WHAT'S FER SUPPER, GRANDPA?

Grandpa Jones used to get asked that question each week on Hee Haw, a popular television show some years back.  He's answer with a menu of down home cooking.  That old country star has passed on now, but our eating habits have changed very little.  We're still munching down on things we've been eating for a long, long time, and it's time for a change.  In fact, we're way past time to change because we're running out of food sources.  Problems abound when it comes to feeding a nation as large as the U.S., and part of the problem is that we're badly spoiled when it comes to food.  Even people with little money are unwilling to eat low on the hog, as the old saying goes.  We're high on the hog eaters here in America.

We eat too much meat, and that's a fact, not just an opinion.  Meat consumption in this country is responsible for many of our health problems, overweightness being a major contributer.  Mexico is the only nation in the world fatter than we are.  Mexico, a poor country, and they're fat?  Do the research and you'll find that they're fat because of what they eat, not how much they eat.  A friend of mine just came back from vacation in Europe, and said, "You know, they're not fat like us."  Hummmmm.  Wonder why.

The morning news had a story about a large bluefin tuna selling for $70,000, and that's encouraging in at least one way.  I figure the only way we'll ever quit eating them is when we run out of them.  If a decent cut of steak cost five times what it does at the moment, we'd cut back on that too.  I can afford to be critical of meat eaters because I'm one of them, but my tastes in meat aren't expensive.  And I don't eat a lot of beef.  I prefer fish or chicken, and I eat some pork . . . and I'd like to stop doing that.  My concerns are not so much about health as the are a rising respect for the animals we eat.  It's time for us to take a serious look at our dependence on eating other living creatures.  Yeah, I know, everything we eat was alive at one time, vegetables included.  That's a lame excuse for continuing down this same path of consumption.  We need to change, and we need to do that before those food sources are used up. 

We will always be able to raise animals for slaughter commercially, and that will continue for a long time.  But the lakes, rivers, and oceans of the world are badly overfished, and that food source is endangered.  Land, the space required for farming, is going away too, as it the water it takes to irrigate crops.  Groups concerned about animal welfare are getting stronger, and that voice will get louder and louder.  I could name off dozens of other problems, but the bottom line is simple:  We need to learn to eat differently.  We need to get off the let-the-animals-feed-us tit.  If we don't learn to eat something besides meat, we may end up eating each other.  Yuk!