Some interesting points raised here, both by the writer and the panellists he's critiquing, all showing that when it comes to what we eat we really do face enormous and quite probably unsolvable dilemmas.

Raising livestock is environmentally damaging and often entails enormous cruelty to the animals involved, and yet the protein it provides is essential to good health for many people.

Eating a diet high in animal protein, along with high fruit and vegetable content, does make it possible to eat less food. The food stays with you longer and makes it easier to survive on three meals with minimum snacking. The consequent eating of less grain and junk food has to be a bonus for the planet.

Protein is good brain food and many mental health conditions can be greatly ameliorated by eating more of it. O blood group people in particular benefit from eating meat. So, while meat eating has obvious costs, I don't think the corollary of switching to veganism or vegetarianism is necessarily a healthy option for all people.

It's extremely convenient for agribusiness to promote the myth that high fertiliser, high pesticide, high food mile, high tech, genetically-modified and large-scale agricultural production is needed to feed the hungry. It ignores the fact that many of these 'hungry' once fed themselves and their villages perfectly capably. That was before western 'wisdom' forced them into their current subservience to GM and fertiliser conglomerates, to whom they have to pay huge amounts for inputs they once never needed, and all for the privilege of growing produce their families can't eat.

It's a difficult debate with no easy answers, but hopefully Geoff's contribution 'stirs' some interesting discussion.

Bronwyn: If you check the NHMRC Nutrient Reference Values

http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/PUBLICATIONS/synopses/n35syn.htm

for protein, you will find they don't have one set of values for
animal protein and another for plant protein. This is because
the differences, as far as human nutrition go are academic, and
of no practical importance. Nutrition Professor Ken Carpenter
has a readable history of how the great myth of animal protein
arose:

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/7/1364

and he wrote a whole book on the subject a while after this
little piece.

What is the weapon of choice for dealing with children
with kwashiorkor? Plumpy'nut --- fortified peanut butter, a
plant protein. It works as good or better than the fortified
milk products that were previously (and still are) used.

shall we talk about the v word
how meat eaters are all bad

how vegans are all pure

[that is what this boils down to]

so to no particular vegan
some loving critique

i have heaRD IT SAID KILLING BEASTS IS CRUEL
and yes it is

why even the bible says we shalt not MURDER

wel mr joe vegan is not a seed living ?

to make your soy latee how many LIVING seeds of soy were murdered,
has not science found plants FEEL emotions TOO?

how much amazon for-rest was destroyed to plant the soy seed

how much polution was produced to refined soys natural toxins out of the soy seed

[soy requires two alkaliod washes to refine the murdered seed into that curd like substance ,you so greedilly consume and salt up to make it taste like meat]

i wont get harsh about the fax paux
that labels meat eating as this huge evil

[yes there is cruelty but too much spoils the taste of the meat [adrenolin makes the meat tough,and yes some horrible land clearing practices and overstocking and pasture improvement practicies that haunt us with the guilt meat consuming brings.
#
but let those {V}with out sin not stain their purity by casting stones ;in real life there is no such thing as whiter than white
in this reality death frees the spirit to its next incarnation

religion proves we are spirits having an incarnate experience
why we humans even tend to reflect our previous incarnations [thus humans acting as beasts]

Very interesting Geoff. It would have been an interesting forum.

I was a vegetarian for a short time in my youth but found I became anaemic very quickly and don't absorb iron well, particularly plant-derived iron (non-haem). Even now that I eat meat I still have lower iron levels albeit in the normal range. We can certainly eat more ethically for sure - free range eggs, organic meat, avoiding veal and the like.

Issues like land clearing for meat (or grain) or damming rivers for water are only problems while our populations continue to expand. Population and expansionist policies do more harm than our diet. Of course, we can all try to eat locally (meat or plant) to reduce food miles and help local communities to be more sustainable.

There is another school of thought that argues for no grain or reduced grain in our diets - also another great use of land space. The argument being that humans were never meant to eat as much grain as our modern diet contains; particularly the high level of carbohydrate. There is a bit about this throughout the net and too many sites to link here.

Bronwyn,
Excellent response. Especially the bit about local sufficiency. A point I offer Geoff.

Geoff,
One of the failings of this type of discussion is that they all tend seem to be shackled to a particular restrictive paradigm; that the way things are thought about and done are immutably fixed. Yet history tells us otherwise. What we view as history isn’t the consequence of some hidden plan it is the consequence of choices made in the context of the times. In essence I ‘m saying that while we maybe on a modern equivalent to the ‘Titanic’ I see no reason why we should make the mistakes of yore by continuing with their thinking.

We already have the means (technology, science to solve the issues). All we really need is the will to do so instead we bow to the vested interests of a minorities’ ‘cash cow’ mentality.
* “cash cow” minimal capital input maximum output *

There are enough caloric food produced today to feed all the people in the world the impediments are easier profits, distribution and stasis thinking that stops us.

Why for example (outside of cash cow focus on profits) don’t we set up village/tribal based hydroponics? The technology exists. “Feed a person today tomorrow they’re hungry again. Teach them how to farm and you feed them for ever.” Likewise it makes no rational sense to destroy this country in the long term to export to other wealthy countries to feed over consumption.

Instead of short term reactionary thinking of old paradigms it’s time to paint a goals and then systematically solve the issues. Much like the US did in landing man on the moon and bringing them back safely.

Examinator: Yes, indeed we will need plenty of new ideas. In
Europe recently a major project looked at shifting Europe from its
current pig protein focus to a pea protein focus:

http://www.springer.com/environment/book/978-1-4020-4062-7

This project had some serious industrial funding because Europeans
understand that their current agri-systems are unsustainable and
their days of just sucking food from the rest of the planet
are numbered.

But hydroponics? Buying bags of chemicals that come free with
any half decent soil doesn't look like a winner to me, but under
some circumstances it may well make sense. Meat grown in labs
will probably happen some time soon.

Pelican: of cereals produced in 2006/7, humans ate about 1000
million tonnes and livestock ate 700 million tonnes -- with
biofuels accounting for about 100 million. Humans have extra
copies (compared to chimps) of a gene for making amylase
to break down starch and while there is no shortage of internet
sites selling the "eat less grain message", their arguments are
theoretical rather than epidemiological. What I mean by this
is best illustrated by chicken and carcinogens. Cooked chicken
meat has plenty of HCAs which are potent carcinogens in animal
studies, but there is no epidemiological data indicating that
eating chicken causes cancer in people. I wish there were!
It is possible that the lack of evidence is because of the
way studies are designed and data is collected (but I doubt this).

So if I want to convince you not to eat chicken I can talk
about chickens living in pain for the last few weeks of life, or
I can talk about the increased risk of a global flu pandemic, but
I can't use a chicken/cancer argument.

The bottom line is I don't think much of the "we shouldn't
eat grains" arguments because they don't really have good data.

It's pretty academic anyway. Grains feed the planet, no other
food (except potatoes) is even in the running.