Souljourn for World Hunger

I follow several blogs (listed over there on the right) and one that has been updating every day this week is Voracious Vegan. She’s in the middle of an experiment to live on only 1,000 calories a day, which is basically a starvation diet, in order to see what it’s like to live a life of food insecurity. She’s writing about the physical and emotional effects she is feeling and also about food insecurity issues in various areas of the world. It’s very powerful and reaffirms my commitment to switch to a vegetarian diet. While I think it’s OK for meat eaters to indulge (like my son) I would hope that all the carnivores out there would think about the impact their habits are having on the planet and at least reduce their meat intake. Start out with Meatless Mondays, for instance, then maybe, after finding some good vegetarian recipes, go for a few more meatless days every week. My grandmother told me she and my grandfather only ate meat once each week when they were newlyweds, for instance. It was an economic issue for them but it goes to show that reduced meat consumption is something do-able. (My grandfather was a big guy so for him to eat a mostly vegetarian diet means anyone can do it.)

I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll say it again now- when we eat meat we are taking food out of the mouths of starving people in other countries. There is a direct correlation. The food that is grown to feed our cattle should go to feed people instead, but we have money and power so our cows get the grain. The huge appetite for meat in our society is not sustainable, but yet our hunger for meat with every meal is being exported and adopted by countries like China, with their huge population. Our planet can’t do it.

Voracious Vegan is going into a lot more detail, with all the facts and figures, than I can do here so I encourage everyone to click on over and read what she’s got to say. It will shake you.