What to eat

I think it's about time I became a vegetarian. Although I sometimes think that later ages will look on our carniverousness with a horror like the one we feel on looking at slave societies, it's not because of animal rights. (I've avoided factory farmed meat for a while now.) No, it's because meat is ecologically unsustainable. The hunger spreading around the world as the prices of staples like rice and flour have risen dramatically is in part the consequence of more people becoming meat eaters. I've never eaten much meat, but from now on I'll make a point of avoiding it when I can.

Questions of what to eat aren't new - indeed it sometimes seems like food choices are the last way people in late modernity can interact with the world - ecologically, politically, culturally, etc. How very convenient that political correctness should also taste good! (Do I hear the execrable Michel Houellebecq sniggering here?) I already avoid processed foods (except Cheetos), but I'm not one of those who try to get everything organic. I've tried for a while (though inconsistently) to try to eat seasonal foods - harder to do in the winter, when the honest farmers' markets are bare! On top of that one is now supposed to be a locavore - eating locally grown food. Since it also tastes better, I'm happy to give that a try, though I'm doubtful (if hopeful) that Michael Pollan's right that it will also be cheaper, since rising petroleum prices make local products relatively cheaper than mass-produced ones shipped in from afar. (If I can get our garden going, I'll be a super locavore!)

Not sure how I feel about fish. Actually, I know exactly how I feel about fish - I love it, and the papers tell me there won't be much of it left in just a few decades. But is that a reason to eat a lot or a little?

The views of Mount Fuji in a rice paddy (one in a wave in a rice paddy)
are from Inakadate in Aomori, Japan, using different varieties of rice plant.
For a scene of the planting of these paddies - or is the harvest? - look here.)