"Poultritarianism"

Since I was about 14 years old, I've consciously thought about my food choices, although not necessarily for reasons relating to their environmental impact. During my freshman year in High School I decided to experiment with vegetarianism. After reading a series of articles/publications on the brutal torture of animals used methodically to produce the majority of the foodstuffs we as Americans consume on a daily basis, as well as a rather nasty bout of food poisioning after consuming a Kobe-beef burger at my favorite restaurant downtown, I decided a life without meat wouldn't necessarily hurt. Growing up in a city, with relatively health-conscious parents, I learned of negative urban consumption patterns, and for a period, lived them as well. I knew how easy it was to simply pick up a prepackaged meal after a hectic day of school, or skip on an apple and instead enjoy a bag of potato chips. These habits were simply a matter of convenience in a place where eating consciously seemed out of the question. For example, how were we to know that the produce we were buying at our local market was actually organic? And products that claimed to be "locally grown"? Where exactly was this local growing occuring?? Certainly not anywhere within the busy streets of Manhattan, or so we hoped. To this end, we were also subservient to an added cost to all of our items simply as a consequence of our living on an island, which required further transportation costs to deliver the items we consume. Surely, when we vacationed elsewhere during the Summer, my parents would make an honest effort to buy all of our produce and food at the local markets where is was more likely the products were actually locally grown and organic, and thus less detrimental to both our health and the environment. So, I decided one of the only ways I could do my part and slow the effects of our burden caused by overconsumption on the environment, as well as do my part for "animal rights", was to stop eating meat all together. Unfortunately, my dedication to this cause was inhibited not even a year after it began. After a visit to my doctor revealed I had developed "anemia", a condition in which low iron-levels result in bruising and other side-effects, and a subsequent visit to a nutritionist, both recommended that I increase my protein-intake, and recommended I at least imbibe in chicken, which I had sorely missed anyway. I still to this day avoid all meats besides chicken.

But what other food choices am I making, that are perhaps subconscious, that are effecting the environment?? Although I intellectually support local/organic markets, I can't always afford to shop purely at the farmer's market, for both time & fiscal constraints. To this end I often buy my food at Safeway, where the products production sources are generally unknown, and the caloric-input required to create the product is even more difficult to calculate. At least when one is buying food-stuffs at a local market, it is assumed that the meat is mostly grass-fed, and the transportation costs are minimal because of the proximity of the farms on which the products were made. Although these local products are often pricier than supermarket goods, which, to most students, seems like an inferior option, the readings for this week demonstrate that we are actually incurring a higher long-term cost to ourselves by buying mass-produced goods. These goods tend to be a result of centralized systems in exponentially more energy-input is required to reep what are nearly the same amount of output as local/organic production systems.


This, and the section of the "Oil We Eat" article that discusses the positives and negatives of vegetarianism were revealing to me. For even though vegetarians, and in some sense "poultritarians" (as my classmates labeled me), saves energy by eating food at its most primary state, many vegetable and foods consumed by vegetarians are still processed, and thus require nearly the same energy output as many meat products, such as soy-based products. Unfortunately, I eat soy-products--burgers, tempeh, milk, etc., on an almost daily basis, and therefore am perhaps cancelling out any positive effects my vegetarianism has had on the environment.

I guess then the only way we can really be conscious about our food choices is by eating purely locally-grown/organic foods, in which the animals are grass-fed instead of grain-fed, and where transportation costs are lower (requiring less overall energy, fossil-fuel, input). While I have always felt that my chicken consumption, although somewhat infrequent, has been the most ecologically harmful, I now understand that my consumption of processed foods on a larger scale, is harmful as well, and perhaps equally detrimental to my consumption of chicken.