I feel quite clever at this moment. I just thought up a title of this new post that eludes to two very different things. The first thing is the obvious. I just finished cleaning up my soccer gear from Friday and Saturday. The whole thing gave off quite the aroma. I opened the bag and my thoughts shifted to my mom and sister who are talking on the phone being meanies. My mom won't stop bothering me about my hurt arm, insisting that it's broken and i need to go to the hospital. It most definitely isn't and I most definitely don't. My sister is making fun of me calling me a 'sookeelala'. But the bag was gross and I just finished putting shin guards, socks, and shorts in the laundry. Then I took the boots out and put them outside on a rack to air out a little.
Now as I look back at the last paragraph I get a kick out of the suggested word for the 'misspeldded' word 'sookeelala'. It comes up with zookeepers, saloonkeeper, salmonella, and someplace. Nothing remotely connected to my sister's meaning except for salmonella if you include sookeelalaness in your dictionary of diseases.
The second thing this post was supposed to talk about was the weather and how I am very socked in today. It has been like this for the last week. The fall and winter sometimes yield 60 days straight where I don't see the sun at all. Kind of sucky if you ask me. I'm feeling like this gray weather is not improving my mood which is bad because my sleep sucked cause my arm hurt to move. I was wanting to go pick blackberries but the rain won't stop long enough for me to put my pants, jacket, socks, and hat on. Maybe a movie night tonight. Ran out of creative juice. Anyone have a place where you can buy some, please post a comment and I appreciate it.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
The cost of Meat.
All of you who do not know as you shouldn't unless I'm known personally to you, I am a vegetarian. If your one of those that are super picky I also eat fish so if that disqualifies me then too bad for you. I will try to explain why my eating no meat helps out almost everything, except the beef industry of course.
It all happened at the beginning of January after coming back to school from the two week Christmas break. I was sitting on a couch reading a book called "The Atlas of Planet Management". I turned to the girl sitting beside me and said, "I'm gonna quit eating meat." She didn't believe me and for good reason, I often come up with spontaneous ideas that I don't follow through on. Since then i have only broken the pact once when I completely unintentionally ate a hot dog from a free skating show. I didn't realize I had eaten the meat until I went up for the next one and was unpleasantly surprised to find that I had just eaten meat.
Soon after i made the decision to go meatless I told my sister who was traveling abroad and she right away agreed that it was a notable cause and she too has been faithful ever since.
The reason I do it is because of the inequality of peoples diet in Africa and Asia versus our North American diet. Just the other day I was talking with my mom about the huge amount of waste we go through. We North Americaners consume much more resources then we ought to and yet still there is little change in the way we look at the rest of the world. The average american eats a record high 124 kilograms of red meat, poultry, and fish a year. To contrast that the average Mozambique citizen consumes less than 6 kilograms of meat a year. I am not saying that people in Mozambique should eat just as much meat as the rest of us but rather I just wanted to show how much more Americans eat.
The real reason behind my vegetarian kick is the large inefficiency of producing meat versus just raw materials that cows themselves consume. To through out some facts; just shy of 40% of the world's grain is fed to livestock yet grain calories are converted to beef calories at a rate of 1:7. That means that there would be way more grain available then there is now and poorer countries could afford to buy grain because the increase of supply. Better alternatives to beef and poultry would be naturally occurring deer here in Canada and the many gazelles, antelopes, water buffalo, buffalo, wild boars, and whatever else that lives in the bush. These are good alternatives because they convert natural grasses into protein where it otherwise would not benefit humans. Any questions or flaws you see in my reasoning would be appreciated.
It all happened at the beginning of January after coming back to school from the two week Christmas break. I was sitting on a couch reading a book called "The Atlas of Planet Management". I turned to the girl sitting beside me and said, "I'm gonna quit eating meat." She didn't believe me and for good reason, I often come up with spontaneous ideas that I don't follow through on. Since then i have only broken the pact once when I completely unintentionally ate a hot dog from a free skating show. I didn't realize I had eaten the meat until I went up for the next one and was unpleasantly surprised to find that I had just eaten meat.
Soon after i made the decision to go meatless I told my sister who was traveling abroad and she right away agreed that it was a notable cause and she too has been faithful ever since.
The reason I do it is because of the inequality of peoples diet in Africa and Asia versus our North American diet. Just the other day I was talking with my mom about the huge amount of waste we go through. We North Americaners consume much more resources then we ought to and yet still there is little change in the way we look at the rest of the world. The average american eats a record high 124 kilograms of red meat, poultry, and fish a year. To contrast that the average Mozambique citizen consumes less than 6 kilograms of meat a year. I am not saying that people in Mozambique should eat just as much meat as the rest of us but rather I just wanted to show how much more Americans eat.
The real reason behind my vegetarian kick is the large inefficiency of producing meat versus just raw materials that cows themselves consume. To through out some facts; just shy of 40% of the world's grain is fed to livestock yet grain calories are converted to beef calories at a rate of 1:7. That means that there would be way more grain available then there is now and poorer countries could afford to buy grain because the increase of supply. Better alternatives to beef and poultry would be naturally occurring deer here in Canada and the many gazelles, antelopes, water buffalo, buffalo, wild boars, and whatever else that lives in the bush. These are good alternatives because they convert natural grasses into protein where it otherwise would not benefit humans. Any questions or flaws you see in my reasoning would be appreciated.
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