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,
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!
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
One great Vegetarian who was renowned during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth was the playwright George Bernard SHAW. He was once asked to speak at a gala dinner of The Vegetarian Society but refused. When asked "Why?" he answered "Well, the thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me."
ReplyDeleteIt would me as well!