Please, Sir, may I have some more?

A couple of articles on the BBC Radio News last year (2019) piqued my interest.  One of them was about the Flexitarian Diet and the other was about how cattle, particularly cows,

generate high levels of Methane gas – a significant contributor to global warming.

The first article discussed how much was made of the Flexitarian diet in 2019, when it started to attract a great deal of attention in diet rankings; it being a way of life espousing a flexible approach to vegetarianism.  The diet being predominantly vegetables but not precluding eating a limited range of meat.

Now where have we seen this sort of diet before?  Got it, the Ministry of Food’s Second World War national rationing programme.  The scientists who devised the rations for UK citizens during the war would recognise all elements of the Flexitarian diet although the 1940’s diet reflected all that was available at the time.  Really, this is not much “new” but a fresh, healthy, varied and flexible approach to a daily diet.

Incidentally, Churchill attended a dinner at Claridge’s Hotel during the War where all the guests were served Woolton Pie, he spurned it, pushed it away and said “Bring me some meat.”  They did.

At the end of the war, the UK population was very lean and healthy, very few people were overweight, but everybody was hungry a lot of the time so nothing was wasted and if a bar of chocolate was left lying around - it would not last long!

Secondly, the special report on climate and land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes plant-based diets as a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change ― and includes a policy recommendation to reduce meat consumption.

“We don’t want to tell people what to eat,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner - an ecologist who co-chairs the IPCC’s working group on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability - in interviews during 2019. “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”

Similarly, if countries take action to completely refresh the way in which they farm cattle or move away from a predominantly meat-eating culture it may be possible to really change the impact of meat-farming methods.  We need to change, that much is agreed, but precisely how far we need to move is still subject to a great deal of debate.

Once again this makes me think of the scientists working on the nation’s diet and rations during the Second World War.  What they were concerned with was delivering a specified portion of calories onto the population’s plates every day of the week.  They calculated the area of land available across the entire country, along with the financial cost and the quantity of fodder used to deliver a specific number of calories each day to everybody in the nation.  Their aim was to ensure that everybody had sufficient food and this was delivered as economically as possible.

A major problem that they faced was that certain breeds of cattle needed much more land than others for grazing and cost much more in terms of veterinary and feeding expenses.  I believe that decisions were made then not to breed certain cattle during the war and concentrate solely on those that gave the maximum benefit.  In short, a number of breeds probably disappeared completely and some are now regarded as “Rare Breeds” and farmers have been trying to build up their stocks from a very small base.

We went to a Rare Breeds farm once in North Wales.  Mrs A stroked a Jacob Sheep in the big field, then a Shetland pony wandered over while we were enjoying the view and started trying to eat my wife’s shoe.  I do not know what they were feeding them on – the grass looked luscious to me!

Recommended reading:

Laura DAWES:           “Fighting Fit – The Wartime Battle for Britain’s Health”. Weidenfield & Nicholson – Paperback edition 2017.

A couple of hyperlinks to two BBC items that are informative reading:

Control - Click here for Link to: "Meat - a Threat to our Planet" on the BBC

And Control - Click here for Link to BBC Health report on the Flexitarian Diet