Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: meat, forced vegetarianism, etc.

[ann (ann]

> And
> while we may be concerned about hormones in the meat, it's also true that
> most of the pesticides don't wash off of the wheat kernels.

Just to clarify this set of ideas a bit...as I understand it, one 
enviromental pollutant/food safety argument around meat vs. grains or 
vegetables runs like this:  Let's say an ear of corn carries 1 unit of a 
somewhat icky agricultural chemical which does not wash off well and is 
stored permanently in the fat of animals that eat it.  So...you eat an ear 
of corn, and now you carry 1 unit of somewhat icky chemical in your 
body.  That's not *such* a big deal, since it's not much compared to your 
body weight, and it's socked away in your fat cells.  But you're also 
having some beef with dinner.  The cow from which the beef came was 
corn-fed at a level of say 50 ears of corn per quarter pound of meat, which 
means that (depending on the amount of fat in your particular burger and 
probably several other factors I have failed to consider) your burger 
carries 50 units of the somewhat icky chemical.  So the hamburger you have 
with dinner helps you accumulate somewhat icky chemical in your body 50 
times as quickly as the ear of corn.  This would tend to hold true for a 
number of stubborn fat-soluble agricultural chemicals and 
pollutants--animals are accumulators in this case.  This could be an even 
more significant issue with regard to fish that come from mildly polluted 
waters but are high on a long food chain.

For the record, I don't particularly endorse eating or not eating meat, 
vegetables, fish, grains, or slightly icky chemicals.  But there is a 
difference in the way animals and plants process and hold fat-soluble 
environmental chemicals, and it's worth understanding that difference when 
you decide to eat your burger anyway (or not).  And, yes, I know this 
doesn't relate directly to community dining.  Community dining...now that's 
tricky.

Ann 


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