White Hat says - "Fussy Eaters Harm the Environment"

[This short article was first published in the White Hat Food Newsletter in August 2009 and forms part of of our investigation of SOLE Food - Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical]

People who eat skinless chicken breasts but won’t eat chicken livers or chicken feet are major contributors to climate change. Australian vegetarians who don’t like pips in their oranges and buy stringless beans and burpless cucumbers have a larger ecological footprint than eaters who are prepared to be less fussy.

When man slowly ceased to be hunter gatherers and started planting crops and domesticating animals, the number of humans a country could ‘support’ changed for ever. A sheep or goat could throughout its life give milk, produce wool for clothing and eventually be eaten whereas the hunted animal, if it did not limp away and die from its wounds, was often hastily and inefficiently consumed. A domesticated bird such as a hen or a duck could continuously lay eggs, produce down, recycle food scraps into the earth for growing crops and eventually be eaten. A larger mammal such as a cow or a bullock could provide milk or provide brute ‘grunt’ for ploughing’ and other labour, provide skins to be turned into leather and eventually be eaten. All the domesticated animals produced manure which helped with the production of crops. Humans in turn helped by protecting the domesticated animals from predators and providing them with warmth and nourishment in unseasonable weather. This all seemed to work much more efficiently than the old hunter-gatherer system as long as you didn’t mention the “and eventually be eaten” bit too often in the presence of the animals.

When an animal was killed, as much as possible was eaten and productive uses found for any remaining parts. Ingenious (and eventually delicious) recipes were devised for offal and other parts of the animal which we would now describe as ‘cheap cuts’. (We have to admit that traditional Anglo/Australian ‘tripe in white sauce’ is not one of the great culinary wonders of the world. In fact a few other more colourful descriptions come to mind, but then try a good Italian or Vietnamese tripe dish and you may change your mind. True, in those cases the recipe would probably make old leather shoe laces taste good, but isn’t that part of what cooking’s all about?) However, the affluence of certain communities in the last century or so has led to a monumental wastefulness in our consumption of food. Youthful animals are seen as more tender so we raise chickens rather than hens, lamb rather than mutton, discard many of the cheaper cuts as industrial by-products as well as disregarding the other contributions the animal could have made had they been allowed a full and productive life. Thus those who eat skinless chicken breasts but not old boilers and chicken livers and chicken feet and who don’t make their own chicken stock are part of the current ecological problem rather than part of the solution. It is also worth remembering that the great majority of obesity in the world is not caused by eating natural food, however seemingly fatty, but by eating processed foods with its added unnatural fats.

Similarly, many people don’t like pips in the oranges and therefore buy the Navel oranges imported from California (together with all the greenhouse emissions embedded in those food miles) rather than the local Valencias. There are many unsustainable practices generated by fussy vegetarian eaters as well as those caused by fussy meat eaters and, let’s face it, very few of us will be prepared to eat absolutely anything that is put in front of us. However, when looking for a life partner it might be good to use the Jack Sprat principle so that you as a couple have a lesser environmental footprint.

And next time your kids turn up their nose at a dish they don’t like you can tell them “You don’t have to eat it, but if you don’t, you can never lecture me again about environmental sustainability because you have surrendered your moral authority to do so.”

 It’s worth a try.