the skinny on this vegan thing

So look, I haven't really explained my vegan madness here, at least not on the blog. So I thought maybe it was time.

The authors of this book I've cited (The Way We Eat... - which, btw, I picked up haphazardly for $4 @ Value Village) point out a number of what for me were very salient points:

• organic beef, which treats the animals better than factory farming, means they get to eat grass and hay and roam large swaths of pasture. However, cows that eat grass and hay actually produce more methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2 (http://www.epa.gov/methane/), and in giving them room for pasture, they use way more land than factory-farmed animals
• eating local (particularly local and out of season) can actually cause more damage and use more energy than getting stuff from overseas. Example 1: Californian rice - in fact, it takes much more energy and much more water to produce rice in North America than it does to grow it in, say, Bangladesh, and ship it over by sea. Example 2: greenhouse-grown local tomatoes use tons of energy to heat the greenhouses, and tons of water to irrigate.
  
• farm animals produce lots of waste. The more of us there are eating meat and cheese and eggs, the more waste gets produced, and that waste ends up running off into groundwater, into lakes and streams, into rivers and oceans. It can also contaminate those self-same animal products.
  
• cows consume 5 times more than people, so if we stopped eating beef and used that land to grow crops for human consumption, we'd actually have a lot more food! (see "where's the grain?" in this Cornell study from 1997)

...so essentially, if we stopped eating animal products altogether, we'd put a lot less strain both on the food system and on the planet. It really is difficult though! I now weigh 213.6, which means I've lost 2.4lbs in two and a half weeks. Great diet plan, I guess, though this was not a goal of mine. I don't really like tofu, though meatless burgers are okay, and I've made some headway on nice vegan main dishes with things like potatoes, green beans, pasta, and rice. It's going okay. I can imagine just keeping on going; it certainly does get easier, but it's still a bit of a struggle.

Preview: Global TV tonight began a new series based on the now famous 100-mile diet. It actually looks even more difficult than going vegan. My wife wondered aloud whether this was my new quest... so this evening I spent some time Googling local sources of flour (or maybe bread? pasta...?), dairy (can't wait!), and coffee (no dice. argh), and I'll have a look around for locally-sourced beer (luckily we live right near one of the world's great wine regions) and yeast, and we actually already have connections to local produce, local honey, local chicken, and local eggs. So maybe come August 15th...? I'll keep you posted.