Help me eat more ethically

In My Humble Opinion
1

Yesterday, in the midst of a political discussion about the nature of animal rights, I said that I thought that societies of the future would view our current farming practices as barbaric. Now, you may or may not agree with that statement, but I suddenly realized that I do believe that, but I’m not living as though I do. I have pretty much ignored where most of the meat I eat comes from.

My plans right now are

  1. Eat less meat overall. I’m not planning to become a vegetarian, but I expect that I will eat a lot more like a vegetarian than I used to.
  2. Try to buy ethically raised meat and animal products. Try to eat at restaurants that buy ethically raised meat, etc. (if I’m eating meat there).

Point 2 is the tricky one, since I don’t really know what to look for. I can certainly look for meat and eggs marked “organic”, “free range”, “grass fed”, etc. but I don’t really know if those words have valid meanings, or if they’ve mostly been captured by marketing machines. I’m skeptical of “organic”, since I hear it means a lot less now that there’s major money behind it. I’ve heard that “free range” can be satisfied by pretty meager accommodations, so I’m not sure what to think.

If you are making such considerations for your diet, what should I look out for? Is there anything that you recommend I’d avoid altogether? Are there particular brands or restaurants that you can recommend? Is there any value in asking a restaurant, or should I assume that they’ll advertise any ethical considerations they make? What online resources are good for more information?

2

I really enjoyed the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s funny, insightful, well-researched and has all the background you need to begin your new ethical eating experiment (and it’s not preachy).

Here’s the website for that book, which has lots of additional information. In particular, check the Web Resources and Finding Local Foods sections:
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Check into whether or not you can subscribe to a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm in your area. A share runs up into several hundred dollars per year, but you can often find people who will split a share with you. With a share in a CSA, you’ll either pick up or have delivered a box of whatever’s in season, locally and sustainably grown, and FRESH, and you get it anywhere from once a week to once a month for the entire growing season. It’s awesome.

Get to know your local butchers and grocers. Talk to the people at the farmers markets. They’ll be happy to tell you where and how their foods were raised and harvested. If you have specific requests, they will accommodate them if possible, point you to someone who can, or – in the worst-case scenario – your request gets added to a hopefully growing pile of requests from other consumers which will eventually persuage them to carry something new.

3

Also, check out “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food”, by Michael Pollan.

4

I’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and enjoyed it. I’ll check out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I’m reading Small Wonder by Kingsolver, right now, and I like her.

It looks like there’s at least one CSA in the Santa Barbara area, but I think that joining it is a little more of a grocery commitment than I want to make right now. I am going to go by their market stand more often.

When I talk to the local butchers, what, exactly, do I ask for?

5

And this article on eating ethically on a budget, which makes reference to this blog detailing exactly how one family did so for a month.

6

It’s tough starting from scratch. The easy, sort of half-assed way to do it is to find a natural food store locally that sounds like it has the philosophy you’re looking for, gets its produce and dairy and eggs from a local farm, and all that. These places in particular are pretty forthcoming with mission statements and "Our Philosophy"s and that sort of thing.

Then, you can shop there and know at least that somebody is vetting the products that you’re seeing; if you trust the owners of the store you can feel better about the brands. Then you’ll know that anywhere you can find those brands, you’re golden. That also has the advantage of putting you in touch with the staff there, who are usually ready with a recommendation or two for a restaurant. Once you’ve gotten started, the rest gets easy, because you know what you’re looking for.

For the record, I’m not anywhere near as vigilant as a lot of people, but my girlfriend is pretty adamant about certain things, and she tends to find what she’s looking for when we’re in a new town or something without too much trouble. There are a million things to learn depending on how much you want to invest in it, but it certainly isn’t a super steep learning curve; I’ve picked up a pretty decent working knowledge of the lingo and the dos and don’ts just by eating out with her, shopping for groceries with her, and vacationing with her, to the point that I can pretty reliably find something that won’t make her eyes bug out if I’m called upon to find something to eat.

As far as the specifics go, well, you ask for what you want. What that is is up to you. That’s where the books can help a lot; it isn’t always the case that one kind of farming practice or whatever is clearly morally superior to another, so some of it is just down to taste, for lack of a better word. Whatever you feel good about, that’s what you can ask for. Sounds like maybe an important step here is figuring out what you’ll feel good about.

7

Start eating venison. I buy it from a friend who needs to kill a dozen deer yearly to keep the numbers in check and can’t eat them all. Cheaper than store-bought, healthy as hell and utterly ecological. Takes some driving to get the meat from there to here, that’s all.

8
9

Those are cool blogs, but I’ve always kind of thought doing experiments about affordably eating SOLE when you’re home all day and live in California was cheating. It’s the ideal conditions for making such a thing work, so it really doesn’t say much about how feasible it actually is for the average Joe who is short on money, even shorter on time, and lives in an area with a short growing season.

It’s something I’ve wondered about time to time, especially living in a rural area with little arable land. I could probably manage fairly well, having the luxury of time at home, but I think the people I work with, who leave the house at 7 in the morning and come home at 7 in the evening five days a week and have a couple kids to feed at a reasonable hour, would have a hell of a time. Perhaps I should do an experiment on how feasible it is under those circumstances.

10

Offal. I’ve long been convinced that the most ethical and ecological (but FAR from the healthiest) diet would comprise large amounts of offal. Think about it. Regardless of how local and organic your food is, some field got plowed and some animals died for what you ate, whether it’s spinach or hamburger. Except offal. I mean, sure, something had to die for you to get it, but nothing was killed for the offal. Chorizo is some mighty tasty sausage, and it is composed mostly of salivary glands. Yep, you read correctly: salivary glands. I don’t think they can put that stuff in dog food! Clearly whatever chorizo you eat was otherwise destined for the landfill. I’m not as big a fan of menudo, but I think it’s a fair wager that the supply of tripe vastly outstrips the demand. I suppose if you wanted to get really hard core, you could go ask the butcher at your supermarket for all of his scraps, but I just stick with whatever looks most exotic at the local taco stand, supplemented with the occasional hotdog. I’m tellin’ ya - there’s no footprint to lips and assholes.

11

Alan, heh, funny post. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve been a vegetarian for ethical reasons for 25 years. It’s really been wonderful to see the mainstream swell of acceptance of that view in the past 5 years. I remember some posts here on the SD , 10 years ago, when some threads got mighty heated toward that view, and hashing all that out. So much easier now, yay! Lots of good information on this thread already.

Basically, (:3=, try to support local farmers, through farmers markets, and here’s your local one Talk to the farmer vendors and get to know them, they are a wealth of info, have been living that life for years, and walking the talk. The farmer’s markets here in NC have recipes to help you use produce , with an eye to do-able for modern life.

After that, try to use the least processed food you can. Honestly, when I go to a regular supermarket, what I buy might fit into two aisles. The rest is glurge to me.

Look into cooking with whole grains and beans. In the early years, I was all about doing it all from scratch, because it wasn’t available, but now there are good quicker alternatives. Still, learning how to cook them and parcel out for meals is way more economical. For meat eaters, having the basic grain/bean dish with small pieces of meat added is tasty and healthier than slabs O meat.

Two good cookbooks as guides: Laurel’s Kitchen, a couple of decades old, the one I learned from, with great nutritional charts to understand. And Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors, which came out a few years ago to give good recipes for farmer’s markets.

One good thing to keep in mind; eating healthy, and ethically, is a work in progress as you learn what works , and is important for you. Learn about where your food comes from, appreciate that what you eat is really of primary importance in your health, and make wise decisions as best you can. It’s been pretty basic for centuries;lately, we are bombarded by what is Cool, and there is plenty of that marketing in the health food industry.

I’m really grateful that there are so many choices now, that allow me to follow my ethical reasons, and not cause more detriment than I need to in eating to live. So much easier to do that now than it was even a decade ago.