Meet Your Meat

Are you wondering why food trend after food trend after food trend indicates that more Americans are becoming vegetarian?  The reason is simple, more and more people are becoming aware of how meat is produced in this country and losing their appetite for beef, pork, and chicken.  Not to mention a disdain for factory farmed eggs.  People also want to eat healthier diets and meat consumption is being restricted if not eliminated altogether.

Americans are getting hip to the way meat is produced in this country from lots of books such as Eating Animals and Animal Factory not to mention videos such as Meet Your Meat, narrated by Alec Baldwin and produced by PETA.  The video is graphic and does not glamorize meat production and although every single meat producer in the United States do not treat their animals this way the fact is that the vast majority are guilty of inhumane treament on their farms.  You can show your students the video and let them draw their own conclusions at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-513747926833909134#

And as food prices rise and more people go to bed hungry think how Meatless Monday, which should now be standard practice in every culinary program in the US that has a commercial student run operation, would go along way toward solving world hunger with these facts from Veganist: Even if Americans at just one fewer meat dish a week, that would free up 7.5 millon tons of grain, enough to feed the 25 million Americans who go hungry each day.  If 10 percent of the world population gave up meat, it would be enough to feed the estimated billion people who go hungry annually.  Hell, if Mario Batali can institue Meatless Monday in ALL of his restaurants we do our part in our operations big and small.

It is also the reason that I have been a vegetarian now for 6 months and never felt better about the food I eat and the good it is doing for my body and the planet.