Who said vegetarianism was getting more acceptable?

Oh - and in addition to the vegetarian cafe/bookshop in the next village - in the other direction close by we have the fantastic Coriandre - which does ‘pay what you like’ on Mondays!
https://www.facebook.com/resto.coriandre

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“…it’s good to change my habits for the sake of the planet”

It’s estimated that 80% of the worlds calories come from just 4 grains.

Widespread industrialisation of food processing for human consumption is fueling the spread of vast estates of single crop farming, like wheat and rice and soy and palm oil.

It’s really not good for humans.

We are all slaves to our genes and thus constrained by the glacial rate at which changes in the human genome happen. It makes no sense to be dependent on such a limited source of calories, bit like Pandas really, particularly as we have evolved to process calaries from such a wide variety of foodstuffs especially meat and fats.

Such vast unnatural monocultures are also not good for the planet.

So, how does changing your habits benefit the planet, Jane???

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I don’t think anybody has suggested that it’s a good idea to change to a more restricted diet, much less continue the industrial-agricultural ‘monocultures’ model.
Some (myself included) have suggested that eating less meat, especially beef, would be better for the planet. One of the benefits could indeed be using the land currently devoted to monocultures for cattle feed to instead grow both more efficiently, and grow more varied crops directly for human consumption.
I can post lots of links for you to look up the evidence for this if you are interested.

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Around here, the farmers fall into 2 categories (more or less)

  1. Those who grow enough crops to feed their animals and themselves… perhaps swapping stuff with a neighbour. Animals out in the open, crops with no chemicals etc etc.

  2. The farmer who puts his land to produce whatever will give the best financial return. Intensive, with crops or livestock. That chap will earn enough to buy whatever he needs although he will (almost) never admit it.

That is a very rough breakdown of what I see around me.

As Geoff says, plus we minimise any foodstuff and other products that have been transported long distances. 85% of our fruit and veg we grow ourselves. If I do eat meat it will be when neighbour kills one of his highland cattle, so only transported to abattoir round the corner. Our extravagance is fish as we do get bored with local trout, saumon de fontaine etc. We don’t use soy or palm oil either.

One person can’t change the planet of course, but if we each do a tiny bit then together hopefully opinion and common practices will change. Maybe in 10 years or so it will become normal again only to eat meat once a week, or less, which is more than’s needed for health.

I’m harking back to my postwar childhood. Money was in short supply so Dad grew everything he possible could (fruit/veg) and neighbours had chickens which everyone helped to feed and thus share the eggs and get a chicken to roast once in a blue moon.

I’ve no idea where the meat came from but we often had beef - 'cos we fought over the beef-jelly at the bottom of the pot of dripping… delicious on toast :hugs: Lamb jelly was not nearly as nice.

Thinking back… meat was probably the biggest purchase from the housekeeping, yet we had it regularly in one form or another. Thanks to the imaginative cooking of those days, we were well nourished and never went hungry.

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I’ve found some Veg curiously attractive, but they don’t measure up to a good portion of sticky BBQ Ribs :grin:.

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