Leafy Green already blogged about this New York Times editorial last week, however one of our readers submitted the same link for a possible article , so I've decided to offer my own commentary on the subject.

I feel as though I've written about food a lot this week. It's difficult not to because it seems to be a topic everyone is talking and/or writing about. This article from the Times doesn't offer any real surprises, but it does provide an interesting perspective on the subject.

Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern, but as the horrors of raising meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better place were some of the grain we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human beings?...If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

As I've said several times before, I'm a meat-eater. I've never really gotten into pork, but the closest I've ever been to vegetarian is the year in college I gave up red meat and stuck to poultry and seafood. Then one night my dad was barbecuing steaks for dinner and I suddenly had the unquenchable craving for red meat and caved. It's been a regular part of my diet again ever since.

I'm not surprised to hear that Americans are eating more protein than they technically need to. By and large, we are a carnivorous society and it shows. Every fast-food joint has one obligatory vegetarian burger or food option and the vegetarian section of a sit-down restaurant menu is usually buried discreetly somewhere near the back. Popular diets such as Atkins and the South Beach Diet advertise protein as the go-to source for fast (though not necessarily long-term) weight loss. Therefore, the suggestion that American's consume less meat and substitute it with more plant products will take the world's best marketing campaign to be a success, especially since, as the writer claims, the higher cost of meat likely won't be a deterrent for those who eat it regularly. Essentially you will have to rely on people to be motivated by health, pollution and animal cruelty concerns.

The theories make sense: if we reduce our consumption of meat, the demand may subside enough to allow animals to be raised naturally as opposed to being "grown," as well as freeing up some much-needed food resources in poorer countries. However try relating the issue of starvation to the guy ordering a 20 ounce steak in a restaurant or biting into a Big Mac on the weekend. People don't seem all that concerned with the fact that they're getting fatter and harming the environment in which they live, let alone caring about the state the animals they're consuming were raised in or about the starvation issues in a country whose name they can barely pronounce.

I'm not trying to be a nay-sayer, but I am trying to be realistic. In a perfect world, you would be able to influence people to care enough to take action and make changes that would solve the problems outlined in the article. Realistically, considering how long it took for Al Gore to make people start to care about the issue of global warming and the staggering figures related to obesity in North America, doesn't it seem a little naive to believe people will really care enough to make significant changes to their lifestyle?

» The New York Times