“To help save the planet, quit wasting food and eat less meat. The conservation nonprofit Rare analyzed a sweeping set of climate-change mitigation strategies in 2019. It found that getting households to recycle, switch to LED lighting and hybrid vehicles, and add rooftop solar systems would save less than half the carbon emissions combined than would reducing food waste and adopting a plant-based diet.” Excerpt from “Your diet is cooking the planet: but two simple changes can help” in The Atlantic.
Braised slabs of squash steak with a buried center portion of sautéed smoked wild sockeye salmon trimmings and scallions, pictured above, is my interpretation of the example of a “third plate,” given by renowned chef Dan Barber in a recent program in Great Barrington. He explained that the “first plate,” a corn-fed steak with a vegetable side (e.g., steamed carrots) was the pinnacle of eating in America before being superseded by the “second plate,” a grass-fed steak with a side of heirloom carrots. The “third plate,” introduced by Barber in his prestigious restaurants and in his book, “The Third Plate,” is represented by a slab of carrot steak with a sauce of braised second cuts of beefsteak. The squash steak Dan mentioned in his recent talk could have been a deep orange winter squash. I seized the moment by harvesting my summer squash and scallions.
The protein portion, Ducktrap River of Maine Salmon Trimmings, keeps valuable scraps from the filleting of wild salmon out of the waste stream: a rather new frozen product found at the Berkshire Food Co-op. According to RTS, “Food is the single biggest component of our country’s landfills, and the average American sends more than 200 pounds of food there every year. More than 1,250 calories per person a day, or more than 140 trillion calories a year, get tossed in the garbage.”
Matched by the fact that 80 percent of agricultural land around the world is livestock pasture or devoted to raising crops to feed livestock that offers less than 20 percent of our calories, we see life on our planet suffering. Clark, a scholar of food systems and health at the University of Oxford, explained that it takes excessive inputs to produce beef as an output: about 20 kilograms of corn and soy protein to produce one kilogram of beef protein. Further, cows burp methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Deforestation to support farm animals destroys natural carbon sinks, erodes the planet’s biodiversity, and depletes fresh water resources.
Fifty years ago, the publication of “Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappé, reshaped a generation’s perspective on food and how to feed ourselves: a generation raised on a value system that required daily meat or fish meals. In the first edition, Lappe’ described meat as “a protein factory in reverse,” and now, “That factory is still going in reverse.”
Both The Atlantic and Washington Post articles are must reads, as are the 50th anniversary edition of “Diet for a Small Planet” and “The Third Plate.” Here is Dan Barber’s August 14 conversation with Elizabeth Kolbert.
Meatless Mondays provides support for everyday eating choices that are pivotal for human health and the health of the environment that sustains the diversity of life on our beleaguered and beloved planet Earth.
In closing, consider the view that it is better if all Americans cut meat consumption by 40 percent than 3 percent of Americans do so completely. Here is a starter recipe, especially for those who would be like to try a look-alike-no-meat-ball.