Grains... bad for us, bad for the planet

I don't eat grains*. Grains are not part of a species-appropriate diet for people. Gluten and dairy proteins (specifically caseins) contain opioid peptides, which as the name suggests have an opiate-like effect on the brain. There's some evidence that these opioid substances may play a part in some cases of autism (autism has multiple causes, and not all cases are caused by the same ones) and possibly also in schizophrenia.

We only started eating grains in any quantity around 10,000 years ago - with the advent of agriculture (estimates vary - agriculture happened gradually, not all at once) - and in evolutionary terms have not had time to adapt to eating them.

All-in-all, there's a lot of evidence that they're not good for you - and with the active opioids, bread (and other products made of wheat) may actually be slightly addictive, which I reckon is why people say "Oh, but I could *never* give up bread!" when I tell them about my diet.

Recently, though, I've been reading a lot of stuff about how eating meat is bad for the planet, because of the carbon footprint of meat. In Australia, 96% of our meat is generally grass-fed (it's slightly lower at the moment because of the drought), which is good because the carbon footprint of meat is greatly increased by feeding the animals grain, and also because you can graze animals on land that just isn't good enough to grow crops (again, mostly the case in Australia). Grass-fed meat also has a different ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids (more omega-3, better for you). So some of the concerns raised by vegan hippies concerned environmentalists about meat from feedlot farming etc are not relevant here. But there's still the carbon footprint.

Of course, considering the carbon footprint on its own is not an accurate assessment of the environmental impact of our diets, as I had reinforced for me this morning when I read this fascinating piece about the historical environmental impact of growing grain. The bit about the Chinese swapping their children for other peoples' during famines, so they didn't have to eat their own is fairly chilling. As is the fact that Plato was already writing about land completely depleted by growing grain crops:

What now remains of the formerly rich land is
like the skeleton of a sick man. ... Formerly, many of the mountains were
arable. The plains that were full of rich soil are now marshes. Hills that were
once covered with forests and produced abundant pasture now produce only food
for bees. Once the land was enriched by yearly rains, which were not lost, as
they are now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea. The soil was deep, it
absorbed and kept the water in loamy soil, and the water that soaked into the
hills fed springs and running streams everywhere. Now the abandoned shrines at
spots where formerly there were springs attest that our description of the land
is true.

There are some bits of the article I'd dispute, but the historical outline is eye-opening. While I know that the diet I choose to eat is a diet that could not feed the entire population of the planet, in a sustainable sense, neither can the diet most people are eating now. And my diet at least has the virtue of being (more-or-less) species-appropriate for a human#.

Population reduction is going to have to happen, one way or another.






*other than if someone makes a really, really tasty cake. Then I cheat.
#don't even get me started on what people feed dogs and cats. Dogs and cats are carnivores - they are even less adapted to eat grains than we are, and yet most commercial dry foods are largely made of grains. As this website points out, "Manufacturers of dog food have a job to do: produce the cheapest possible product that will taste good enough for the Fidos and Fluffies of the world to gobble it up by the bag full. Despite their advertising claims, their main concern is not with the health of your pet, but with the sales of their product. How do they produce the cheapest possible product? By using "4D" meat (meat from diseased, disabled, dying, and dead animals) and then filling it up with a lot of grains, for which dogs have no dietary requirement, and a limited ability to digest and utilize. Sounds unappetizing, but then why does your dog "love" his dog food so much? Easy: they add sugar, salt, cancer-causing chemicals and tasty preservatives to entice your dog to eat more. On top of that, the whole mess is heat processed at extremely high temperatures, thereby destroying any remote nutritional goodness that may have been in there in the first place." Mind you, I think cats at least probably get addicted to those opioids - when I first got my cat (who was around ten years old at the time and had always eaten dry food), I tried to switch her to a more species-appropriate diet (including rabbit, various bits of raw chicken including bones and gizzards, etc) and she went on a hunger strike and refused to eat for several days until I caved in and gave her dry food again... sigh...