Coconut orange tea cake and is meat-eating good for the planet

Adzuki beans in coconut tomato sauce with polenta

Food Diary (May 19, 2011)

Breakfast: Rolled oats with sunflower seeds and flaxseeds

Lunch: Adzuki beans in coconut tomato sauce with polenta

Dinner: Sautéed mushrooms with rye sourdough

Baking/sweets:

I seldom eat ice cream even though its delicious. Yesterday I saw an interesting documentary titled “What's Really In Our Food”. The particular series answered questions such as “is ice cream good for us”, “how much should we eat" and “is low fat less tasty”. 

The documentary was produced in New Zealand. The New Zealand authorities recommend 3 servings of dairy every day and ice cream as listed as one of them. Great news for ice cream lovers.

Even more good news. The thought of eating low fat ice cream probably does not make many of us overly excited. A blind taste test was done and the number of people preferring low fat was little below those that preferred full fat ice cream. Apparently many humans cannot detect fat content through taste. The host was asked to taste two separate glasses of milk and identify the low fat one. She failed. I have never tried low fat ice cream but apparently the difference in taste is not very noticeable, to most consumers anyway. I suppose if we were not told its low fat we would not think it was low fat! 

And even more good news. Low fat ice cream has more calcium and protein and marginally more sugar. So its better than full fat ice cream.

Today's Favourite Photo

Source: Technicolor Kitchen

Coconut orange tea cake

Today’s Favourite Blog

Source: BBC

There’s an ongoing debate about reducing meat consumption. Huffington Post has an article on test-tube meat, stating this will be good for animal welfare and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. BBC has an article titled “Is meat-eating good for the planet?” where it looks at the positive side of things. Yes there are positives. 

The industry provides jobs for a large number of people.  

The meat industry has ‘byproducts’ such as eggs, milk, cheese and butter and these are important food sources for billions of people. And there is leather and wool which keep us warm and fashionable.

Livestock can be raised on land which would be difficult to use for other purposes, in a cost effective way. This type of land, referred to as marginal grazing land, is more suitable for livestock rather than crops. It is estimated that around 10% of animals are currently raised on this marginal grazing land and these livestock are raised without being fed grain, they eat grass.

The conclusion was that it would be good to reduce meat consumption but not eliminate it.