In the United States, a vigorous debate is under way over government-issued dietary guidance. A February 2015 report by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) recommended, for the first time, that food system sustainability be an integral part of dietary guidance in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) (1). With the final decision from the secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) and of Agriculture (USDA) about what parts of the DGAC recommendations to include in the 2015 DGAs expected at the end of this year, we discuss the need to incorporate sustainability into dietary guidelines and the political maneuvering under way to excise it.
...
FAO [United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization] defines sustainable diets as those with "low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and healthy life for present and future generations". By this or any other definition of sustainability, no country has achieved a sustainable diet. Current and emerging dietary patterns threaten human health in developing and developed countries and negatively affect long-term food security. It is thus not unreasonable that government-issued dietary guidelines take sustainability into account. The Netherlands, Brazil, and Sweden have already done so. Germany and the United States have active, but unresolved, discussions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by WillAdams on Monday October 12 2015, @01:07PM
There was a college professor a while back advocating that people should only eat food produced w/in a 150 mile radius of their home. (article on him in Discover magazine ISTR)
We're burning 10 calories of petrochemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy, much of that is in transportation, so using renewable energy for container ships (go back to sail?) will help a lot.
Or, why not create a sustainable, opensource Aerogro garden system? Make them the size of standard windows (well-insulated) and put them in when replacing windows --- how many square inches would be necessary to grow the greens and tomatoes for a family of four? If a couple of them were aquariums, could one grow algae (and process that?) what about shrimp?
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday October 12 2015, @01:09PM
Interesting big-business perspective on this in Forbes (no surprise there): http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.html [forbes.com] --- transportation is the biggest issue, and FWIW, I enjoy eating pears year-round, and am somewhat sobered on the locavore idea, by memories of my grandfather's root cellar, and stories from my Dad about the reality of deciding to pitch or no the apples which had started to go rotten.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday October 12 2015, @04:44PM
If you have too much, that's when you make cider or preserves like jam or apple butter. Sealed mason jars of apple butter could last for years. Long enough to hand them out or barter them with neighbors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday October 12 2015, @06:59PM
http://www.ripenear.me/map?search_location=32765 [ripenear.me]
Okay, so I get to eat... tomatoes, collard greens, chickens, eggs, sunchokes, lemongrass, elderberries, white sapote, basil, fennle, oregano, starfruit, and this list is exhaustive.
But wait, at least I get to eat canned tomatos, canned collard greens, white sapote jam, starfruit jam, dried oregano, and chicken jerky in the offseason.
Yea, no thanks. I enjoy a diet which includes such luxuries as "beef", "wheat", "potatos", and "any fish whatsoever".
Anyone who is suggesting something like "eat only food grown near you" is really suggesting a plan of "move to where food is grown", while ignoring other, more important, major economic factors.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 12 2015, @09:58PM
I didn't say anything about "eat local". Just the specific situation of having too many apples.
If businesses like Wal-Mart can save a few bucks by sourcing food locally or building vertical farms close to stores, it will be done.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday October 12 2015, @11:04PM
No data there for my location here in flyover country, but I have a feeling my list would be far more extensive. On the other hand, I'm certain I would quickly notice some big gaps.
I think it's an interesting concept but unworkable in the end. However, I don't think it's unworkable because it's necessarily a bad idea. It's more a matter of seeing that it's 2015, we've had the capacity to enable telecommuting on a massive level, and we haven't, and it makes little sense to me. I know there are places with little to no bandwidth, but even in towns of 20k–30k residents, which aren't exactly uncommon and are surrounded by miles and miles of farms that output a good variety of food, there's enough bandwidth to do video conferencing and broadcast on Twitch, probably for roughly 10 years. Why live somewhere like Silicon Valley where everything costs an arm and a leg and encourage gentrification to the point that “natives” are even protesting company-owned buses?
Well, whether I like it or not, apparently offices with butts in chairs will never cease appealing to those with power, even to the point of creating counterproductive workspaces such as open offices. (Even to the point that apparently offering employees biweekly maid services for their own homes just to keep those butts in chairs longer and longer is a thing??) A call center I've been to a few times has more privacy than many horror stories I've read (perhaps only as a matter of necessity, however)!
Maybe things will be different in 50 or 100 years and moving knowledge workers out to flyover country with the inevitable consequence of sourcing food locally will just be a thing. Telecommuting is still pretty new all things considered.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:56AM
Lucky you! I get to eat feed corn and sugar beets.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday October 12 2015, @01:29PM
Solution: Properly include the costs of pollution and water usage into the price of products.
Do that, and the cheapest food is also the most environmentally friendly, wherever it's coming from. Is the most environmentally-friendly rice grown by a factory farm in North Dakota or a bunch of impoverished farmers in India? I don't know, and it would be extremely hard to find out, but if that information affected the price I could easily make the right choice.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 12 2015, @02:00PM
The green windows sound cool, but I have lived in houses that had foliage grown up over all the windows - they were very cave-like / depressing (and also much easier to cool in the summer.)
If you're going to make your windows growing space, you'll want more windows in order to keep the natural light ratios in balance.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Monday October 12 2015, @02:13PM
I don't have any coffee trees within 240 km : ( Plenty of corn, cows, and chickens though. Anyways, as much as i like the idea, it does take a step backwards in trade. Not all land is useful for animals and not all land is useful for crops. Then you have varying climates. It's not easy to grow citrus in colder climates, for example. Trade also allows you to sell your excess produce which means you can scale up very high and focus on one specific crop/animal.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday October 12 2015, @02:18PM
Yeah, see the Forbes link in my follow-up comment, and as I noted there, I like to eat fresh pears in the winter.
Arguing against trade is to ignore that northern grapes are perfect for making white wines which are perfect chilled, while southern grapes are best suited for making red wines which are best at room temperature or even warmed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 12 2015, @03:52PM
I've been trying to grow algae (spirulina) myself for about a year. I just can't get it right. Filtered the water twice, put the supplements in exactly the prescribed proportions, used a water heater. No dice. Just can't get the stuff to grow. If any Soylentils have done it successfully, please submit a story about it!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Monday October 12 2015, @07:27PM
Blah blah....STOP HAVING SO MANY BABIES.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday October 12 2015, @02:13PM
I take all my dietary advice from Jimmy Buffet: "Cheeseburger In Paradise".
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 12 2015, @06:00PM
And I like cheeseburgers, though my penchant is for blue cheese. I prefer baconburgers, obviously.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday October 12 2015, @06:42PM
"Jimmy Buffet (whoever he is)"
He's a US singer/songwriter who's had a number of well known songs over the years. Cheeseburger In Paradise is one of them.
One verse is
"Cheeseburger in paradise
Medium rare with muenster be nice
Heaven on earth with an onion slice
I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise
I like mine with lettuce and tomato
Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes
Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer
Well good God almighty which way do I steer"
Sounds like pretty good advice to me. Certainly better than kale chips. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Buffett [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday October 12 2015, @03:02PM
That collides with the big corporations goal of maximum consumption. I'm curious to see who will win this, common sense or the corporations that control the government through extreme lobbying.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Monday October 12 2015, @04:12PM
The big problem is meat, and other animal products. There's no getting around this uncomfortable fact. Americans have been conditioned to see a ludicrously high level of meat consumption as normal. Worse, there's a bizarre connection between meat consumption and patriotism/masculinity, which makes it difficult to change people's behavior. This might seem like a stretch, but I also think there's a connection to capitalism and the Christian religion, both of which have a sort of natural antagonism to ecological sustainability. Trying to conserve resources, slow growth for the sake of the environment, or do without some luxury because it's unsustainable, are horrifying concepts to people who worship capitalism--and lots of Americans do. Christianity also has instilled an aversion to sustainability. Why bother? Jesus is coming back any day now.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @04:33PM
Meat is one of the easiest things to grow locally or move around. Pick a domesticated animal which eats your local foliage, run a sustainable grazing load, slaughter, profit.
The real problem is fossil fuels. Our current system of agriculture is utterly bound to fossil fuels, and our per-acre yield will drop like a rock once petrochemically sourced, extracted and shipped plant nutrients stop. Yes, yes, I know about fish in rice paddies and all the other wonderful tricks. I'm actually a farmer myself. Aside from the fact that there are very limited environments in which we can run that sort of thing, it's still no substitute for petrochemical harvesting, grain drying and other systems.
Honestly, animals are so great at concentrating some nutrients that we might see more animals around for the value of their dung.
But go ahead, keep spouting that veggie propaganda. Agricultural science is too hard to make sense of.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @04:48PM
Nothing you said negates any of my points. You've just elaborated on the problem. Where do you think a large amount of those petro-calories go? Not for human consumption. They're eaten by livestock. If you wanted to raise animals sustainably on grass the way they're meant to live your yields will be substantially less than is currently possible. Which means...less meat in the diet, as the price will skyrocket. Americans think cheap meat is their God-given right and anyone who dares suggest otherwise is treated with hostility or smug dismissal. Sort of like what you just did.
And I'm not a vegetarian.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @06:12PM
Clearly you know nothing of agribusiness in the wetter parts of the midwest. You know, all the regions that aren't in what used to be called The Great American Desert. Believe it or not many farms run without fertilizer. Know how? The cattle, the diary cows, and the pigs make the manure for the rest of the farming op. The meat and milk more than covers the overhead of generating your own fertilizer to the point that, as far as a well-run farm is concerned, meat is more than free.
Other places are different, but around here, an average country homeowner can keep livestock at negative net expense. That is why many families with the space have a cow, some pigs, or more commonly sheep/goats to go with their oversized garden (which never ever needs to be watered here) even if they commute into a city office job.
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Monday October 12 2015, @08:40PM
Other places are different, but around here, an average country homeowner can keep livestock at negative net expense.
Most places are different. This is 2015, not 1815, and most people live in cities and suburbs. The percent of people who have the ability to do small-scale farming like you describe isn't even double digits. The vast majority of people get their food from massive industrial scale farming operations--and the practices required to produce meat as such scales are not sustainable. If all meat was produced sustainably as you described production would plummet, prices would increase, and people would eat less meat.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @09:45PM
You completely missed the point. The original was that meat is very expensive to grow due to petrochemicals. I presented two situations where meat is free because they are the replacement for petrochemicals.
This argument has nothing to do with suburban soccer moms or urban hipsters. If you really think most people live in cities and suburbs I suggest you actually get out of them or at least take a cursory glance at Wikipedia. The majority of the world's population are still farmers.
Yes. One of my examples was commercial farms that use livestock output for fertilizer.
Prove it. Do you not even know how many millions of bison were once living quite sustainably on their own?
Prove it. See previous point and my original post. Most of meat production is already done the way I describe, with the exception that many cattle-only operations sell or trade manure for cattle feed and still run at a profit, disproving all of your points.
Prove that people eat less meat when prices increase. I bet you can't. When prices of meat rose in historical contexts, such as the rationing in WWII, meat consumption rose because people would buy whatever they could when it was available. This has been studied as a curiosity as to why there is extra meat proteins found in a layer of landfills from the time, because people would buy larger cuts and not be able to finish it all.
You really should go visit a farm and learn what agribusiness is really like. It would surprise and inform you about this topic.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @05:23PM
Isn't that presupposing the land couldn't sustain a higher turnover of vegetables though? Look at it this way, you have a plot of land big enough for a single cow to be farmed for its meat; is the output from that (i.e. a single cow's worth of meat) able to compete with using that same plot of land to produce vegetables in terms of feeding people sustainably? I don't know one way or the other but I'd be surprised if there haven't been a number of studies done, perhaps even the one referenced in the article above (currently unreachable for me). Moving meat on a local scale is not hugely energy-consuming: the cows/etc have legs, after all. Floating it on a boat halfway around the planet? That's obviously more energy-consuming. Assuming some great leap forward in producing energy (i.e. the all stuff you mentioned becomes viable through sustainably-produced energy), does it all still shake out the same way? This is only going to get more complex - and more pressing - as time goes on.
And no, I'm not a vegetarian either, but it's an interesting topic given the sheer number of people on the planet and the fact that the number is increasing all the time, plus we have diminishing resources to feed/clothe/occupy those people. Words like "propaganda" aren't helpful to the discussion.
Anyway, what do we call the vested interests of meat producers? Big Meat? Big Farmer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @08:47PM
Isn't that presupposing the land couldn't sustain a higher turnover of vegetables though?
In many areas of the country, that's not at all a high bar. You can graze goats in areas so barren that humans would be digging for bulbs because everything above ground is twigs and thorns. In the really high country your limiting factor turns into things like partial vapour pressure of CO2, and your cattle or sheep can roam widely enough to graze a meaningful region and concentrate it into a package, but harvesting it would be an exercise in futility and heartbreak. If your plan is to blanket all agricultural land in high tunnel greenhouses with drip irrigation and forced CO2 intensification, great, but then you're back to a very intensive (including energy intensive and resource intensive) model. Moreover, all calories are not created equal. You need enough of the right kind of amino acids in more or less the right balance to feed someone a healthy diet, and getting those from plants is not simple, easy, or even feasible in large parts of the continental USA, let alone the world at large.
Look at it this way, you have a plot of land big enough for a single cow to be farmed for its meat; is the output from that (i.e. a single cow's worth of meat) able to compete with using that same plot of land to produce vegetables in terms of feeding people sustainably? I don't know one way or the other but I'd be surprised if there haven't been a number of studies done, perhaps even the one referenced in the article above (currently unreachable for me).
Good question. Excellent question. Short answer: yes, it absolutely is able to compete. The right animal might not always be a cow, but if you're smart you'll often find that animals plus vegetables together trump just vegetables. Banging the drum of "less meat" as the original poster did is, absent better information, much less important than "less food" quite simply because our inputs are going to run the hell out and trying to survive without animal agriculture in a virtuous cycle is like fighting Mike Tyson with one hand behind your back.
Moving meat on a local scale is not hugely energy-consuming: the cows/etc have legs, after all. Floating it on a boat halfway around the planet? That's obviously more energy-consuming. Assuming some great leap forward in producing energy (i.e. the all stuff you mentioned becomes viable through sustainably-produced energy), does it all still shake out the same way?
Yes, because we have major problems with sources of phosphate, among other things. Even assuming the magical energy fairies give you all the nitrogen from the air that you want, and you have similar sources of potassium, the P in NPK is a major crunch coming. No, I don't know the answer, but I'm working hard on it.
This is only going to get more complex - and more pressing - as time goes on. And no, I'm not a vegetarian either, but it's an interesting topic given the sheer number of people on the planet and the fact that the number is increasing all the time, plus we have diminishing resources to feed/clothe/occupy those people. Words like "propaganda" aren't helpful to the discussion.
You don't have to tell me about the complexity or urgency. I'm well acquainted with those. However, I, and all the farmers I know, are at our wits' end with all the - yes, I'll say it - propaganda we get, generally produced by ideologues and swallowed wholesale by urbanites who are well-intentioned, but utterly misled. This is a major problem for us. How would you like it if all the lawyers were told by farmers that they couldn't take probate cases any more because that was profiting off death and misery? Or telling programmers that they need to drop realtime programming because nobody needs any time more specific than the hour? That's the kind of crap farmers face all the time.
Anyway, what do we call the vested interests of meat producers? Big Meat? Big Farmer?
Don't know. Don't care. Not my problem. I'm not them. You can call them Conan the Expendable for all I care.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 13 2015, @03:06AM
On a per-acre basis, crops are more profitable than livestock. Vegetables and fruits are more profitable than grains. As a result, farmers grow fruit or vegetables where they can, grain where they can't, and only run livestock as a last resort, on ground that is too poor or too dry to grow anything more edible than grass. (Finishing livestock in a feedlot is only a minor part of the animal's life cycle.) Only a small percentage of the Earth's land mass is actually good for crops (I've seen numbers in the neighborhood of 10%). The rest is somewhat-variably suited to livestock, but farming it would be an exercise in starvation. Funny how the veggie crowd seem to be entirely ignorant of the realities of producing what they eat, or how that production is limited by world's terrain and climate in ways that don't impact livestock.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @03:49AM
You're right, but there are lots of ways in which livestock, properly used, are so beneficial that you're actually better off with them. Other posters have pointed out some of the implications, but quite often it's very prosaic. Goats for weed control. Sheep for cover mowing. Cattle for work and various birds for invertebrate and weed control.
And, as mentioned, all of them for dung. And, as appropriate, meat, eggs, dairy, leather, fibre, feathers, everything.
Done right, animals mean more crops on a given chunk of land.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday October 12 2015, @08:40PM
Christianity also has instilled an aversion to sustainability.
So why are you sparing other religions? How is this different from Islam or Hindu? Majority of Islamic world has very young demographic - much younger than developed world. India does not exactly have sustainable population either and is doing nothing about it. And how about policies of Judaism? Seem about the same.
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Monday October 12 2015, @08:46PM
I singled out Christianity because we are talking about US public policy specifically, and Christianity is the dominant religion in that country.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 12 2015, @04:49PM
How much energy goes into the protein of one pound of meat, as opposed to that same amount of protein from beans?
It's not just that we have to grow and transport the animal feed but also manufacture the fertilizer and pesticide, transport the water and so on.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Monday October 12 2015, @05:08PM
Exactly. And why feed cows grass when you can eat the grass instead... wait what? Nice sentiment, doesn't always work.
Most of the figures associated with how much X takes to do X are bologna (Some examples [megatome.com]).
People doing these outrageous comparisons almost always have an agenda to push, so expect the numbers to be super inflated to fit their views.
As for me personally, I will continue to eat meat. You can have my steak when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 12 2015, @06:12PM
We need lab meat. That will make it so everyone has all the meat they can ever want, and no animal suffers for our food ever again...plus, it has the potential to be much friendlier on the environment.
I am not a vegetarian but I have been cutting down my meat consumption. Learning to cook Punjabi food (what most Americans think of when they hear "Indian food") has been very helpful.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 12 2015, @07:27PM
I can't disagree with you on the idea of "lab meat," if it can be done properly. Though as a pessimist I fear that any such product would be much more difficult to execute with any level of quality by commercial interests, especially when they are dogged by the likes of FDA which would be lobbied by existing farm interests. It is hard to believe that industrialized meat grown in a vat will not be plague by the same constrains as meat that is essentially factory-grown. Things like pressure for profits resulting in race to the bottom, which causes poor quality enforcement/guidelines through political lobbying.
In addition to that, lab grown food may still lack certain things which might be essential but are not understood at this time. Just like presence and function of gut bacteria is not well understood, with current research claiming it is causing and is the cure for much of obesity, we could find that eating food that has grown up in the same environment as us may offer us something which we might not get otherwise. I mean, yes you can fool nature often, and maybe for extended amount of time. But you can't fool it all the time, and definitely not forever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @08:51PM
We need dung. Manure. Stuff to keep agriculture a cycle, rather than a dead end. I'm sure there are byproducts of lab meat, but are they as beneficial as manure? Doubt it.
If you want sustainability, you want cycles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @11:08PM
People get hysterical with GMO food, what makes you think lab meat would be accepted?
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 14 2015, @07:13PM
Because there is no need to M the G, as it were. If anything, properly-done lab meat would be MUCH safer than the current methods, since it would be cultured in an aseptic medium.
We'd need to figure out a way to give it some toughness and texture, but I'd guess running tiny pulses of electricity through it every few seconds to make it contract would do it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @11:05PM
Beans, yeah. If it's all the same methane, why let cows have all the fun when we can fart to our stomach's content?
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Monday October 12 2015, @07:17PM
What sane people read when the view these words is roughly:
"The FDA has been changing their mind about what you should be eating and how much of it for decades, but until now at least gave the impression they were doing science; trying to promulgate the best advice science could offer at the time. Now they have dropped any pretense of that and will be injecting SJW/Green politics into their advice." And as sane people they should conclude; Best to ignore them from this day forward.
Once an organization is infected it is generally not salvageable. Burn it down, salt the ground. Nuke the site from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday October 12 2015, @07:50PM
It's not like anyone actually follows the food pyramid, or the food trapezoid, or the 26-dimension food manifold, or whatever else they come up with anyway. Unless it's the schools, in which case, no one eats the food, just because.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday October 12 2015, @08:25PM
gottta go pee on my garden, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by jb on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:15AM
The biggest problem with any dietary advice issued by the USDA is that it comes from the USDA, who pretty much by definition have a vested interest in propping up the US grain industry. That's no doubt why they're still recommending insanely high levels of carbohydrate consumption, more than 4 decades after the harm that was doing was discovered.
As a foreigner, I wouldn't mind so much (what the US Government does domestically within the US isn't really my business), except that the governments of just about every other English-speaking country (including the one I live in) seem to end up just copying whatever dietary advice the USDA put out...