The Future of Food by Mark Bittman - April 8th, 2015

Award winning journalist and author Mark Bittman delivers a lecture at the Englert Theater in Iowa City as a part of the University of Iowa's "Food for Thought" themed semester.

[@PravinDahal]

Excellent talk. I have just one gripe with Mark Bitteman (and Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle for that matter) and that is on eating plants. It's one thing if you eat only plants grown in your vegetable garden without pesticides... and if you know how the plant was being prepated and eaten traditionally in the tribes cultures they were borrowed from, then that is excellent. Even then, you should limit eating plants mostly because plants don't want to be eaten and unlike most animals, their defense is toxins. Yes, us humans have traditionally removed plant toxins from our domesticated plants by artificial selection... but then, that which doesn't have neurotoxins are eaten by insects. So, the industrial growers have to use pesticides, whether it is organic or GMO or chemicals, all of them are poisonous to insects and also to us. The food industry wants very much that you eat plants over animals because they have high profit margins because of low risk (use pesticides in one form or another and grow in en masse in a rather short period of time... compare that to animals which can get sick and die, and take rather long to raise), generally longer term storage, less requirement for refregeration and freezing etc. So they have made animal products harmful to health and therefore to casual observers, it may look like plants are better... but I feel frustrated that people like Mark Bitteman, Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan who have dedicated their time learning the ins and outs of the food industry can't see through this. And vegan is even worse. There's a reason that there are no known vegan tribes or cultures throughout the world throughout the entire known history. That's because plant poison us and don't really nourish us. Whichever culture tried it perished. You can eat a little with animal foods to enhance taste and have variety but other than that, eating plants is really insane if you think about it. And no, it is not "bad for the environment" to eat animals. Maybe chickens and pig becuase their feed primarily relies on products of the food industry... But definitely not cows, sheep, goats etc. They primarily eat grass, even in the worst industrial farms. Grass with animals grazing on them creates excellent grassland soil, which captures much more CO2 than trees ever will. Compare that to crops which have multitude of problems. Most of the plants that are produced today are basically the products of the cheapest unclean energy sources. The soil needs nitrogen... and fertilizers have to be mass produced and used all the time. Because of monoculture and pesticides (in one form or another as I mentioned before), the soil is lifeless and devoid of microbiome or plant diversity and insects and other animals. Mass produced vegetables are much much worse for the environment than what the industry has convinced meat and milk are.