Spice it Up
Eating to Save
Our Planet
An environmentalist at heart, Business Fit
Magazine’s Editor, Claire Morley, wants to
encourage more people to make a move to
eating vegetarian meals at least once a week.
I was listening to a radio programme a few
weeks ago, they were discussing a primary
school in England which had developed a mini
farmyard, including pigs, vegetable patches
and hens, a scheme designed to teach the
children about food provenance and animal
welfare. The radio discussion was about
whether the school should send the pigs to
slaughter (which had always been the plan)
and a petition organised by parents to try and
stop it.
One of the people to voice an opinion on the
matter was a vegan, who was very vociferous in
her attempt to convert everyone to veganism,
immediately. Her reasons included the
environmental effect of the mass production
of meat and meat related products. Personally,
I am not a vegan, not even a vegetarian, but I
am an environmentalist, so I do appreciate her
concerns. We do make a habit of not eating
meat or fish every day and red meat has been
removed from our diet for several years.
However, I did get to thinking about the impact
of converting everyone suddenly to a non-
meat diet. Economically and environmentally
it would be disastrous. At the present time
meat and associated products is a massive
industry. It supports jobs, pays wages and
taxes and delivers food. On the other side, the
availability of pulses, enough vegetables and
legumes to support an immediate switch to
non-meat products would not provide enough
to feed everyone. A gradual change would be
required.
I don’t know that I would become a complete
vegetarian or vegan, but I fully encourage a
movement to get people to eat meat-free a few
times a week. Vegetarianism had such bad press
in the past, jokes about nut roasts, hippies and
pale skin or it being just a phase. Recipe books
weren’t so readily available, restaurants even
less so, there was the ubiquitous mushroom
risotto as a token gesture. However. in recent
years, it has become far more supported with
most restaurants catering for different types
of diets.
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For those who are not prepared to fully give
up meat, a move to one night a week off, will
make a significant impact to the consumption
and therefore production of meat products,
if everyone did it. My partner was brought up
as a “meat and two veg” man, so I wondered
how he would cope with the introduction of
meatless meals when I started to cook them
a few years ago. He is pretty ambivalent
towards most lentil dishes, but when it comes
to chickpeas, he has totally embraced them.
Having substituted them for chicken in an all-
time favourite, curry, he now prefers the non-
meat version.
In my effort to try and introduce people to
non-meat dishes, albeit on an occasionally
basis, I am sharing with you here, my chickpea
and cauliflower curry with saag aloo and rice.
If we could all accept that vegetarian meals can
be delicious, wholesome and healthy, perhaps
more of us could make the effort to go meat-
free once or twice a week. This will have a
positive impact on our environment, without it
causing an economical problem.
One night a week
off will make
a significant
impact to the
consumption and
production of
meat products
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