Eat More Food!

Kitchen Gardeners International made a recent post about how new US Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines mean Americans are going to have to eat more! In order to produce the additional food necessary for the new guidelines, assuming it is to be produced domestically, crop land area for fruits and vegetables will have to nearly double. In addition milk production will have to rise by almost 30%. I’m sure eating all this extra food is going to go a long way to improving the health of Americans.

I recently installed a satellite TV dish, meaning I am picking up TV channels from the UK (mostly ITV + BBC). I am astonished how many cooking shows are on TV there. Every show has the same thing in common, they show you how to cook and eat large amounts of rich and mostly imported or factory farm foods. I have yet to see any vegetarian foods cooked. Beyond perhaps the odd salad intended as a side dish, I don’t recall seeing anything that would really be practical for a individual or small family on a budget, who wanted to eat local foods. It’s like every cooking show is an advertisement for European meat or fish companies.

Something happened a few years ago that seems to be forgotten by everyone. There were discussions over food guidelines in the UK. Together with the World Health Organization, the British Dietetic Association issued food guidelines that among other things recommended eating mostly fruits, vegetables and starchy carbohydrates like rice, potatoes and pasta. They said if you ate any kind of meat or fish, it should be limited to 90 grams (about 3.5 ounces) per day. There was an uproar. The food industry said you should not discourage people from eating food, only encourage them to eat the right foods. In the end the WHO adopted these guidelines, but the British Dietetic Association didn’t.

After recent elections in Holland, in which a previously unknown ‘Party for Animals’ gained several seats in the Dutch Parliament, there have started to be discussions about the kind of food that is produced here. This newly elected party would like to see a return to older methods of food production, that result in lower volumes of higher quality product. The food industry has said this will seriously impact exports, because exports are dependent on high volumes. It’s my understanding a Parliamentary debate on this issue is planned.

It’s really time a more sustainable and healthy approach to food is adopted by food companies and governments! The solution is not for us all to eat more, that’s for sure.