Word: grains
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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PROFESSOR JEAN MAYER'S proposal to institute meatless days at Harvard deserves serious consideration. Eating meat is the most inefficient method of obtaining calories, since it takes about eight pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. The world's grain reserves are at a dangerously low level, and the average American--who now consumes over twice as much beef as in 1950--is helping to deplete them even further...
MEATLESS DAYS should not be seen as a panacea for the world's food problems. Even if every American turned vegetarian tomorrow, there is no reason to believe that the extra grain made available would reach the people who need it most. Before that can happen, there must be a fundamental change in the theory and practice of food aid programs, both in the United States and in other rich countries. And judging by Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz's performance at the World Food Conference in Rome two weeks ago, that change may be a long...
Even the food aid programs the United States has implemented in the past have not done a particularly good job of feeding starving people. One of Butz's boasts at the conference was that "last year when there was no grain surplus we programmed $67 million worth of food under Public Law 480." What Butz did not mention was that 43 per cent of the 1974 deliveries under P.L. 480--otherwise known somewhat euphemistically as the Food for Peace program--went to only two countries, South Vietnam and Cambodia, where much of the money was used for military purposes...
Mayer answers that the Food Services would inevitably save some money by cutting down on meat, but he adds that the problem is not money. "The real problem is bringing about a change in the patterns of consumption," he says. "That is the only way large amounts of grain can be freed and the only way we can knock down the amount of fat and cholesterol in the American diet...
...fundamental change in eating habits, and it is not yet clear how far students are willing to go. Even if they are ready to take the step to meatless days, the plan is not an automatic solution to the food crisis. There remain the enormous problems of transporting grain from rich countries to poor countries and of slowing the rate of world population growth, which threatens to outstrip the available food supply...