William’s 4000 Calorie, Factory Farmed Diet
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In response to the question, “What do you all do? Any other suggestions for how we can promote environmentally and ethically responsible food consumption practices?” at a blog that I like, people chimed in with answers such as drinking from the tap rather than buying bottled water or using reusable grocery bags rather than plastic. William commented :
“I do very little and refuse to feel bad about it. I live in a big city with a high cost of living, don’t have enough room for a window box much less a root garden, and go to graduate school. ADM-style produce is cheap and plentiful, factory farmed meat stretches further, and farmer’s markets in my area tend towards the gentrified and come with the significant price bump to reflect the smug sense of self-satisfaction their patrons are really buying.”
“I’m 6′1″, 270 pounds, and maintenance is close to 3000 [sic, he clarifies later that it's actually 4000] calories a day for me. What I do do is refuse to buy bottled water, avoid processed snack foods as much as is possible, read the labels of the foods I do buy, and try to learn new tricks in the kitchen to keep myself and my wife happy. The way I see it, if we saved a little money and enjoyed a good homecooked meal devoid of corn syrup I’ve done just about the best I can hope to do.”
This may be news to William and those of his kind, but the average human being can live off of potatoes. It’s one of the only foods we can survive on without requiring many additional foods. We don’t *need* to eat animal products whatsoever.
“It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climate than any other plant. It is, of course, the potato.” source: The Economist, March 1st, 2008.
Take the stereotypical American meal: meat and potatoes, side vegetable and salad. Now take the meat out and add some more potatoes. Now you have a healthy meal, that’s not only satisfying, but also very cheap and easy.
Like this:
Or… like this:
Give peas a chance…
Yummmm.. that looks sooo good. I’m salivating now just looking at that aloo matar (or potatoes and peas). Make it without ghee (clarified butter).
Now take William’s caloric “needs” (he says 4000 calories/ day) and say he got 1/4 of his calories from potatoes, the other 3/4 from other plants (side vegetables like carrots, peas, and broccoli, salads like lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, and legumes like lentils or kidney beans).
From the potatoes alone (1000 calories worth), William would get about:
30 grams of protein
15 mg of iron
420 mg of vitamin C
62 mcg of vitamin K
90 mcg of beta carotene
36 grams of fiber
other nutrients
and NO cholesterol
Regardless of William’s actual caloric needs, plants are perfectly capable of producing plenty of food. And the food is nutritious. As you can see, William’s excuse that he has to eat factory farmed meat just doesn’t hold up.
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