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Wednesday 23 July 2014
Cows and salad
I am re-evaluating my relationship with cows. Don't get me wrong. They are very friendly creatures. As long as I'm not in the same field as they are. We moo happily to each other as I go out for country walks. One of the nice things about living here is that it's a two minute walk to get to the “country”, or at least a field with a cow in it.
It's more about eating cows. I like beef, no question. There are one or two beef recipes on this blog. And there's nothing nicer than a proper Cornish pasty with the beef and veg sealed raw in the pastry and slow cooked to perfection. I have known for a long time that the environmental cost of a cow is proportionately more than the cost of the same amount of meat from a pig or a chicken, but I have reconciled myself to that by thinking of all the other savings I make.
But a new report shows just how big the difference is. “Land, irrigation water, greenhouse gas, and reactive nitrogen burdens of meat, eggs, and dairy production in the United States” measures the relative burdens of beef cattle, dairy, poultry, pork and eggs. (There is a potted version here.) Dairy, poultry, pork and eggs all have roughly similar impacts. Beef takes 28 times as much land, 11 times as much water, produces 5 times as much greenhouse gas, and 6 times as much reactive nitrogen as each of those other forms. That is a heck of an impact. For me that means less beef is going to be an important future choice. (I assume that the differential between beef and dairy cows is not that dairy cows consume less, but that you get a lot more milk from the lifetime of a dairy cow than you get beef from the lifetime of a beef cow. But I haven't studied the research report in enough detail to get any more information about that.)
At the same time, we hear that the fabled Mediterranean diet is good for the brain. Research confirms Mediterranean diet is good for the mind: “The first systematic review of related research confirms a positive impact on cognitive function, but an inconsistent effect on mild cognitive impairment.” This is not a single piece of research but a research review, so the conclusion is quite robust. So I guess it's less beef, more olive oil and veg. One of the interesting things about the Mediterranean diet is that they seem to be unable to separate out whether any parts of it are more effective than other parts. It may be that the combinations of different foods matter. So, oil and salad, here I come. I'm not sure I could take all that fish though.
It's more about eating cows. I like beef, no question. There are one or two beef recipes on this blog. And there's nothing nicer than a proper Cornish pasty with the beef and veg sealed raw in the pastry and slow cooked to perfection. I have known for a long time that the environmental cost of a cow is proportionately more than the cost of the same amount of meat from a pig or a chicken, but I have reconciled myself to that by thinking of all the other savings I make.
But a new report shows just how big the difference is. “Land, irrigation water, greenhouse gas, and reactive nitrogen burdens of meat, eggs, and dairy production in the United States” measures the relative burdens of beef cattle, dairy, poultry, pork and eggs. (There is a potted version here.) Dairy, poultry, pork and eggs all have roughly similar impacts. Beef takes 28 times as much land, 11 times as much water, produces 5 times as much greenhouse gas, and 6 times as much reactive nitrogen as each of those other forms. That is a heck of an impact. For me that means less beef is going to be an important future choice. (I assume that the differential between beef and dairy cows is not that dairy cows consume less, but that you get a lot more milk from the lifetime of a dairy cow than you get beef from the lifetime of a beef cow. But I haven't studied the research report in enough detail to get any more information about that.)
At the same time, we hear that the fabled Mediterranean diet is good for the brain. Research confirms Mediterranean diet is good for the mind: “The first systematic review of related research confirms a positive impact on cognitive function, but an inconsistent effect on mild cognitive impairment.” This is not a single piece of research but a research review, so the conclusion is quite robust. So I guess it's less beef, more olive oil and veg. One of the interesting things about the Mediterranean diet is that they seem to be unable to separate out whether any parts of it are more effective than other parts. It may be that the combinations of different foods matter. So, oil and salad, here I come. I'm not sure I could take all that fish though.
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