Are vegetarians just picky eaters?

I was having an on-line debate with vegetarian who claimed that the human body was not adapted to eating meat. As proof, he offered up that our teeth are too dull and our intestines are too long, and besides, if you'd just look at the studies, meat eaters have higher rates of cancer (and erectile dysfunction, for some reason he kept bringing that symptom up, it was odd) than vegetarians.

I countered with that fact that my incisors are pretty good at cutting meat, that my stomach produces enzymes that break down components that are found only in meat, and that there's no vegetable that offers complete protein, and a purely vegetarian diet is easy to have iron, B12 and protein deficiencies. Also that bacon cooking is the best smell ever. Your body knows what it wants, and it wants pot roast.

The cancer studies? I'll gladly give him the point that vegetarians are going to have lower rates of cancer than someone who eats processed meat, fast food, gets no fiber and thinks ketchup is a vegetable. Find me a bunch of twins who lead identical lives as far as exercise and environment, but where one is vegetarian and the enjoys a grass-fed steak now and then, a farm fresh egg for breakfast on Sundays and pastured chicken a few times a week and we can compare cancer rates and I'd be willing to bet they'd be identical.

My opponent and I did have some common ground, we both think CAFO's are horrible. We both think that large beef processing plants are evil. I'll even go so far as to grant him that the world would be better off if we ate less beef. But stop eating meat? That's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Speaking of faces - that's another argument isn't it, 'I wont eat anything with a face'. Well that's just stupid. Cockroaches have faces, how do you feel about killing them? And roaches are pretty closely related to shrimp and crayfish, and from there it's a very short hop to lobster.

My theory is that vegetarians are just picky eaters. Like some sort of spoiled brats that won't eat their dinner.

God went to a lot of work to give us cows. Some plantets don't have any cows.

A new localvore thinks about winter

I've been trying to eat local products whenever possible for a few months.

The idea is easy; eat the things that are close to you, in season.

In the summer, fruits and vegetables are easy to find local from the farmer's market. But what about winter? Fortunately I live in the south, winters are milder and the growing season is longer, but still...sometime soon, the fall harvest veggies are going to go the way of strawberries.

And dammit, next year I'm freezing some strawberries. I've been putting a lot of thought into the best way to do it, and I have some ideas. Fresh sweet corn too. My idea involves some specialized equipment though, heat sinks, fans - basically I'm going to try to make a mini blast freezer that I can fit inside a larger freezer. I've said too much.....

But there's the rub; freezing, canning - even dehydrating; I don't have tons of freezer space, I don't have any canning stuff. I'm definitely not going to make it through winter on my own stores. And I'm not so swept up in this that I won't give in to imported veggies from time to time; but the important thing for me right now is to do what I can.

I absolutely want to get into canning. I'm fine with high acid stuff for now. I want a pickle crock so bad it hurts.

The wife and I made 25 pounds of tomatoes into a heavenly red sauce yesterday, that's in the freezer. I need a full time, long term storage freezer though. Chest models; I know they're more efficient, but I've also read that things tend to get lost in them, and our garage isn't so big - so it'll be a standing model.

Irradiated Food

I've been reading up on the issue of using radiation to protect our food supply from contamination; e.coli and the like. Evidently, a recent decision has given the green light for it's use on lettuce and spinach.

Prima facie, such arguments as:

"When ground beef is irradiated, at least 99.99 percent of E. coli and other harmful foodborne bacteria are killed."

- and -

"The CDC estimates that if just 50 percent of the meat and poultry consumed in the United States were irradiated, the number of foodborne illnesses would be reduced annually by 900,000 and deaths by 352."

It almost seems a no brainer, but the more I think about it, the less I like it.

First of all it just seems patently absurd to me; that these most basic food elements off the farm; spinach, beef - they just aren't safe. Gotta nuke it! Cheez Whiz and Twinkies? Perfectly safe.

I know there are logical flaws with that argument, but even so - is this really the best solution we can come up with? Seems to me the tail is wagging the dog.

And it's not the issue of lingering radiation in the food that scares me. (It doesn't give me warm fuzzies, but it doesn't scare me) What worries me most is that we've just closed any real incentive to keep poop away from food in the first place. Don't worry about it - the radiation will kill it!

And there are other concerns..I was reading a decent debate on Bill Marler's Blog when I noticed this tidbit from Linda Greene - testing director for Food & Sensory Sciences at 'Consumer Reports' regarding radiation treated meat:

"Does irradiated meat taste different? - When presented with pairs of food, our trained tasters were able to detect the irradiated beef or chicken 66 of 72 times because it had a very slight "off" taste. But the average consumer may not notice the difference."

Yikes.

And there's some vitamin loss caused by the radiation that we know about. Are we so arrogant that we don't think there could be unintended consequences from a nutritional standpoint from eating this stuff?

Lastly, one other thing to keep in mind - irradiated produce lasts longer. Why is that a bad thing? Because produce is supposed to rot. That's how you know it's no good for you anymore.