devastating atherosclerosis and by minimizing their dependence on insulin therapy. A common cause for the malfunction of a diabetic's insulin -- which controls his blood sugar levels -- is the high level of fat in the blood. Studies have demonstrated that patients restricted to very low-fat diets and forbidden any sugar consumption were able to eliminate or decrease significantly their medication. (Robbins, pp. 275-276)

The cholesterol, salt, and saturated fat present in meat, fish, and eggs are all risk factors for hypertension, or high blood pressure: cholesterol, by clogging and narrowing the arteries; salt, by drawing water into the blood and increasing the pressure on the arterial walls; and saturated fat, by causing platelets to stick together and impede the flow of blood. All three conditions can be alleviated by replacing the culprits with whole grains, fresh vegetables, and fruits. (Robbins, pp. 294-296)

Does anyone doubt that obesity -- literally, excessive levels of body fat -- has become a national crisis? And according to Harvard nutritionist Dr. Jean Meyer -- and anyone else with a modicum of common sense -- individuals who obtain most or all of their calories from cereal grains, dried beans and peas, potatoes, and pasta will lose weight and boost their chances of living longer and healthier. (Robbins, p. 289)

Today's factory farm livestock are not only mutant reservoirs of saturated fat, they are also carriers of residues from pesticides, hormones, insecticides, tranquilizers, herbicides, and growth stimulants whose potential harm to the environment and to humans is incalculable. (Robbins, p. 309)

And "pesticides don't just affect the creatures who ingest them first. They infiltrate animal tissue, and then, as one organism is eaten by another, they build up in higher concentrations at each successively higher rung of the food chain." (Robbins, p. 314)

Consider the following substances formerly in widespread usage which have been banned for their toxicity: the growth hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES), which caused sexual disorders in adults and children and cancer in animals in tiny doses; the pesticide DDT, which decimated bird populations by the hundreds of thousands; the pesticide dieldrin, a potent carcinogen which also attacked the liver and central nervous system; and the waxy or liquid lubricants known as PCB's, which caused cancer, low sperm counts, birth defects, and deterioration of the immune system. (Robbins, pp. 312-332)

Other poisonous compounds have survived official scrutiny. Cattle, pigs, and sheep are regularly fed huge quantities of contaminated fish. They are routinely doused with the parasite-killing toxaphene, which causes cancer, birth defects, and bone disintegration in laboratory animals. To exterminate flies, they are sprayed with dichlorvos, for which a human's acceptable daily intake is 0.004 mg/kg, which he will exceed by being exposed in a room for nine hours wearing a small No-Pest strip. Their feed may be enriched with the larvicide Rabon, which can damage the nervous system and send people into convulsions. (Robbins, pp. 335-336)

Reducing or eliminating one's intake of meats, fish, dairy products, and eggs is the most effective way to limit his exposure to toxic chemicals. "Meat contains fourteen times more pesticides than plant foods; dairy products five-and-a-half more." A new direction for America's agriculture and diet preferences would ensure better health and a cleaner environment for current and future generations. (Robbins, pp. 342-344)

It would also mean a more intelligent use of natural resources, which is to me the most compelling of Robbins's arguments.

More than half the agricultural acreage in the United States is harvested for its livestock, which consume five times as much soybeans and grains -- including eighty percent of its corn and ninety-five percent of its oats crop -- as would supply the country's human population. Cattle are notoriously inefficient machines, devouring sixteen pounds of soybeans and grains to yield one pound of table beef. (Robbins, pp. 350-351)

A given acreage can feed twenty times as many pure vegetarians as it can typical American meat-eaters. (Robbins, p. 352) According to the Department of Agriculture, an acre of land that can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes will produce, if used for cattle feed, only one-hundred-sixty-five pounds of beef. (Robbins, p. 353)

Cycling grain through livestock also wastes ninety percent of its protein, ninety-six percent of its calories, one hundred percent of its fiber, and one hundred percent of its carbohydrates. (Robbins, p. 352)

To provide lebensraum for grazing livestock, thousands of American forests are cleared every year. "More than three times as much meat is derived from formerly-forested land . . . as is derived from range land. That ratio is climbing every year as erosion and soil degradation claim more and more of the nation's range land and ever more forest land is converted to . . . land (for meat producing)." (Robbins, p. 361)

The devastation reaches beyond domestic borders, as Central and South American countries which raise beef for American export are cutting swaths through their priceless rain forests. Amounting to only thirty percent of the world's forests, these natural treasures are home to eighty percent of its land vegetation, a substantial portion of its oxygen supplies, half its plant and animal species, and to essential base components of life-saving medicines. (Robbins, pp. 363-364)

Because tropical rain forests store their nutrients in their trees and plants, the cleared land is so poor in minerals that revitalization is slow to nonexistent. Further, without a plant cover, the heavy rains cause extremely rapid soil erosion. Meanwhile, native populations suffer from lack of food and high prices, as cattle feed cultivation takes priority over subsistence farming. (Robbins, p. 364)

In the United States, where there is less rainfall, over half the total water consumption is allocated to the irrigation of livestock feed and fodder farmland and to manure disposal. (Robbins, p. 367)

"To produce a single pound of meat takes an average of 2500 gallons of water -- as much as a typical family uses for all its combined household purposes in a month . . . It takes less water to produce a year's food for a pure vegetarian than to produce a month's worth for a meat-eater." Rice production requires only ten percent as much water as meat production, and wheat only one percent as much. (Robbins, p. 367)

In the Pacific Northwest, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho lose seventeen billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, as copious amounts of water are pumped from the Snake and Columbia Rivers to support feed and livestock production, resulting in nuclear power plant construction and higher electricity prices for area residents. (Robbins, pp. 368-369)

Every year thirteen trillion gallons of water are drawn from the Ogallala Aquifier to quench the thirst of all the grain-fed beef roaming the High Plains regions of Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico -- more than is used to grow all the country's fruits and vegetables. There and elsewhere, the disproportionate share of water swallowed up by the meat industry creates shortages which necessitate drilling deeper and more expensive wells. (Robbins, pp. 370-371)

The squandering of other natural resources is equally startling. A study sponsored by the Departments of Energy and Commerce showed that one-third of country's raw materials is invested in the production of meats, eggs, and dairy products. Economists Robin Hur and David Fields report that "a nationwide switch to a diet emphasizing whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables -- plus limits on the exports of nonessential fatty foods -- would . . . cut imported oil requirements by over sixty percent," and increase the supply of renewable energy one-hundred-twenty to one-hundred-fifty percent. (Robbins, pp. 374-377)

The livestock of the United States deposit twenty times as much excrement as its entire human population. Over half -- a billion tons a year -- comes from confinement operations from which it cannot be recycled. Much of it ends up in rivers and streams, nourishing algae and depleting oxygen reserves. Animal waste generates ten times as much water pollution as human waste. (Robbins, pp. 372-373)

Even if Robbins's manifesto (or others preaching a similar message) should ever reach a broader audience, American dining habits are too firmly entrenched, and the meat and dairy marketers too powerful for any significant dietary revolution to take root. Two nights ago, at a Furniture Market banquet, having thoroughly digested all Robbins's incontrovertible reasons why the poor slab of beef hunkered down on the plate before me was a scourge to my body and indeed the whole earth, I still can't resist the temptation, and chew through about half despite its predictable lack of taste and tenderness.

Cursing myself for such irrational behavior, I silently repeat the pseudo-vegetarian's solemn oath, and swear never to let flesh pass my lips again.

REFERENCE

Robbins, John. Diet for a New America. Tiburon, California: HJ Kramer, 1987.