GOP freshman senator Joni Ernst continues her party’s august record of dealing with the important issues. Forget about climate change, a Supreme Court vacancy, and the blood of dozens fresh in Orlando: the real threat to our lives and democracy is Meatless Monday. A couple of weeks back, she introduced federal legislation that would stop the Department of Defense from spending any money on it or any program designed to reduce meat consumption by U.S. military personnel.
Ernst is from Iowa, Gestation Crate Hellhole of the U.S., so one could argue that she’s just looking after her constituents’ interests. But that’s not what she said in an emailed statement. What she said was—I’m paraphrasing a bit–“OMG WHERE WILL OUR SOLDIERZ GET THEIR PROTEINZ?!?11!?”
It’s an incredibly stupid argument to make in 2016.
Take it away, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sponsor of Meatless Monday:
Recently, freshman U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) threatened to legislate the removal of Meatless Monday from military menus, suggesting that soldiers and military personnel would not be able to meet protein needs if they cut out meat one day a week. The senator is misinformed about human nutrition, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines (DGAC) and the Meatless Monday campaign.
The 2015 DGAC recommend that for people who consume 2,000 calories per day, the ideal amount of “protein equivalent foods” to consume daily is 5.5 ounces. Protein equivalents include beef, pork, lamb, poultry, seafood, eggs, tofu and soy products, beans, legumes and nuts. According to the Dietary Guidelines, which are revised every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, protein needs can be adequately met with a variety of foods, including plant-based proteins such as the above-mentioned tofu, soy, beans, legumes and nuts.
It is more than feasible for a person to remove meat from his or her diet one day a week and still easily meet the Dietary Guidelines recommendations for protein….Furthermore, removing meat one day a week will actually help Americans meet additional components of the Guidelines, particularly recommendations for increased vegetable consumption and a reduction in saturated fats.
They conclude: “Observing Meatless Monday in Department of Defense dining facilities could improve the health and well-being of our soldiers, and it has the potential to contribute to reduced food costs and fewer environmental and climate impacts.”
Ernst–a real charmer who boasted during her campaign of castrating baby piglets and promised to “make ’em squeal” in Washington–is obviously happy to sell out the health of the soldiers she claims to care so much about for the benefit of her pig-torturing constituents. And she’s no doubt basking in the attention her little amendment has generated. But even if she succeeds in getting it passed, the meat industry is fighting a losing battle. Meat consumption (other than chicken) has been on a decline for years in the U.S., a trend that will continue and accelerate.
PS – Not Just Related But Yuge: Yesterday, The Guardian reported on a plan by China to cut meat consumption by 50% for public health, ecological (land degradation), and climate reasons.
Hillary Rettig
Well? Would you?
boatboy_srq
The folks at JHBSPH could have stopped with “the Senator is misinformed”…
boatboy_srq
Re: the postscript: that alone is proof that Meatless Mondays lead to Soshulizm!!11!1! Or is it that Soshulizm is upon us because Meatless Mondays are a thing…
Hillary Rettig
@boatboy_srq: ziiiiiiiiiiiiing!
greennotGreen
Meat is generally environmentally unsound. Plant protein requires many fewer acres to produce the equivalent protein.
That being said, we are by nature omnivores, so I don’t know that I would prescribe a blanket vegetarian diet for everyone, but cutting down on American meat consumption is advisable on so, so many levels.
agrippa
No.
Not much to say other than: No.
Gin & Tonic
Does a dinner consisting of half a bag of Doritos and three beers count as appropriately meatless? Um, asking for a friend, of course.
Jeffro
Couldn’t we solve this almost instantly by having the Obamas come out in favor of an all-meat diet?
You’d see such a rush to the produce sections of grocery stories (especially in red states, omg) it’d make your head spin.
Jeffro
@greennotGreen: We call it “meat minimizing” in our house – the kids are totally fine with it. I think Mark Bittman calls it “vegetarian before 6pm” or something like that?
Either way, we’re clearly not doing our patriotic duty…sad!
scav
Meatless Fridays, however, are totally a different thing, being a fast day and thus sacrosanct. Would the good Castrating Pig Senator vote to hold pious Catholics down on Fridays throughout Lent, shoving meat down their throats (actually, for once) in the name of troop readiness?
boatboy_srq
@Jeffro: I still want the Obama’s to advocate regular consumption of oxygen and dihydrogen peroxide. It would solve SO many problems if they did that.
Hillary Rettig
@Gin & Tonic: I think what you want is Feckless Monday. :-)
Hillary Rettig
@Jeffro: given the hysterical reaction to Michelle’s sensible eating tips (“SOCIAMALISM! NANNY STATE!”) that’s a pretty smart suggestion.
boatboy_srq
@scav: You forget that Catholics aren’t Xtians unless there’s religulous libertee to be preserved, child molesters to be shielded, or some Xtian wingnut’s freedom from unGodly incarceration (for attempting to evangelize the heathen in, say, Rome) to be demanded.
Hillary Rettig
@Jeffro:
Vegan Before 6: http://markbittman.com/book/vb6/
Reducetarianism: http://reducetarian.org/
Both great programs, along with Meatless Monday!
Xantar
@greennotGreen:
The current American level of meat consumption is unsustainable if it were to be expanded to everybody in the world. However, I’m not in favor of turning the entire human race vegetarian either. Vegetable agriculture needs fairly high quality land, and I don’t think there’s enough to produce what we need at sufficient scale. Moreover, the interaction of livestock with crop land produces major benefits for both.
Celebrity Bowling
@Gin & Tonic:
We call it Choir Practice, with Fritos and Schlitz 40s.
scav
@boatboy_srq: I do rather get lost in the churn of who counts and who doesn’t when it comes to justification by faith in the land of the religiously free. The Lenten fasts I get caught up in are Orthodox, but I’m sure they don’t count either. Clearly I’m just never and somehow have never been in the presence of those actual real mercans that surround us.
gratuitous
And here I’ve been told for decades that the Republicans are the party of small or limited government! But here’s Sen. Ernst, trying to micromanage military meals from a position of complete and utter ignorance, as detailed by actual nutritionists at Johns Hopkins.
I’m beginning to think that perhaps some of the favored media narratives are due for a little overhaul.
Hillary Rettig
@Jeffro: PS, really like the framing of “meat minimalization.”
Hillary Rettig
@gratuitous: and it hardly needs to be said that Sen. Ernst was on the wrong end of the yesterday’s gun control votes.
greennotGreen
@Xantar: First step: fewer humans, preferably by reducing production, not by wholesale slaughter. (Soylent Green?) Second step, the right livestock for the land. North America evolved along with two or three excellent meat mammals: bison, deer, and maybe elk. (Never eaten elk, so I can’t say how desirable it is.) Cattle have been a scourge to this hemisphere. Pigs are a scourge just about anywhere they’re let loose, but raising them in pens is inhumane, and they are very intelligent.
Humans are responsible for getting the entire planet out of balance. We have to find a way to get back to a sustainable equilibrium. I think we should start with the First Step. Unfortunately, Zika and its compatriots may help us along.
Bill
Conservative backlash against anyone suggesting we shouldn’t be eating meat 24/7 baffles me.
My diet includes plenty of meat. in fact my favorite meal is probably a really good steak. But from a health and environmental perspective controlling meat intake is a good idea. This just seems like such a weird issue for some conservatives to latch on to.
It kind of reminds me of how some conservatives hate anything related to soccer. There a just some random topics that they’ve decided to draw a line in the sand on, and it makes little sense.
raven
No meat for 20+ years but still chicken and fish.
raven
@Bill: And fucking light bulbs.
Major Major Major Major
Meat minimization is definitely something to strive for, but I take an environmental harm reduction approach. Less meat’s good, efficient meat’s good, and so forth. Unfortunately for meat-lovers like myself we can’t keep up this level of consumption, and that’s before you even begin to look at the ethics of eating animals.
Of course, farm-to-table and locavorism is wasteful as all-get-out in many cases, too.
Emma
@greennotGreen: So we start by mandatory sterilization or mandatory contraception? That’s going to be one tough sell.
CONGRATULATIONS!
What the hell? THIS DOES NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE.
Part of my job does involve going to DoD facilities, and as part of doing that I end up eating there. There’s never been a “meatless Monday”, and there never will be…for starters, the soldiers aren’t going to put up with that shit for one second. For seconds, if you want to/have to go vegan/meatless they ALWAYS have that as an option.
Ernst is making this up out of thin air just to score political points, and Johns Hopkins is giving her very valuable assistance.
ETA: military dining hall food, usually, ain’t bad. I was pleasantly surprised.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma: Overpopulation’s not even a problem. The Malthusian/Population Bomb scares have… not come to pass. And the growth rate is down sharply. See also: green revolution.
boatboy_srq
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The modern GOTea. Fixing Big Gubmint intrusions with more intrusive solutions in order to preserve Freedumb that was never jeopardized to begin with.
Poopyman
@raven: Now THAT is a real health risk.
Emma
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I often wonder how the Army brass that has to interact with Congress manages to deal with people like Ernst without just blowing up at them. “Listen you ignoramus, we have vegetarians and vegans in the service and they eat just fine thank you very much so stop this shyte right now!”.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma:
Yeah right. Next you’ll tell me they have gay people and Muslims.
karen marie
Problem I have with salad is getting it to stay on my fork until it gets to my mouth. Never have that problem with meat.
joel hanes
As a former GI, and one from Iowa to boot, I have these reactions :
0. I think vegetarian meals are a fine thing. Some GIs would disagree; some would disagree quite strongly. The Army offered me a sufficient variety of foods (at most meals) that I would have been able to cobble together a vegetarian option, had I so desired. But I think that a significant fraction of my fellow GIs would have regarded an attempt to foist an entire day of meatless meals on them without giving them any choice in the matter as high-handed. Ms. Rettig is free not to eat meat; no one will force her. Why should her preferences be forced on GIs, even one day per week ? Serious question.
1. Sen. Ernst spent 23 years in the military, and commanded a Iowa National Guard transport battalion in Kuwait for over a year during Iraq II, and by all reports did an excellent job. I would trust her opinion on ANY policy that affects the day-to-day life of American soldiers before that of Ms. Rettig.
2. Logistic changes have costs. For the Army, some kinds of diet choices are rather pre-determined. For example, I would be surprised if the currently-stockpiled variety of MREs included an exclusively-vegetarian option. Certainly none of the C-rations I ate in the field did.
3. Sen. Ernst would not be my choice to represent Iowa (I was a Harkin voter when I lived there). However, most Iowans are meat-eaters, and many Iowans derive their income from meat production or processing. It’s as unrealistic to expect Ernst to vote for something like this as it is to expect Shumer to vote for a national credit-card debt forgiveness jubillee, or to expect Wasserman-Schulz to vote for the end of sugar subsidies.
4. The castration thing was an unfortunate choice; it plays poorly outside Iowa. In-state, it’s best understood as a repudiation of “women’s traditional role” gender expectations — a woman who works that phase of swine production is “doing a man’s work” on the farm , and thus is much more difficult for male chauvinists to dismiss as just a girl — and for that reason, it’s a popular statement among rural Iowans.
Bill
@raven: And bicycles.
Patricia Kayden
That’s great news from China. Off topic, but there’s a great Chinese restaurant in Silver Spring, MD (Hunan Manor) where you can get some delicious mock meat dishes. If I lived closer, I’d eat there every day.
Hillary Rettig
@Bill: this is a big topic. Leaving aside the pernicious effect of Big Ag and its lobbying, Bob Altemeyer’s work on right-wing authoritarians seems relevant. tl;dr : RWA’s love authority, conventionality, conformity, and hierarchy – and react violently to the slightest perceived threats to those.
Plus, you know, patriarchy. Let’s divide the world into arbitrary masculine and feminine categories and maintain our own fragile status by despising everything that falls into the latter. Like vegetarianism.
Gene108
Is there another country with a major political party that is as anti-science as our Repiblicans?
There are other countries with xenophobic, racist, proto-fascist parties, but GOP politicians seem to be the only ones who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and Jesus rode dinosaurs and other rejections of established science.
Ms. Jodi is just extending the anti-science ethos to a new endeavor.
Shell
Lunch lady Doris: Heres a hot dog bun. Its full of bunly goodness.
Lisa: Do you remember when you lost your passion for this work?
schrodinger's cat
@Gene108: BJP and its satellites are anti-science especially when the science interferes with their cherished notions.
Major Major Major Major
@joel hanes: I seriously doubt that ‘meatless mondays’ would be anything more than a choice at the mess hall, for a balanced vegetarian meal one day a week. From the link:
I also don’t see anything saying that this is an externally-imposed idea.
Mnemosyne
@greennotGreen:
An interesting thing struck me recently about “Soylent Green” and similar sci-fi tales of overpopulation: the (mostly) men who wrote them literally couldn’t imagine that if you gave women access to safe, reliable birth control, the vast majority of them would choose to use it and have 2 or fewer children. The areas of the world that continue to have a problem with increasing population are exactly those countries where women are not allowed to control their own fertility.
Meanwhile, female sci-fi authors are writing about worlds where birth control implants at puberty are standard and perfectly healthy babies come out of uterine replicators. Talk about living in different worlds …
greennotGreen
@Emma: Uh, no. I was thinking more in terms of education, free contraception, and maybe tax penalties for producing more than two children.
joel hanes
@Major Major Major Major:
Overpopulation’s not even a problem
Half the large-animal biomass has been removed from the oceans. The great North Atlantic cod fisheries are no more. California’s salmon are all but extinct. Best projections are for at least 30% of all species on earth to follow them into extinction within the lifetimes of children being born today. Vast areas of fertile land have been converted to desert, and the process continues; many areas of formerly-lush riparian corridors have been reduced to gullied gravel. To a first approximation, the old-growth forests of North America are no more, and destruction of the Congo and Amazon rain forests continues apace. We’ve nearly depleted aquifers that require tens of thousands of years to recharge. The Gulf of Mexico just outside the Mississippi mouth is a sickening dead zone, too anoxic to support fish life. The surface of much of the ocean is permeated with an unprecedented soup of tiny floating particles of plastic. The atmospheric CO2 levels in Antarctica are known to be at their highest level in over four million years.
Just what would it take to convince you that there are too many humans living on this planet?
I would have thought that the above was dispositive.
http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/down-with-ship.html
Emma
@greennotGreen: Which may, and I say may, work in the United States. What are you going to do in the rest of the world?
Gin & Tonic
OT, but Hillz’s Twitter team is bringing their game.
Mnemosyne
@joel hanes:
As Major x 4 said, I’m guessing this is more of a health campaign in the mess hall to encourage soldiers to choose that day’s vegetarian option than a top-down decision to cut meat out entirely.
The DOD realizes that our survival as a country depends on the wise use of our resources, which is why they’re huge users of alternative energy and are making big strides in water conservation. This seems to be all of a piece with that.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma: Impoverished women around the world love them some birth control, actually. And human rights issues aside, China’s one-child policy was very successful at curtailing their population of young people, so a penalty-focused system can work. If you really want to look at the drivers of population growth (such as it is) you need to turn your eyes to places like India and Africa, where even a smidgen of birth control can go a long way, assuming the men “let” the women use it.
I’m all for staying at a replacement-level population, which is what we need really, and these softer stances would help.
joel hanes
@Emma:
mandatory sterilization or contraception
You’re usually better than this.
When women are educated and have confidential, inexpensive access to contraception, reproduction rates fall to near replacement levels. Wherever women can live independently without having to depend on a man for full participation in society, reproduction rates are lower. Wherever women are kept ignorant, subjugated, or where contraception is not available, the birth rate is higher.
Feminism is the first, and maybe only necessary, step in population growth reduction.
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
Education and free contraception would do a whole lot in the rest of the world, too. Though the hardest part will be breaking male dominance and making it safe for women to use the contraception they’re given access to.
ETA: Also, what joel hanes and Major x 4 said. The biggest obstacle to getting women in developing countries to use contraception is men.
joel hanes
@Major Major Major Major:
Thanks. Apparently I need to either work on reading comprehension, or avoid Ms. Rettig’s posts, or both.
apologies for the ill-founded rant.
joel hanes
comment in moderation, apparently because of a link to fafblog
help please ?
Calouste
@Major Major Major Major: Obviously you don’t think like an authoritarian religious nutjob. Giving people choice is wrong, it might lead them from the straight(laced) and narrow(minded).
schrodinger's cat
Dear HR and Joni Ernst,
Please stop lecturing about food. Kthx bai.
greennotGreen
@Emma: Women’s education and free contraceptives will still help.
raven
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I ate at one a Ft Stewart a couple of years ago and it was NOTHING like the slop shoots we had back in the day. . . and those were stateside.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@joel hanes: Be surprised. They do. Both for domestic distribution (we have Hindus and others in the service who are vegetarians) and for distribution in other countries where meat my be avoided for not being kosher or halal.
Shouldn’t be. Eat what you want. We are liberals, after all, not conformists nor totalitarians. The “other side” will happily dictate what you eat. We should never do so.
dedc79
Even as someone who believes strongly that we can only confront the most serious global environmental problems by getting to zero population growth, this has the ring of “other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Brachiator
Meat? Pah.
And you vegetarian wusses with your … gardens. Real mens and womens would forage, with spots of opportunistic scavenging. Eat some bugs, like your Creator intended.
Emma
@greennotGreen: Try it in Latin America. Both the Catholic Church and the (making inroads in the past few years) evangelicals are not, repeat not, down with contraception. Also, large families are protection — there will be enough members to help run the farm and take care of the elderly and the children if disaster strikes. You’ll be fighting centuries of religious and cultural history.
This reminds me of the argument about people cutting their energy footprint. Most of what we call the Third World went “you first”.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@raven: No shit, huh? Last trip out I gained weight, they had a damn omelette bar and Steak Fridays. Almost said the wrong thing to the wife; “boy, I wish we ate like this at home!” but stopped just in time. Was pretty impressed, though. Never had the old food, but my dad (Phuket 66-72, Air Force) has told me tales. Gross.
Major Major Major Major
@dedc79: Well, duh. It was sort of a “say what you will about Hitler, but you have to admit, he did kill Hitler” comment.
greennotGreen
@dedc79: I’m not Chinese (although I have visited), but one of my Chinese friends told me that living in China, one understood the necessity of limiting population growth. And their history of famine probably supports that, as well.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma:
Why would we focus on a region with near-replacement levels of population growth, the second-lowest in the world?
greennotGreen
@Emma: So we should just not try? We should just not present women with the option of smaller families?
greennotGreen
@Emma: With Zika looming, that resistance may change.
raven
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yea and they had everything labeled with nutritional information. In Korea and the Nam if you were in the rear they had these milk products made from “re-combined” milk which was powdered. Then there were C’s, ouch!
Emma
@Major Major Major Major: OK, so what you’re saying is that we’ll concentrate on our usual targets?
Major Major Major Major
@greennotGreen: They’re going to have a labor/safety net issue pretty soon because they shrank their population growth too fast, but yeah, they did have/do have too many people. Fortunately they’ve got a wealthy and cosmopolitan enough population (relatively speaking) that isn’t very religious.
raven
@efgoldman: Don’t fuck with the Spoons!
You get that salad dressing made from the syrup in the #10 canned fruit?
Major Major Major Major
@Emma: Yep, Africa’s the big one. I’m not saying I have a solution, but correctly identifying the problem is the first step.
Emma
@greennotGreen: No. I am saying that the timeline is skewed against fast enough change. But that’s not the worst of it. I am deeply suspicious about this “but it’ll be good for the planet” approach because it’s preaching action when all we do is words.
Never mind.
schrodinger's cat
These vegetarian threads seem to bring Malthusian cranks out of the woodwork. Nice!
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: I say we just cram everybody into Rhode Island and let nature take its course.
Emma
@Major Major Major Major: Agreed. And here’s the problem: When we needed slaves we took them and bred them, when we wanted their land we took it and shunted them into “townships”. Now we are saying we don’t need so many of you so stop having children. Don’t you see how it will look to them? Can’t you imagine the resentment? Winning their minds come first and we have a piss poor track record in Africa.
ps. how did my last two comments get switched around?
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
But I haven’t heard of that filtering down other than maybe in some corners of activists in the VHP or RSS.
As far as I know, no one is pushing to ban the teaching of Evolution from the science curriculum for students, for example, which is a very real issue with regards to the U.S.A. and Republican’s sincerely held beliefs.
Brachiator
@joel hanes:
What should be the population of the United States? What should be the population of the city you live in?
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, drat those pesky little human rights issues. Also created huge problems of gender imbalance, given the cultural preference for male children.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma: That article you linked did a good job demonstrating that, for the most part, it’s on their governments to handle it because a) of course it is and b) that’s the only way it’ll work.
@Brachiator: The original comment had the tongue quite clearly in cheek for that one but I guess it got lost in an edit.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: I will give you two examples:
1. The whole banning of beef thing in the BJP controlled states.
2. Getting rid of eggs in school lunches in some BJP controlled states
Their shibboleths are different than the evangelicals but they do have them.
They are also trying to rewrite history by erasing Nehru’s contributions.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
Outside of Africa and parts of the ME, most of the world is at near replacement levels of births.
If you can get family planning into Africa, we’ll solve population growth problems.
Major Major Major Major
Anyway, the important thing is, human population seems to be leveling itself off, so there’s no reason to panic. And we have plenty of food; people are going hungry because of logistical issues. (I include ‘genocidal maniacs’ in ‘logistical issues’, so don’t make fun of me for that.)
That said, we should still focus on education, birth control access, and trade liberalization as the main drivers of population limitation, human rights, and (at this point) environmental protections.
Emily68
@Jeffro: we call ourselves “domestic vegetarians ” because we don’t eat meat at our house.
BruceFromOhio
@Brachiator: Back in MY DAY, there was NOTHING to eat except dirt and ROCKS.
AND WE LOVED IT.
@joel hanes: Thank you for this, it helps to fill in some unheeded blanks. (Did not know Ernst had the military history, for example)
I’m trying to remember a time when a statement like this was shocking. Seems … like forever ago.
quakerinabasement
Gotta dance with them that brung ya.
Brachiator
@greennotGreen:
The worst famines in China were caused by political nonsense, not over-population. For example, during the Great Leap Forward, as many as 36 million died:
This has also been the case with respect to some of the worst historical famines in Ireland or India, during the era of British domination.
Keith P.
Americans eat a TON of protein as it is. I’m supposed to eat a lot due to being on dialysis, so I started out putting down a pound of beef/chicken at a meal. So my phosphorous levels skyrocketed. My medical staff and I had to come to an understanding about use of vague words such as “lots”. I can’t remember what the “proper” amount per meal is, but I want to say it’s only 6 oz of beef to get 50 grams of protein, which is about what an adult needs per day. But as Americans, it seems like we’re conditioned to put down double digit oz of meat per meal, with 3 meals per day. And you also get protein elsewhere…beans, pasta, eggs(!).
It’s kind of like trying to make sure you get a lot of potassium/phosphorous in your diet…American foods already contain so much of them that if you consciously try to eat a lot, you’ll likely overdo it.
raven
@Brachiator: Things ain’t too great in Argentina right now.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Like my above comment re: genocidal maniacs being a driver of starvation, as opposed to not having food.
We also need to get golden rice online, stat.
RaflW
I am amazed that some Iowa kids can make it through a grueling school day on a PBJ sandwich and some fritos. Maybe a choklaty-coated sponge cake thrown in for good measure.
Meatless lunch! In Iowa! Call the SWAT team!
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: As a Rhode Islander, I say “no thanks.”
catclub
@Major Major Major Major:
yes, we can feed those billions of people. Species and habitat loss will continue. Ocean productivity is heavily stressed.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Are you confusing Venezuela and Argentina? Cause Argentina’s fine.
John Revolta
@Major Major Major Major:
For certain meanings of the word “successful”. They’ve currently got 30 or 40 million men over there who won’t ever get near a woman due to people aborting female fetuses. OTOH I suppose that’s a population control all on its own so….
Ian
@raven:
How are those not meat?
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t view that as anti-science. It’s just a religious belief they are imposing on people. I don’t really agree with it, but it’s like Blue Laws in the U.S., where you can’t sell liquor on a Sunday or before a certain time of the day or at all in some places.
The BJP led government signed onto the Paris Accords to reduce CO2 emissions.
You won’t get Republicans to admit Global Warming is an actual problem and that there is real science behind the concern caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
I believe the House Science committee is working to undo any restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. A U.S. Senator tossed a snowball on the floor of the Senate as “proof” Global Warming alarmism is unwarranted.
Link
Emma
@Major Major Major Major: I guess so and I’m sorry it was you who happened to trigger that particular nerve. I am a bit unhinged on this topic and have been for a while. A lot of the “save the planet” movement seem to imply “save the planet but I’m not lowering my standard of living one iota, thank you.” There are big things we could do to really change things but it needs commitment and mucho dinero from the “first world.” And most of the usual proposals reek of fvck you I’ve got mine.
D58826
And on the topic of stupid republicans, but I repeat myself,
Just goes to show the only amendment to the bill of rights that is important is the 2nd.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-republicans-call-for-more-surveillance-after-orlando-massacre_us_576938ffe4b0fbbc8beb9dfc?section=
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
Your information seems to be outdated — Latin America has essentially the same rate of population growth as North America. The countries with a higher-than-average rate are places like Bolivia and Guatemala that have a lot of political instability that’s disrupting people’s ability to access healthcare.
Catholics in Latin America seem to be following in the footsteps of Catholics in the US and ignoring the church’s teaching about contraceptives.
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: We actually have too much food. If we go full GMO, we can cut back on resource strain and do a pretty good job feeding everybody at the same time. Like I said, logistics is the real issue.
John Revolta
@John Revolta: Must learn to type faster…………………..
D58826
@BruceFromOhio:
And in my day you had to grind the rocks first in order to make dirt
Emma
@Mnemosyne:
Somebody’s growing. And the division between women who “ignore the church’s teaching” and “those who can’t get to reliable contraceptives” is getting bigger instead and smaller.
Mike in NC
The Pentagon is feeding the troops Soylent Green! When will that story grace the cover of National Review?
Major Major Major Major
@Emma: They’re just slightly above replacement level. 6 million is not a lot of people.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: They try justify all kinds of BS under the umbrella of Vedic science. At their heart of hearts they are not that different from evangelicals, they just haven’t been in power long enough to wreak enough havoc.
Have you read the idiotic things that the BJP chamcha Rajiv Malhotra usually writes?
RaflW
In all seriousness, if I don’t count milk and eggs, I probably have about 6 servings of animal protein per week, and typically 2 of the 6 are fish. There are still a very surprising number of my neighbors who probably have 14-20 servings of meat/chicken/fish etc per week. I personally think that is nuts, but I don’t go stomping around in a huff like a certain pig-castrator does in the inverse situation.
Now, if you factor in milk, cheese, yoghurt (esp greek – I looooove greek yogurt and it’s a protein bonanza) I am probably not so great on 1. cholesterol (but I don’t care. My grammy ate big ol pats of butter every one of the days of her 87+ years on earth. And enjoyed it!) and 2. land resource impacts.
On the latter, I do buy organic milk, usually from the farmers cooperative dairy because the mass-market organic brands these days are, IMO, factory farming but using pesticide-free feed. That is marginally better than regular milk, but I can afford the $5 half gallons of small-farm regional milk (no kids to slurp that up in a nanosecond).
I also buy Locally Laid eggs, a friend’s egg company that is, well, local! Not organic, but real pasture-access free range, ‘small’ (3,000 bird hen) flocks, and they focus on minimizing food miles for the eggs. Twin Cities eggs travel about 310 miles. Which seems not-local till you realize how far supermarket eggs can travel, via processors, warehouses, etc.
Brachiator
@raven:
Do you mean Venezuela?
But here is something frightening and insane, right here at home. A recent LA Times story:
It’s as though society is slowly unraveling, and what was once unthinkable slowly becoming commonplace.
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
“Population growth” includes immigration — like North America, people immigrate to South America. The birth rate answer is at the bottom:
IOW, the poorest, most unstable countries in Latin America have the highest birth rate, because it’s difficult for women to get contraception under those conditions.
FWIW, my contention here is that if you give women free choice, they will almost all choose to have 2 or fewer children. Reducing the birthrate will be a nice bonus for the planet, but I’m thinking more of the 14-year-old girls who won’t be forced into marriage and childbirth long before they’re ready for it. Feminism is good for the planet, too, but that’s not the main reason to support women being allowed to control their own fertility.
Punchy
This is just pure application of Cleeks. Nothing else. She doesn’t give a shit about proteins; she only cares because the Liberal Military is in favor of it. Also, too, Cleek’s law pretty obvious here, too.
Major Major Major Major
@RaflW:
That doesn’t necessarily mean a smaller carbon footprint, though. Economy of scale and all that. This isn’t always true but for some products it is. Dunno if eggs are one of them.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I knew fellow students at USC who were on food stamps 25 years ago, so I suspect this may be partly an issue of people not having been counted before.
Does someone who ends up couch-surfing with friends for several months because they got kicked out of their apartment count as homeless? If so, I think I knew some homeless students there, too.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: My boyfriend at the time was homeless in that he couldn’t afford a room and his parents had disowned him, but he had a place to stay. I really don’t know how the government counts these folks. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they fall under the banner of ‘homeless’.
Food stamps at USC, though, that’s unexpected. I went to one of your bitter enemies and I didn’t know anybody on food stamps.
danielx
No, nor on any other topic.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
Emma
@Mnemosyne: Maybe I’m blinded by experience. I hope you’re correct. But considering that this happened in 2009 makes me less than willing to underestimate the power of the Church to throw a spanner in the works.
.
Agreed. Now, let’s establish how we make that free choice available in countries where free choice is not a tradition.
danielx
@Brachiator:
I’ve heard Sean Hannity offers that very same advice to the underprivileged, so it must be right.
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: There are both vegetarian and vegan MREs.
Ian
@Emma:
Less than 1% growth, by your own statistics.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I would think that the increasing lack of affordable housing is beginning to affect students as well as the general population. From the article:
There is the suggestion here that the homelessness is more than a result of falling out with friends or family.
During my student days, some friends took in a guy who was a kind of a vagabond hippie freak. It was unclear why he had no place to live. He ended up auditing a few classes for a while as well.
The food insecurity, though, is even more troublesome.
Hillary Rettig
@joel hanes: appreciate your thoughtful comments.
1) > But I think that a significant fraction of my fellow GIs would have regarded an attempt to foist an entire day of meatless meals on them without giving them any choice in the matter as high-handed. Ms. Rettig is free not to eat meat; no one will force her. Why should her preferences be forced on GIs, even one day per week ? Serious question.
Serious (tho short) answer: because our individual food preferences have societal implications. Just like wearing/not wearing seat belts, antidiscrimination legislation, etc. The animal ag contribution to climate change is something like 19%, to cite just one example.
2) >I would trust her opinion on ANY policy that affects the day-to-day life of American soldiers before that of Ms. Rettig.
that’s not actually the choice: it’s between Ernst-as-nutrition-expert and Johns Hopkins standing in for pretty much the whole medical establishment. And your comment is particularly ironic considering that, in the very action we’re discussing, Ernst sold out the health of “her” soldiers to support the pork industry.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic:
And, as usual, it’s best for my blood pressure if i focus on the tweet and DON’T FOR THE LOVE OF GOD read the comments!
greennotGreen
@<a hr@Emma: ef=”#comment-5862713″>Brachiator: Sorry for the delay. I stepped away from the thread.
I’m not advocating telling developing world peoples what to do. I’m advocating giving them the tools to have choices.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Housing prices are not helping, I’m sure. With the food insecurity, I’m wondering if students are allowed to use any of their financial aid to purchase a university food plan. If not (and I have no idea), that would probably be a contributing factor. Plus if tuition and fees have been soaring, I can’t imagine the price of a food plan has stayed low.
(“Food plan” being where you have X number of pre-paid meals on campus.)
Schlemazel Khan
@joel hanes:
You do understand you came off as a dick in that rant, right? It seems to me that she has toned down the religion so your reaction appears totally out there. Learn to let things go.
I have been doing the meat reduction thing for years because it is healthier and better for the planet. Making interesting meals can be a challenge at first when meat is not the center of it but there are many great vegetarian meals if you just let yourself enjoy them & not focus on the religion of the debate. I an neutral but find that there are people on both sides who have turned the discussion into a religious war. If someone wants to eat a steak let them, if they want to eat vegetarian let them. Everyone eat in peace.
Schlemazel Khan
@BruceFromOhio:
YOU HAD ROCKS!?!? You lucky bastard!
Lurker Extraordinaire
Former GI, former vegetarian here.
Joni Ernst is an idiot, and I don’t give a damn if she was a commander or not. There are plenty of idiots in uniform and commanding troops. Just because they went through ROTC, West Point, or OCS doesn’t mean they are smart- and they are certainly not nutritionists. I wouldn’t trust Ernst as far as I could throw her dumb ass.
That being said, I was a vegetarian the entire time I was active duty. If anything, dining facilities (in the Army, at least) were terrible for vegetarians. Everything was heavy on meat, heavy on carbs, and, depending on where you were, terrible with fresh produce. Edible, but tasteless, and very limited choices. This was less true for the commissary, but if you aren’t getting separate rations, you are kinda stuck with DFAC food. The best commissary for vegetarians I ever saw was the one on Fort Eustis from 2000-2002, and that was because the post commander at the time was a vegetarian.
Now, I hardly eat red meat….I stick with poultry and seafood. I realize that even these sources of protein are problematic, but much less so than red meat. People should feel free to eat food they like, but there is nothing wrong with military meatless Monday’s. It represents a reduction in costs as well.
Don’t assume that commanders (or former commanders) have their soldiers best interests at heart. They don’t, and don’t think for a second they don’t try to influence their soldiers political beliefs- they do.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Don’t know. I wonder though. I would think that aid and loans would have to specify tuition and fees, so that a student could qualify these amounts for federal education credits. Housing, food plans, could not be part of this, although it could be part of a separate student aid package.
Carolus
@joel hanes: I work in Naval Aviation. Ipersonally know several aviators who not only do meatless Mondays–they fast on Mondays, taking only water, juices, teas, coffee. They do this because they’re pretty serious about fitness and meeting weight requirements. They understand if you want to fly, the PRT isn’t a once a year cram session.
sm*t cl*de
Next you libs will want to replace Pork-barrel politics with soy protein or something.
MikeBoyScout
This thread is spent, but just think about what an elected government representative (1 0f 100) could do to enable her livestock feed producers to move up the value chain to produce food people eat and which evidence and trends show is an increasing market, vice cattle/hog/chicken feed.
Republican politics kills everything it touches.
Kenneth Kohl
@scav: So, instead of “meat’, I’ll settle for seabass or cod on Fridays. Oh, the sacrifice, oh, the humanity…
joel hanes
@Omnes Omnibus:
There are both vegetarian and vegan MREs.
I stand and sit multiply corrected.
Thanks for catching me out.
Never saw an MRE myself; don’t think the Army had them yet.
joel hanes
@Schlemazel Khan:
You do understand you came off as a dick in that rant, right?
I do now.
redshirt
In our future space military, meat will be a rare luxury.
Also, drones are vegan.
Jeffro
@Emily68:
I like that plan! Keeps things flexible while (I’m guessing) still having most meals at home and therefore vegetarian. (Also a bit of family bonding theme there too!)
My friends and family give me a good-natured hard time about having my ‘semi-annual’ steak (and that’s pretty accurate, actually) but having been raised on a diet that was at least 50% variations on red meat (especially ground beef)…I have to say, “I’m loving it” (tm violation intended ;)