Comfortably Unaware (2 page)

Comfortably Unaware
reveals facts and provides fresh perspectives by exploring how food choices affect our land, water, air, pollution, biodiversity, true sustainability, and our personal health. I structured
Comfortably Unaware
to resemble more of a symphony than a conventional nonfiction book—that is, the initial chapters serve
as a prelude that establishes an appreciation and better understanding for hearing the crescendo—the final chapters that follow.

I would like to extend a special thank you to Dr. Jane Goodall for authoring “Harvest for Hope,” which provides a global view of our current food choices with themes of sensitivity and hope. Other authors have paved the way and have written about food choices as they relate to our health and various disease states. To them, I am very grateful and acknowledge their commitment and accomplishments. Although there have been many, specifically I would like to thank Dr. Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and Dr. Dean Ornish of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute.

Over the years, I have lectured extensively on this topic to numerous audiences and have written many, many notes and articles. In fact, each chapter of
Comfortably Unaware
and many of the subtopics could have been developed into multiple books. The difficulty I found, then, was how to condense this enormously important subject into a book for the masses that would provide awareness, create intellectual stimulation, and effect positive change. I wrote
Comfortably Unaware
quite carefully, in a way that would present research without seeming too academic, that would relate difficult-to-believe facts without seeming too “in your face,” and at the same time, offering new, challenging perspectives without appearing too theoretical or smug.

The first two chapters prepare the reader with a definition of
global depletion
as it relates to food, and they provide relevant facts and figures to serve as tools to help with appreciation for the rest of the book.

Chapters III
through
VII
are devoted to each area of depletion—our air, rainforests, land, water and oceans, and pollution. This separates, in a clear format, each area of our earth that is becoming irreversibly depleted by our food choices.

Chapters VIII
through
XI
are intellectual in nature but easy to read and compelling. They provide insight on how this crisis happened and how to solve it. These are the chapters that separate
Comfortably Unaware
from all other books, as they provide never-before-seen perspectives about our culture.

Numerous books have been written about various diets and food as it relates to our health. Many also are now available about global warming and climate change.
Comfortably Unaware
is the first to bring to light the much larger and more insidious issue of global depletion as it relates to food. I have not cut corners or suppressed topics to avoid exposing businesses, institutions, or individuals and I am not concerned whether or not it is a risky business move for me to write this book. I also have not withheld or modified information because it may be difficult for you, the reader, to accept it or because it may be culturally or socially overloading for you.

So, my agenda is clear: to provide you with complete truth and compel you to understand all the issues of this critical topic. It is my sincere hope that you become more aware of and sensitive to the ubiquitous effect of your food choices and that a positive difference can be made in your life and in the health of our planet and all its inhabitants.

Comfortably Unaware
, first and foremost, is a book about sustainability—of our planet, our resources, and ourselves. At the same time, though, it is a book about food choice and responsibility, which are intertwined inextricably with the concept of achieving true sustainability (although “true” or “full” sustainability may be a difficult, if not improbable, state to achieve).

Global depletion is a term I have used over the years to describe the loss of our primary resources on earth, as well as loss of our own health due to our choice of a certain type of food. Therefore, global depletion essentially is about sustainability, but I feel we need to hear it from a different direction and with a more accurate view, through an unfiltered lens. Most of us have heard about the atrocities of factory farms, the issues with high-fructose corn syrup, and the industrialization or processing of foods with their contribution to obesity—all important topics. But these are simply small fragments of the picture. We need to move beyond that to understand the entire picture by connecting the dots and including our effect on all aspects of global depletion—topics such as loss of biodiversity, world hunger, sustainability of our own health, water scarcity, agricultural land-use inefficiencies and loss of our rainforests, pollution, and the state of our oceans and fish, as well as the effects on climate change. The largest contributing factor to all areas of global depletion is the raising and eating of more than 70 billion animals each year and the extracting of 1–2 trillion fish from our oceans annually. It's simply not sustainable.

Because of what can be viewed only as misuse or abuse of the word “sustainable,” I am introducing and advocating use of the term
“relative”
sustainability. How “sustainable” is it to raise and eat ANY animal products in a RELATIVE sense, as compared to plant-based foods? How can we
best
use our resources? What foods will have the very
least
effect on our planet? Which foods
best
promote our own human health and wellness, and which are the
most
compassionate? Do we really
need
to slaughter another living thing in order for us to eat? Or, sadly, is it because we
want
to? In terms of sustainability, this is the way we must begin viewing things, in a
relative
sense, from this day forward.

Even as we deplete our natural resources, we add 230,000 new human mouths to feed each day. Water will become scarcer—predicted to be a 40 percent global shortage in just 18 years (over one billion people are already without adequate drinking water; two billion are without running water for cleaning and hygiene)—nearly one billion people are considered hungry, and six million children will starve to death this year. Nevertheless, of the 2.5 billion tons of grain harvested in 2011, half was fed to animals in the meat and dairy industries; 77 percent of all coarse grain went to livestock. Many of our planet's issues—dwindling resources, food security concerns, increased climate change, hunger and poverty, loss of biodiversity, pollution, declining human health and escalating health care costs, and the ravaging of oceanic ecosystems—can be eliminated or at least significantly minimized by a simple, collective change to a healthier, more peaceful plant-based food choice and thereby a more efficient, more compassionate food-production systems.

Almost everything we do, every decision we make every day, is based on our culture—what we've learned; what someone has told us is acceptable or necessary. After realizing by the end of the nineteenth century that bloodletting wasn't so healthy for us after all, we miraculously stopped, even though we had been doing it for more than 3,000 years. We are accepting culturally driven practices today, especially with food choices involving all animal products, that are much more unhealthy for our planet and for us than bloodletting—and by all counts, we don't have 3,000 years to get it right.

Defining global depletion as it relates to food (where global warming fits)

“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”
—Thomas Edison

STOP. TAKE A STEP BACK AND ASK
yourself, “Where did this food I am about to eat really come from? How much water, land, and other resources did it take to get it from point A to point B? Why am I eating it?” Have you ever asked yourself that? Of course you haven't—and why would you? Where your food comes from has to be the most “out of sight, out of mind” process that exists in our culture today; it's obscured by many layers of cultural, political, and educational untruths and misperceptions. This is particularly true as it relates
to our use of animals in the meat, dairy, and fishing industries. And yet, that very same subject—the origin of your food—is the cause of billions of unnecessary dollars spent annually on certain aspects of health care and loss of productivity. Most important, it is the major contributing force in
global depletion
—the eventual loss of our drinking water, air quality, land, biodiversity, and other resources.

Is global warming an issue with you? Whether it is or is not, please note that our current food choices detrimentally affect climate change and global warming more so than do all the cars, planes, trucks, buses, and trains used worldwide.
¹
That might be shocking and difficult to accept, but it is important to know—and it is true. Also, while we certainly should be concerned about global warming, it is just one aspect of the much larger issue of global depletion. If you really want to reduce your negative impact on our earth, it is not so much a point of adding insulation to your house, for example, as it is what you elect to eat. While it is clear that we must be aware of global warming, it frankly does not matter how many light bulbs we switch out if we run out of water to drink. Nor does it matter what type of hybrid car we drive if we run out of clean air to breathe.

So while it seems that our collective attention has been on global warming, it is only a small fragment of the more complex picture of what we are doing to ourselves and to our planet, as it is one component of the bigger picture of global depletion.

What exactly is global depletion? It is the loss of our renewable and nonrenewable resources on earth. At this point, we may need to redefine “renewable” as it relates to our resources. For instance, water is generally viewed as “renewable” and yet some of the water that is used daily on our planet comes from
sources that take thousands of years to create. Similarly, trees in the Amazon forest (and ecosystems dependent on those trees) that are destroyed, required hundreds of years to develop. How “renewable” are these? We should use the term “nonrenewable” for any of those resources that, if destroyed, would most likely not be seen again in our lifetime. This also should apply to animals, such as those found in rainforests and rangelands, whales, and all other marine life.

It is these life-sustaining resources that are being used or destroyed at a rate such that replacement or restoration is impossible for hundreds, if not thousands, of years—if ever. Water, land, air, and wildlife ecosystems are most affected, and while many industries are to blame, our food has had the largest single negative impact on our environment. Every day, individuals and various industries use our planet's natural resources. Land is used for housing, transportation, waste management, and agriculture. Our clean water supply is used for drinking, waste removal and cleaning, and agriculture. Fossil fuels are also in demand for personal use, as well as by a number of businesses, including agriculture. While most uses of our resources can certainly be scrutinized, modified, and even reduced, it is startling to know that the sectors that use and deplete most of our resources are the meat, dairy, and fishing industries. The choices of food that we all make directly impact the use and subsequent depletion of our planet's resources.

Because it is the current “buzz,” let's begin with a brief overview of global warming, or “climate change.” Experts and organizations have filtered much of our understanding of this subject, but essentially, global warming is principally caused by an increase in greenhouse gases. This assumes, of course, that the
earth's relationship with the sun has not changed, and the energy derived from the sun remains constant. Because our attention has been primarily on the
production
of these greenhouse gases, it also assumes that there is nothing else on our planet that affects these gases in terms of absorption, which creates more or less of an effect on our climate. But there actually is something else—our forests. This is particularly true of our rainforests, which absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, while producing and exchanging it for oxygen.

Although water vapor and ozone (O
₃
) are considered greenhouse gases, it is widely understood that the increase by human activities in the other greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO
₂
), methane (CH
₄
), and nitrous oxide (N
₂
O)—have had the most influence of any factor on global warming. While atmospheric concentrations of CO
₂
have risen by 35 percent from the preindustrial year 1750 to 2006, those of methane have risen 145 percent, primarily due to the rise of the livestock/meat/dairy industry.
²

Much emphasis has been placed on reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and subsequent CO
₂
production and what we, as individuals, can do to help reduce this trend. Former vice president Al Gore's book,
An Inconvenient Truth
, certainly has helped increase awareness about global warming and has provided a sense of authenticity to its existence—and this was a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore did not tell the real truth, which set forth a public misconception that global warming is the primary concern with regard to our effect on the planet, and that our excessive production of carbon dioxide is the principal factor in global warming. Overall, Mr. Gore told only that part of the global warming story that was the easiest for him to explain—essentially,
that which was the most “convenient” for him. His story and proposed solution is the least controversial route and, despite the title of his book, actually is the easiest for all of us to accept and to act on. Ironically, he effectively chose the path of least resistance. He emphasized that the culprit of global warming is carbon dioxide. After all, it comprises 72 percent of emitted greenhouse gases, and we humans produce most of it by the electricity we use and the cars we drive—how easy to deal with it. Simply reduce electricity and drive less often.