another reason for l.o.v.e.

[Image via Top Veg]

Yesterday, I mentioned some of the reasons why I'm doing this raw, vegan fast, but I left out a pretty big one. It has to do with dietary awareness and the effects our choices have on the world. As I've mentioned a bunch of times before, yes, I do still eat meat. I eat it sparingly, and choose the best quality (read: humanely raised) meat, mainly from local producers at the farmer's market. Every once in a while, a piece of questionable chicken ends up in the mix. But for the most part, if I don't know where it's from, I skip the meat and go veg.

Precious resources - like the air we breathe, the water we drink - are adversely affected by agricultural production. This goes for meat, dairy, and produce alike. But anything that has to do with animals eats up like 10-fold the amount of resources. Animals have needs. They need to be fed, to be cared for, to relieve themselves. Where does their feed come from? In big ag, it's mostly genetically modified or chemically treated corn or soy. How is their waste managed? Most likely in waste lagoons (see image left) that pollute waterways and contribute to dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. (Read more fun facts about animal waste. Even the CDC weighs in on the issue).

And then there are those pesky greenhouse gas emissions. In an article from New Scientist,

Climate-change experts have warned of the high carbon cost of meat for several years.

Beef is particularly damaging. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released from flatulent cows and by manure as it decays. Furthermore, to produce a kilogram of beef (2.2 pounds), farmers also have to feed a cow 15 kg of grain and 30 kg of forage. Grain requires fertiliser, which is energy intensive to produce.

Read more

Appealing, isn't it? Makes you want to grab a burger, right? BTW, I'm not sure most American cows are getting any forage (This was a Dutch study, original journal article here).

Aside from the environmental issues, there are the ethical concerns. How are these animals really being raised? Grass fed isn't the same as pasture raised. They might still be in a CAFO (confined or concentrated animal feeding operation), even if they are eating what nature intended them to.

Oh, and there's also the world hunger issue. Read more about that here.

If you haven't read enough, a few more compelling arguments and resources for going veg (or at the very least cutting back on meat):

• The Low-carbon Diet [Audobon mag]
• The Meatrix
• GoVeg
• Vegetarian Times

Side note: I apologize if this post is a little fragmented. I'm going to attribute it to the delirium caused by last night's lack of sleep, the slight pang of hunger gnawing at my belly, and I'll throw in some PMS for good measure.

Stay tuned for more exciting details on how my fast is progressing tomorrow, starting with my l.o.v.e. - day 2 morning...

expensive flotsam and jestam

[Image: Brett Flashnick for The New York Times]

When I heard about this problem it really irked me. People who bought boats in boom time and can no longer afford them are abandoning them. They remove all identification, sand off their cutesy vanity names (like Pier Pressure or Sea-N-Red, a little too appropriate now), and run the boat aground or just push it out to sea.

Of course it bothers me that these people are treating the ocean like a dump. Boats are full of (and covered with) toxic chemicals and made of ingredients that are not always so biodegradable. But there's something deeper than the disregard for the environment here. There's an opportunity going unnoticed.

It's true that the boats have become a financial burden, they can't be sold because the market is flooded, and proper disposal is costly. But couldn't the materials used in these unwanted boats be reutilized elsewhere? We've all seen those tote bags made from repurposed sail cloth. Why can't the same idea be applied to the whole boat?

We live on a planet of finite resources. We take from the earth and repay it with trash. Why can't we give old goods a new life so that we don't end up living on a giant garbage dump?

Have any ideas for how old abandoned boats can be reclaimed and reused?
Drop a line in the comments section.

[inspired by this NY Times article]

is this fish for real?

I'm going to let this video speak for itself. This fish is pretty freakin' wild.




Read more about Macropinna microstoma (aka, Barreleye) at PopSci.

more about our emptied oceans

It seems like a challenging task to demonstrate how vast our negative impact on the oceans is. Most obviously because, when we look out at an open sea, we can't see below the surface.

Randy Olson, documentarian and one-time marine biologist, shows us how depleted the oceans have become in a one minute video. He simply compares the observations of two ocean voyages 50 years apart. Pretty compelling stuff.



Read the NYT blog about it here.

Related post
fin, finito, bye bye fishies

fin, finito, bye bye fishies

The oceans are being depleted of their onetime abundance. Overfishing is something we can all help stop if we want to save fish from extinction. There is a sobering article in GOOD magazine about the imminent global collapse of fishing. It is a must-read for anyone who eats fish. Some eye-opening highlights:

The end of fishing = global food (and economic) crisis

The demise of commercial fishing is beyond the limits of even our darkest environmental imaginations. And yet the evidence of the ocean’s diminishment is everywhere. Leaving aside the legitimate concerns of conservationists, the possibility of a broad fish collapse is harrowing for other reasons. At a time when we are mired in a global food crisis, nearly 1.5 billion people depend upon the sea as a source of food or income. The destabilizing effect of such a collapse would be tremendous, bringing communities and countries into conflict over a resource we once considered boundless. It is fair to say that the endgame has begun.

Government support for an unsustainable industry

Many experts think that governments have been too kind to the fishing industry. The European Union, China, Japan, and the United States spend as much as $20 billion a year to subsidize a $90 billion industry. The number of industrial-sized fishing boats in the world, which the U.N. estimates at 1.3 million, will have to be reduced by more than a third to reach sustainable levels of fishing (and some conservation organizations put the number at closer to half).

Overfishing isn't the only problem, but it's the easiest to fix

We have imperiled what is perhaps the last wilderness on earth, for the simplest reason: We believed it was so vast it couldn’t be harmed. The signs of our folly are now too numerous to ignore. Massive, swirling gyres of plastic have formed in the North Pacific, as have toxic dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and dozens more places. Coastal pollution and construction is destroying critical wetland habitats worldwide. And the ocean itself is warming, a development that will have consequences we can hardly imagine. Amid these challenges, overfishing represents the most immediate threat and possibly the easiest problem to remedy.

We are all responsible

Because of our role as consumers, we’re no less culpable than fishermen for the state of the oceans. Global seafood consumption has doubled since 1973 and, just as its health benefits are becoming known, it seems clear that we will have to eat less fish, and that the fish we do eat will have to be smaller and lower on the food chain, where the effects of fishing are less pernicious. A cod caught by a bottom trawler carries with it a different set of environmental implications than a cod caught by a hook and line—and we ought to recognize and pay for the difference. And we would do well to contemplate, too, why it is that we become indignant at the thought of a world without wolves or elephants, yet stand idly by as bluefin tuna, for instance, are hunted into obsolescence. This animal, as grand as any we know, can live for 30 years, weigh as much as 1,200 pounds, and cross thousands of miles of ocean in a single year.

Please read the whole article.

You can do something!

1. Follow the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide. They have a free downloadable (or mail order) pocket guide you can take with you to restaurants.
   
   --Some common fish to avoid: Atlantic halibut, Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, flounder, sole, monkfish, Chilean sea bass, trawl-caught haddock, skate*
   
   
2. Tell your favorite restaurant or fishmonger to offer sustainable seafood
   
   
3. Help the Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service make the right decision about shaping new commercial fishing regulations

*I realize this may be hard for many people to do, but if we don't change our actions now, these species will be fished into extinction. There are many viable (and delicious) alternatives, including: Arctic char, Pacific halibut, longline-caught Pacific cod, striped bass, tilapia, mackerel, U.S. Atlantic pole-caught Mahi Mahi, trap-caught lobster, plus farmed oysters, clams, mussels and more!

there are whales out there!

Right here in NYC, not far from the isle of Manhattan, whales are dodging cargo ships and singing their melancholy songs. It's a first for the city, not their presence, but the recording of their sounds -- of humpback, northern right, and fin whales.

This is an exciting time for New Yorkers. Just think, just miles from the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Carnegie Hall and Times Square, the great whales are singing," says Chris Clark, the Director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "These are some of the largest and rarest animals on this planet trying to make a living just a few miles from New York's shores. It just goes to show us that there are many important and wonderful discoveries to be made about the living world right here, right in our back yards.

Read more at Science Daily.

sustainable seafood news

• Maine seeking sustainable status for lobsters [Telegram]
• Brits start replacing cod and chips with more sustainable species [Telegraph]
• Top safe & sustainable fish named [Plenty Mag]
• Learning to live with frozen fish [Washington Post]
• FDA to ease rules on China seafood? [USA Today]

another reason to choose organic

Choosing organic isn't just about not consuming pesticides. It's also a choice that affects the ecosystem, big time. I've mentioned the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico before. Well, I hate to be all doom-and-gloomy, but it's getting bigger -- it'll be about the size of New Jersey this summer, according to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Runoff of agricultural chemicals is doing the trick. From the New York Times :

The scientists said high nutrient levels in the water stimulate the growth of algae whose eventual decomposition depletes oxygen to the point that most marine life cannot survive.

plastic pile

I have a confession. I have a large collection of plastic that can't be recycled in NYC. Mostly #6 (PS or polystyrene) and some #5 (polypropylene) objects are piling up in our "office" (aka, second bedroom; aka, junk room). Coffee cup lids, containers that held mushrooms, yogurt containers -- I can't get myself to throw them away. I have a big project in mind for them, but yesterday I was thinking, maybe there's a place I can send this stuff to be recycled.

And I found out today, there is! Thanks to Ideal Bite, I found out that Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn will be happy to take my #5s and some of my number #4s (although these aren't as common) to send to Recycline. As I've mentioned before, they have a partnership with this maker of Preserve products. So the plastics that were destined to go to the dump (or the ocean) are now the stuff of toothbrushes, razors, and other household goods.

Now what to do with those #6s?

clearing up the fish fog

Trying to figure out which fish are okay to eat can be tricky. So many questions enter my mind when attempting to decide on the fish I'll consume. Does the fish I'm about to eat contain mercury? Is it overfished? Is there trawling involved, which damages the sea floor? Are other sea creatures getting unintentionally trapped in the nets?

One little tool which helps in the decision process is the handy Monterey Bay Aquarium fish card I carry around with me. On their Seafood Watch site, you can order a free pocket fish card of your own (or more for friends, if you'd like) or just print one out for your particular region. They break it down simply: Best Choices, Good Alternatives, and Avoid. If you're curious about a particular fish, you can also search their online database.

And if you're really curious, they're hosting a webcast next Friday, June 13th where they'll talk about how to cook and eat the fish that are sustainable and how you can be an advocate for our oceans.

hittin' the bottle of a different kind

Have you jumped on the reusable water bottle bandwagon? With all the news about bisphenol A and other endocrine-altering chemicals leaching from baby bottles and other water bottles, I wonder why everyone isn't carrying around a safer container for drinking water. Like the Sigg or Klean Kanteen bottles that are now widely available.

Not only are they safer to drink from, they don't contribute to the giant waste stream we've created, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- a veritable island of plastics estimated to be anywhere from the size of Texas to more than twice the size of the US.

So what kind of water does one fill these nifty reusable bottles with? Good ol' fashion tap. You can attach a filter to your sink, use a Brita, the office water cooler, or find a public water fountain.

And which to get? I have a couple of Siggs (which come in lots of fun designs) but if I were to buy them again, I think I'd go with the pure stainless steel construction of Klean Kanteen.

You can get both Sigg and Klean Kanteen at:
REI
Amazon