Flexitarian diet to save the world, and maybe you/us

[Blue Hills]

I wouldn't call the equivalent of one burger a week 'a few bits'... Well, I suppose if you quartered the burger, that would do!

.

Well I am very very very slowly working through a stock of high quality sausages - i skin a single one once or twice a week and use the mince in a pasta meal that has so many tomatoes in one form and another (fresh, tinned, tube concentrate, sun dried bits)' I am surprised I haven't turned red.

 

[Blue Hills]

Oh here we are again in health and diet

 

[mudsticks]

The production method of meat or grain or dairy or vegetables is the thing that makes the difference in terms of planetary effect.

You can have 'bad' meat - factory farmed feed lot type stuff.

Or fairly 'benign' meat and dairy - pasture fed.

Just as you can have 'bad' arable and veg production - big scale agro-chemical farming, that destroys soil and habitat, pollutes atmosphere, and water.

Or 'benign' production of same - smaller scale, minimal tillage, that rebuilds soil, sequesters carbon, and uses natural pest control through rotation, and encouragement of biodiversity.

It's not so much the 'what', its more the 'how'.

That said, meat is energy intensive to produce--you need a lot of grazing for 1kg of beef, for example.

So we do need to see it as a luxury food really.

At time of press it is illegal to feed.commercial pigs food waste - so we have to feed them soya.

The conversion rate is better than other animals, but it is quite wasteful growing plant protein, to make animal flesh, when we could just eat the soya itself.
Same with chicken.

So until we can feed pigs food waste again pork should be seen as a high cost food too.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

At time of press it is illegal to feed.commercial pigs food waste - so we have to feed them soya.

I didn't know that.
For what purpose is food waste from households and commercial premises collected, then?

 

[mudsticks]

I didn't know that.
For what purpose is food waste from households and commercial premises collected, then?

It's hot composted, then used as fertiliser / soil conditioner.. Often added to the council greenwaste stuff..

I buy it in by the 15 tonne load.. So it does get reused.. Just not fed to animals.
Foot and mouth, and BSE put a atop to it.
Problem was it went too far As per.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Utter BS.

Beef Steak?

 

[slowmotion]

[QUOTE 5505573, member: 9609"]composted for methane which can be used to generate leccy.

sadly the public couldn't be trusted to put food out suitable for pigs - apart from accidental contamination from metals glass etc that could seriously injure the pigs, I also worry there are too many seriously odd people around these days that may do strange things.[/QUOTE]
I read that some Allied POWs would put pieces of razor blade into what little food waste there was at their prison camps. The reckoned it would put a small dent in The Third Reich's ability to rear pigs.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

It's hot composted, then used as fertiliser / soil conditioner.. Often added to the council greenwaste stuff..

I buy it in by the 15 tonne load.. So it does get reused.. Just not fed to animals.
Foot and mouth, and BSE put a atop to it.
Problem was it went too far As per.

Thanks for that.
I work for a large catering company, our food waste is abysmal, mostly not our doing, though, because we need to provide what the clients asks for.
We put food waste in the appropriate bins.
It is contaminated by paper, plastic, probably the odd bit of cutlery too.
I am doubtful of the actual recycling going on, the local council collects.

[QUOTE 5505573, member: 9609"]apart from accidental contamination from metals glass etc that could seriously injure the pigs[/QUOTE]
Yes.
Is there not a processing method for this waste?
If used as it comes, as fertilizer like @mudsticks said, it surely would harm some wildlife, farm workers would be harmed too.
Have you ever seen the interior of a food waste bin?
We gave up on our domestic food waste bin, actually I can't see anybody in the street using theirs.
The smell, plus the danger of attracting rats, put us off.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Disagree with you colin, I think, or something on that spectrum may well catch on, for all sorts of reasons. . As I said I am on this spectrum already. Note it doesn't say one bit of meat a week. A few birs of meat won't make me gorge/OD on it but won't be going 100 per cent veggie either.

It’s already catching-on.
It’s essential and inevitable that we move in this direction.
It’s hardly deprivation to cut back on red meat.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Thanks for that.
I work for a large catering company, our food waste is abysmal, mostly not our doing, though, because we need to provide what the clients asks for.
We put food waste in the appropriate bins.
It is contaminated by paper, plastic, probably the odd bit of cutlery too.
I am doubtful of the actual recycling going on, the local council collects.


Yes.
Is there not a processing method for this waste?
If used as it comes, as fertilizer like @mudsticks said, it surely would harm some wildlife, farm workers would be harmed too.
Have you ever seen the interior of a food waste bin?
We gave up on our domestic food waste bin, actually I can't see anybody in the street using theirs.
The smell, plus the danger of attracting rats, put us off.

We use a bokashi bin and composter at home and have virtually zero food waste. All goes to grow next years veg :-))

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Red meat is expensive, ime the meat quality from the big supermarkets does not reflect the price.
Red meat from small, local farmers is much better, but of course even more expensive.
Some people might have already reduced their red meat intake because of price.
I confess to buying chicken to cook for the cat: I don't eat it, never liked the colour of the (dead) chickens here in the UK.
If you have seen butchers in the continent you'll know what I mean, unless things have changed there since I left 35 years ago.

 

[Fab Foodie]

A meat tax would be a good idea....

 

[mudsticks]

Thanks for that.
I work for a large catering company, our food waste is abysmal, mostly not our doing, though, because we need to provide what the clients asks for.
We put food waste in the appropriate bins.
It is contaminated by paper, plastic, probably the odd bit of cutlery too.
I am doubtful of the actual recycling going on, the local council collects.


Yes.
Is there not a processing method for this waste?
If used as it comes, as fertilizer like @mudsticks said, it surely would harm some wildlife, farm workers would be harmed too.
Have you ever seen the interior of a food waste bin?
We gave up on our domestic food waste bin, actually I can't see anybody in the street using theirs.
The smell, plus the danger of attracting rats, put us off.

When I've received a couple of loads of unscreened but composted waste then yes it has contained all manner of stuff.

Pretty much restocked my cutlery drawer with teaspoons!

I think they usually put it through some kind of magnetic process, to get the metal out.

There is definitely some plastic contamination.

Ultimately we shouldn't be wasting so much food in the first place.

If we valued it properly.

People at the production end see this.

Home composting is good, but can attract rats if yr not careful..
A compost heap is a nice warm hotel, with an all you can eat buffet, to a rat..

Bokashi is cool, if yr on it..

I can feed unsaleable veg to my pigs as it hasn't been near any processed food or plate waste.

But its not enough to fatten them.
They need some protein and fat (like us) atm that mainly comes from soya.

Some farms get pomace from cider factories, brewers waste, that sort of thing, but it's all very tightly controlled

 

[mudsticks]

[QUOTE 5505566, member: 9609"]lands worked hard now though. predicting low winter forage some of the barley barons seeded super fast high yield grass after the winter barley was cut, couple of cuts out of it in the autumn (there would have been some amount of fertiliser spread for that) - then ploughed and winter wheat put in. Some amazing arable land round here but no ground can take that sort of punishment.


As to the OP. if we don't start to adopt this type of diet we may not have a planet to live on (or at least an atmosphere to live in, l know the planet will still be here as a burnt cinder or something) a bit exaggerated I know [/QUOTE]

The current thinking is maybe sixty years worth of harvests left, if we keep pulverising the bejeezus out of our soil using current aggro- business methods.

Too much gets lost to our rivers blown away on the wind, or eaten up by over cultivation...Growing big scale commodity crops to make quickest profit, not feed people.

So we end up with cheap bread, cheap sugar, cheap carbs, and fats to make us, and our livestock fat.
Not growing so much of the stuff we actually need to eat.

 

[classic33]

If we all went to a vegetarian diet, the land to grow the foood required would be lacking. Leaving no real alternate option.