Continuing the rant about why the American meat habit needs to change:

Not only do we eat too much meat, we also eat too much of the wrong parts. We don’t know where our meat comes from, we don’t know what the animal we’re eating ate, and we sure don’t know how to get behind the stove and take control of what we put in our mouths.

We ought to start by looking at the great food cultures of the world. The traditional cuisines of Asia and North Africa, not to mention France and Italy, are based on rice, wheat, spices and smatterings of all cuts of meat. In just about every other cuisine, protein plays second fiddle to grains and vegetables. When meat appears, it does so modestly; it takes up less space on the plate, and more often than not it’s a piece of the animal — tripe or oxtail — that Americans so willingly discard.

(via “Why Cooking Matters” on The Nation)

The best advice I ever got about meat in our diets is that, more often than not, it shouldn’t be the main attraction of a meal. It’s most healthily used as a side or ingredient in a meal. You know, sauce with meat in it on spaghetti rather than steak with a side salad. Beef stew rather than a half-pound burger.

When I was in Australia, I tried pork knuckle for the first time. Sounds a bit gross, but that’s only because Americans avoid any cut of meat that resembles an actual body part (ribs aside). It’s a smaller serving of meat that is harder to get at, and if there weren’t salad, potatoes, etc. on the plate with it, you’d leave hungry. It was quite tasty and I’d eat it again if I had the chance. But since I live in a country where all these tasty parts are deemed “gross” and tossed out by everyone but a few butchers (who are disappearing at a rapid pace), that might never happen again.

As if I needed another reason to talk about changing our eating habits, here comes a piece from TIME that’s equally insightful and shocking.

As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an elitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don’t take care of your land, it can’t take care of you.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food – Time Magazine

All of a sudden I have a large handful of reasons to eat even less meat and buy more local, sustainable and organic foods.

I read once that the average American eats seven times as much meat than their body needs. If meat products take significantly more energy to produce than the vegetables and fruits we should be eating and cost more to buy and prepare, we could have a major impact on the American obesity problem, the environment and the economy all at once if we cut our meat intake down to what it should be.

But will it happen? I doubt it. We Americans love our meat, and so do our government officials who get lobbied by meat lovers. Funded by steak- and hamburger-lovers everywhere!