Noah Jabusch
I get it. Bacon is possibly the most delicious semi-food, semi-heart attack that anyone has ever invented. So trust me when I say that I fully understood that becoming a vegetarian would mean surrendering my undying love for that greasy strip of heaven. And yet, here I am, three weeks later, still succeeding in denying it a place on my breakfast plate, and I still don’t regret this lifestyle choice. (Okay, maybe just a little).
As cute as I find pigs and cows, I must confess that I am no animal rights activist. I don’t see anything morally disingenuous about consuming the flesh of dead animals. After all, humans evolved to take advantage of meat as a food source because of its nutritional density. It’s quite possible that we owe our intelligence to the need to socially plan the hunt of large animals.
Unfortunately, largely as a result of that intelligence, humanity has grown a bit too big for its ecological britches, but only if we maintain current levels of meat consumption. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Globally, there is enough cropland to feed 9 billion [people] in 2050 if the 40 percent of all crops produced today for feeding animals were used directly for human consumption…”
However, in order for farmers to stop feeding animals crops that humans could consume, we must scale down demand for meat, and scale up demand for other food sources.
Growing enough food for everyone as efficiently as possible is important for a variety of reasons. Human lives are at stake. With the global population around 7.5 billion at the moment, and projected by the UN to exceed 9 billion by 2050, feeding ever more children will be a challenge for decades to come.
In addition to the raw lives, the growth of food has a serious impact on climate change, as growing more crops requires more land, water and energy. The NC State Center for Environmental Farming Systems researches the effect of different farming techniques on the environment, including one ongoing study examining greenhouse gas emissions. While no data have been published yet, in the future, studies like this will quantify how farmers can best reduce their ecological footprint. For now, the CEFS notes that agriculture contributes to an estimated 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The health of the environment is the main reason I decided to change my diet, but my personal health also played a key role. I can honestly attest that I have never eaten so much salad in my life. Beyond this though, in the modern era, where many of us are not fighting daily to obtain food and fight off predators, consuming large quantities of calorie-dense meat is unnecessary at best and harmful at worst.
In addition, a meat-free diet has forced me to think seriously about the nutrients I consume on a daily basis. Now that I have to concern myself with acquiring sufficient protein, I have found it easier to track my relative quantities of other nutrients.
In many ways, NC State is an ideal place to explore different dietary decisions. Practically every eatery displays clearly which options are vegetarian, vegan or contain allergens. The wolf-approved program marks foods that meet certain health standards of calorie and fat content. Also, the NC State Dietitian’s contact information is plastered on practically every surface in the dining halls.
One negative aspect to NC State’s vegetarian options, however, is the lack of variety. Every on-campus dining location I have visited has had a few vegetarian options — but usually only a few. At dining halls, salad, fruit and cheese pizza are always on the menu, and there are often veggie burgers, spring rolls or rice.
Unfortunately, only half of those can be construed as entrees, and the others still offer relatively little variety over the course of a week. The situation is relatively sparser at the restaurants in Talley or the Atrium, especially if you happen to be a picky eater like me.
The old proverb states, “we are what we eat,” and indeed our food choices greatly influence our lives. Deciding to change diets is a deeply personal decision, and we each must decide for ourselves what balance we feel comfortable with. I have found that vegetarianism satisfies this balance for me.
While we as a population definitely ought to reduce our cheeseburger and bacon consumption, a complete halt does not seem necessary. What we do sorely need is to think more conscientiously about what we put in our bodies, and to recognize that each of us has a voice in determining how our university and our society eat.