Let’s Ask Marion: Why Follow Our Fuelish Example?

(With a click of her mouse, EatingLiberally’s kat corners Dr. Marion Nestle, NYU professor of nutrition and author of Food Politics and What to Eat:)

Kat: Two of America’s most entrenched traditions--our meat-centric meals and car-crazy culture—are undermining our health and degrading our environment (and, with the rising cost of fuel, breaking our budgets) on an unprecedented scale. It seems that our way of life has essentially become a recipe for disease and pollution.

So why do so many other countries aspire to live the way we do? Meat consumption is on the rise the world over, and more cars are on the road in China and India everyday. The demand for more grain to feed livestock and produce biofuels is surely worsening the global food crisis. Are human beings just hardwired to crave animal flesh and horsepower?

Dr. Nestle: Kat—I think you may be asking the wrong question, this time. The real question is: Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t hungry people who have to work really hard to get food and to get from one place to another want to live the way we do? Some of us give up meat because we have a choice. But I can’t see that we have any right to expect people who don’t have that choice to make sacrifices. I don’t see too many of us giving up our cars, however (I don’t have one so can be somewhat smug about this point but I also live in a zipcode where owning one is a liability). It’s pretty hard to worry about climate change when you wonder where the next meal is coming from or how you are going to get to work.

I’m not sure it’s hardwired, but it’s practically a law of nutrition that meat intake rises with income. So does intake of sugar, soft drinks, and processed foods, not to mention cigarettes and alcohol (where these are socially acceptable). All you have to do to see this phenomenon in action is to take a look at Peter Menzel and Faith d’Aluisio’s glorious book, Hungry Planet,in which families all over the world pose in front of everything they ate for an entire week. The instant they have a little money, their diets become more diverse, processed, convenient, and meat-laden. We are, after all, omnivores at the top of the food chain. If we want others to give up meat and cars, we have to do that first.