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I write about food. I write about cooking.

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I take it quite seriously,

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but I'm here to talk about something

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that's become very important to me in the last year or two.

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It is about food, but it's not about cooking, per se.

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I'm going to start with this picture of a beautiful cow.

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I'm not a vegetarian -- this is the old Nixon line, right?

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But I still think that this --

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(Laughter)

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-- may be this year's version of this.

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Now, that is only a little bit hyperbolic.

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And why do I say it?

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Because only once before has the fate of individual people

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and the fate of all of humanity

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been so intertwined.

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There was the bomb, and there's now.

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And where we go from here is going to determine

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not only the quality and the length of our individual lives,

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but whether, if we could see the Earth a century from now,

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we'd recognize it.

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It's a holocaust of a different kind,

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and hiding under our desks isn't going to help.

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Start with the notion that global warming

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is not only real, but dangerous.

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Since every scientist in the world now believes this,

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and even President Bush has seen the light, or pretends to,

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we can take this is a given.

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Then hear this, please.

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After energy production, livestock is the second-highest contributor

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to atmosphere-altering gases.

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Nearly one-fifth of all greenhouse gas

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is generated by livestock production --

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more than transportation.

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Now, you can make all the jokes you want about cow farts,

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but methane is 20 times more poisonous than CO2,

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and it's not just methane.

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Livestock is also one of the biggest culprits in land degradation,

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air and water pollution, water shortages and loss of biodiversity.

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There's more.

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Like half the antibiotics in this country

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are not administered to people, but to animals.

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But lists like this become kind of numbing, so let me just say this:

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if you're a progressive,

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if you're driving a Prius, or you're shopping green,

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or you're looking for organic,

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you should probably be a semi-vegetarian.

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Now, I'm no more anti-cattle than I am anti-atom,

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but it's all in the way we use these things.

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There's another piece of the puzzle,

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which Ann Cooper talked about beautifully yesterday,

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and one you already know.

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There's no question, none, that so-called lifestyle diseases --

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diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some cancers --

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are diseases that are far more prevalent here

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than anywhere in the rest of the world.

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And that's the direct result of eating a Western diet.

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Our demand for meat, dairy and refined carbohydrates --

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the world consumes one billion cans or bottles of Coke a day --

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our demand for these things, not our need, our want,

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drives us to consume way more calories than are good for us.

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And those calories are in foods that cause, not prevent, disease.

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Now global warming was unforeseen.

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We didn't know that pollution did more than cause bad visibility.

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Maybe a few lung diseases here and there,

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but, you know, that's not such a big deal.

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The current health crisis, however,

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is a little more the work of the evil empire.

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We were told, we were assured,

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that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate,

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the healthier we'd be.

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No. Overconsumption of animals, and of course, junk food,

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is the problem, along with our paltry consumption of plants.

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Now, there's no time to get into the benefits of eating plants here,

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but the evidence is that plants -- and I want to make this clear --

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it's not the ingredients in plants, it's the plants.

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It's not the beta-carotene, it's the carrot.

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The evidence is very clear that plants promote health.

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This evidence is overwhelming at this point.

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You eat more plants, you eat less other stuff, you live longer.

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Not bad.

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But back to animals and junk food.

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What do they have in common?

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One: we don't need either of them for health.

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We don't need animal products,

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and we certainly don't need white bread or Coke.

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Two: both have been marketed heavily,

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creating unnatural demand.

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We're not born craving Whoppers or Skittles.

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Three: their production has been supported by government agencies

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at the expense of a more health- and Earth-friendly diet.

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Now, let's imagine a parallel.

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Let's pretend that our government supported an oil-based economy,

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while discouraging more sustainable forms of energy,

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knowing all the while that the result would be

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pollution, war and rising costs.

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Incredible, isn't it?

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Yet they do that.

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And they do this here. It's the same deal.

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The sad thing is, when it comes to diet,

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is that even when well-intentioned Feds

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try to do right by us, they fail.

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Either they're outvoted by puppets of agribusiness,

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or they are puppets of agribusiness.

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So, when the USDA finally acknowledged

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that it was plants, rather than animals, that made people healthy,

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they encouraged us, via their overly simplistic food pyramid,

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to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day,

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along with more carbs.

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What they didn't tell us is that some carbs are better than others,

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and that plants and whole grains

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should be supplanting eating junk food.

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But industry lobbyists would never let that happen.

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And guess what?

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Half the people who developed the food pyramid

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have ties to agribusiness.

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So, instead of substituting plants for animals,

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our swollen appetites simply became larger,

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and the most dangerous aspects of them remained unchanged.

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So-called low-fat diets, so-called low-carb diets --

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these are not solutions.

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But with lots of intelligent people

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focusing on whether food is organic or local,

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or whether we're being nice to animals,

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the most important issues just aren't being addressed.

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Now, don't get me wrong.

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I like animals,

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and I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production

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and to churn them out like they were wrenches.

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But there's no way to treat animals well,

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when you're killing 10 billion of them a year.

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That's our number. 10 billion.

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If you strung all of them --

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chickens, cows, pigs and lambs -- to the moon,

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they'd go there and back five times, there and back.

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Now, my math's a little shaky, but this is pretty good,

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and it depends whether a pig is four feet long or five feet long,

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but you get the idea.

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That's just the United States.

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And with our hyper-consumption of those animals

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producing greenhouse gases and heart disease,

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kindness might just be a bit of a red herring.

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Let's get the numbers of the animals we're killing for eating down,

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and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left.

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Another red herring might be exemplified by the word "locavore,"

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which was just named word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

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Seriously.

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And locavore, for those of you who don't know,

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is someone who eats only locally grown food --

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which is fine if you live in California,

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but for the rest of us it's a bit of a sad joke.

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Between the official story -- the food pyramid --

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and the hip locavore vision,

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you have two versions of how to improve our eating.

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(Laughter).

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They both get it wrong, though.

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The first at least is populist, and the second is elitist.

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How we got to this place is the history of food in the United States.

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And I'm going to go through that,

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at least the last hundred years or so, very quickly right now.

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A hundred years ago, guess what?

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Everyone was a locavore: even New York had pig farms nearby,

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and shipping food all over the place was a ridiculous notion.

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Every family had a cook, usually a mom.

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And those moms bought and prepared food.

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It was like your romantic vision of Europe.

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Margarine didn't exist.

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In fact, when margarine was invented,

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several states passed laws declaring that it had to be dyed pink,

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so we'd all know that it was a fake.

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There was no snack food, and until the '20s,

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until Clarence Birdseye came along, there was no frozen food.

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There were no restaurant chains.

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There were neighborhood restaurants run by local people,

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but none of them would think to open another one.

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Eating ethnic was unheard of unless you were ethnic.

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And fancy food was entirely French.

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As an aside, those of you who remember

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Dan Aykroyd in the 1970s doing Julia Child imitations

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can see where he got the idea of stabbing himself from this fabulous slide.

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(Laughter)

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Back in those days, before even Julia,

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back in those days, there was no philosophy of food.

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You just ate.

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You didn't claim to be anything.

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There was no marketing. There were no national brands.

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Vitamins had not been invented.

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There were no health claims, at least not federally sanctioned ones.

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Fats, carbs, proteins -- they weren't bad or good, they were food.

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You ate food.

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Hardly anything contained more than one ingredient,

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because it was an ingredient.

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The cornflake hadn't been invented.

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(Laughter)

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The Pop-Tart, the Pringle, Cheez Whiz, none of that stuff.

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Goldfish swam.

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(Laughter)

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It's hard to imagine. People grew food, and they ate food.

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And again, everyone ate local.

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In New York, an orange was a common Christmas present,

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because it came all the way from Florida.

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From the '30s on, road systems expanded,

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trucks took the place of railroads,

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fresh food began to travel more.

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Oranges became common in New York.

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The South and West became agricultural hubs,

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and in other parts of the country, suburbs took over farmland.

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The effects of this are well known. They are everywhere.

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And the death of family farms is part of this puzzle,

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as is almost everything

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from the demise of the real community

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to the challenge of finding a good tomato, even in summer.

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Eventually, California produced too much food to ship fresh,

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so it became critical to market canned and frozen foods.

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Thus arrived convenience.

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It was sold to proto-feminist housewives

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as a way to cut down on housework.

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Now, I know everybody over the age of, like 45 --

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their mouths are watering at this point.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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If we had a slide of Salisbury steak, even more so, right?

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(Laughter)

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But this may have cut down on housework,

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but it cut down on the variety of food we ate as well.

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Many of us grew up never eating a fresh vegetable

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except the occasional raw carrot or maybe an odd lettuce salad.

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I, for one -- and I'm not kidding --

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didn't eat real spinach or broccoli till I was 19.

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Who needed it though? Meat was everywhere.

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What could be easier, more filling or healthier for your family

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than broiling a steak?

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But by then cattle were already raised unnaturally.

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Rather than spending their lives eating grass,

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for which their stomachs were designed,

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they were forced to eat soy and corn.

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They have trouble digesting those grains, of course,

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but that wasn't a problem for producers.

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New drugs kept them healthy.

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Well, they kept them alive.

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Healthy was another story.

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Thanks to farm subsidies,

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the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress,

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soy, corn and cattle became king.

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And chicken soon joined them on the throne.

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It was during this period that the cycle of

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dietary and planetary destruction began,

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the thing we're only realizing just now.

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Listen to this,

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between 1950 and 2000, the world's population doubled.

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Meat consumption increased five-fold.

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Now, someone had to eat all that stuff, so we got fast food.

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And this took care of the situation resoundingly.

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Home cooking remained the norm, but its quality was down the tubes.

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There were fewer meals with home-cooked breads, desserts and soups,

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because all of them could be bought at any store.

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Not that they were any good, but they were there.

0:11:59.000,0:12:01.000
Most moms cooked like mine:

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a piece of broiled meat, a quickly made salad with bottled dressing,

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canned soup, canned fruit salad.

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Maybe baked or mashed potatoes,

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or perhaps the stupidest food ever, Minute Rice.

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For dessert, store-bought ice cream or cookies.

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My mom is not here, so I can say this now.

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This kind of cooking drove me to learn how to cook for myself.

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(Laughter)

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It wasn't all bad.

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By the '70s, forward-thinking people

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began to recognize the value of local ingredients.

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We tended gardens, we became interested in organic food,

0:12:36.000,0:12:38.000
we knew or we were vegetarians.

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We weren't all hippies, either.

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Some of us were eating in good restaurants and learning how to cook well.

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Meanwhile, food production had become industrial. Industrial.

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Perhaps because it was being produced rationally,

0:12:51.000,0:12:53.000
as if it were plastic,

0:12:53.000,0:12:57.000
food gained magical or poisonous powers, or both.

0:12:57.000,0:12:59.000
Many people became fat-phobic.

0:12:59.000,0:13:03.000
Others worshiped broccoli, as if it were God-like.

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But mostly they didn't eat broccoli.

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Instead they were sold on yogurt,

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yogurt being almost as good as broccoli.

0:13:09.000,0:13:12.000
Except, in reality, the way the industry sold yogurt

0:13:12.000,0:13:15.000
was to convert it to something much more akin to ice cream.

0:13:15.000,0:13:18.000
Similarly, let's look at a granola bar.

0:13:18.000,0:13:20.000
You think that that might be healthy food,

0:13:20.000,0:13:22.000
but in fact, if you look at the ingredient list,

0:13:22.000,0:13:26.000
it's closer in form to a Snickers than it is to oatmeal.

0:13:27.000,0:13:30.000
Sadly, it was at this time that the family dinner was put in a coma,

0:13:30.000,0:13:32.000
if not actually killed --

0:13:33.000,0:13:36.000
the beginning of the heyday of value-added food,

0:13:36.000,0:13:38.000
which contained as many soy and corn products

0:13:38.000,0:13:40.000
as could be crammed into it.

0:13:40.000,0:13:42.000
Think of the frozen chicken nugget.

0:13:42.000,0:13:45.000
The chicken is fed corn, and then its meat is ground up,

0:13:45.000,0:13:49.000
and mixed with more corn products to add bulk and binder,

0:13:49.000,0:13:52.000
and then it's fried in corn oil.

0:13:53.000,0:13:55.000
All you do is nuke it. What could be better?

0:13:56.000,0:13:58.000
And zapped horribly, pathetically.

0:13:59.000,0:14:03.000
By the '70s, home cooking was in such a sad state

0:14:03.000,0:14:06.000
that the high fat and spice contents of foods

0:14:06.000,0:14:08.000
like McNuggets and Hot Pockets --

0:14:08.000,0:14:11.000
and we all have our favorites, actually --

0:14:11.000,0:14:13.000
made this stuff more appealing than the bland things

0:14:13.000,0:14:15.000
that people were serving at home.

0:14:15.000,0:14:19.000
At the same time, masses of women were entering the workforce,

0:14:19.000,0:14:21.000
and cooking simply wasn't important enough

0:14:21.000,0:14:23.000
for men to share the burden.

0:14:23.000,0:14:26.000
So now, you've got your pizza nights, you've got your microwave nights,

0:14:26.000,0:14:28.000
you've got your grazing nights,

0:14:28.000,0:14:30.000
you've got your fend-for-yourself nights and so on.

0:14:31.000,0:14:34.000
Leading the way -- what's leading the way?

0:14:34.000,0:14:36.000
Meat, junk food, cheese:

0:14:36.000,0:14:38.000
the very stuff that will kill you.

0:14:38.000,0:14:40.000
So, now we clamor for organic food.

0:14:40.000,0:14:42.000
That's good.

0:14:42.000,0:14:44.000
And as evidence that things can actually change,

0:14:44.000,0:14:46.000
you can now find organic food in supermarkets,

0:14:46.000,0:14:48.000
and even in fast-food outlets.

0:14:48.000,0:14:50.000
But organic food isn't the answer either,

0:14:50.000,0:14:53.000
at least not the way it's currently defined.

0:14:53.000,0:14:55.000
Let me pose you a question.

0:14:55.000,0:14:57.000
Can farm-raised salmon be organic,

0:14:57.000,0:15:02.000
when its feed has nothing to do with its natural diet,

0:15:02.000,0:15:06.000
even if the feed itself is supposedly organic, and the fish themselves

0:15:06.000,0:15:11.000
are packed tightly in pens, swimming in their own filth?

0:15:11.000,0:15:15.000
And if that salmon's from Chile, and it's killed down there

0:15:15.000,0:15:18.000
and then flown 5,000 miles, whatever,

0:15:18.000,0:15:21.000
dumping how much carbon into the atmosphere?

0:15:21.000,0:15:23.000
I don't know.

0:15:23.000,0:15:25.000
Packed in Styrofoam, of course,

0:15:25.000,0:15:28.000
before landing somewhere in the United States,

0:15:28.000,0:15:30.000
and then being trucked a few hundred more miles.

0:15:30.000,0:15:35.000
This may be organic in letter, but it's surely not organic in spirit.

0:15:36.000,0:15:38.000
Now here is where we all meet.

0:15:38.000,0:15:41.000
The locavores, the organivores, the vegetarians,

0:15:41.000,0:15:43.000
the vegans, the gourmets

0:15:43.000,0:15:47.000
and those of us who are just plain interested in good food.

0:15:47.000,0:15:50.000
Even though we've come to this from different points,

0:15:50.000,0:15:52.000
we all have to act on our knowledge

0:15:52.000,0:15:56.000
to change the way that everyone thinks about food.

0:15:56.000,0:15:58.000
We need to start acting.

0:15:58.000,0:16:02.000
And this is not only an issue of social justice, as Ann Cooper said --

0:16:02.000,0:16:04.000
and, of course, she's completely right --

0:16:04.000,0:16:06.000
but it's also one of global survival.

0:16:06.000,0:16:11.000
Which bring me full circle and points directly to the core issue,

0:16:11.000,0:16:15.000
the overproduction and overconsumption of meat and junk food.

0:16:15.000,0:16:18.000
As I said, 18 percent of greenhouse gases

0:16:18.000,0:16:21.000
are attributed to livestock production.

0:16:21.000,0:16:24.000
How much livestock do you need to produce this?

0:16:24.000,0:16:27.000
70 percent of the agricultural land on Earth,

0:16:27.000,0:16:33.000
30 percent of the Earth's land surface is directly or indirectly devoted

0:16:33.000,0:16:36.000
to raising the animals we'll eat.

0:16:36.000,0:16:39.000
And this amount is predicted to double in the next 40 years or so.

0:16:39.000,0:16:41.000
And if the numbers coming in from China

0:16:41.000,0:16:44.000
are anything like what they look like now,

0:16:44.000,0:16:46.000
it's not going to be 40 years.

0:16:46.000,0:16:50.000
There is no good reason for eating as much meat as we do.

0:16:50.000,0:16:55.000
And I say this as a man who has eaten a fair share of corned beef in his life.

0:16:55.000,0:16:58.000
The most common argument is that we need nutrients --

0:16:58.000,0:17:01.000
even though we eat, on average, twice as much protein

0:17:01.000,0:17:06.000
as even the industry-obsessed USDA recommends.

0:17:06.000,0:17:10.000
But listen: experts who are serious about disease reduction

0:17:10.000,0:17:16.000
recommend that adults eat just over half a pound of meat per week.

0:17:16.000,0:17:20.000
What do you think we eat per day? Half a pound.

0:17:20.000,0:17:23.000
But don't we need meat to be big and strong?

0:17:23.000,0:17:26.000
Isn't meat eating essential to health?

0:17:26.000,0:17:28.000
Won't a diet heavy in fruit and vegetables

0:17:28.000,0:17:31.000
turn us into godless, sissy, liberals?

0:17:31.000,0:17:32.000
(Laughter)

0:17:32.000,0:17:35.000
Some of us might think that would be a good thing.

0:17:35.000,0:17:40.000
But, no, even if we were all steroid-filled football players,

0:17:40.000,0:17:42.000
the answer is no.

0:17:42.000,0:17:46.000
In fact, there's no diet on Earth that meets

0:17:46.000,0:17:50.000
basic nutritional needs that won't promote growth,

0:17:50.000,0:17:53.000
and many will make you much healthier than ours does.

0:17:53.000,0:17:56.000
We don't eat animal products for sufficient nutrition,

0:17:56.000,0:18:02.000
we eat them to have an odd form of malnutrition, and it's killing us.

0:18:02.000,0:18:05.000
To suggest that in the interests of personal and human health

0:18:05.000,0:18:08.000
Americans eat 50 percent less meat --

0:18:08.000,0:18:11.000
it's not enough of a cut, but it's a start.

0:18:11.000,0:18:16.000
It would seem absurd, but that's exactly what should happen,

0:18:16.000,0:18:19.000
and what progressive people, forward-thinking people

0:18:19.000,0:18:22.000
should be doing and advocating,

0:18:22.000,0:18:25.000
along with the corresponding increase in the consumption of plants.

0:18:26.000,0:18:29.000
I've been writing about food more or less omnivorously --

0:18:29.000,0:18:32.000
one might say indiscriminately -- for about 30 years.

0:18:32.000,0:18:34.000
During that time, I've eaten

0:18:34.000,0:18:37.000
and recommended eating just about everything.

0:18:38.000,0:18:40.000
I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure,

0:18:41.000,0:18:43.000
but I do think that for the benefit of everyone,

0:18:43.000,0:18:46.000
the time has come to stop raising them industrially

0:18:46.000,0:18:48.000
and stop eating them thoughtlessly.

0:18:48.000,0:18:50.000
Ann Cooper's right.

0:18:50.000,0:18:55.000
The USDA is not our ally here.

0:18:55.000,0:18:57.000
We have to take matters into our own hands,

0:18:57.000,0:19:00.000
not only by advocating for a better diet for everyone --

0:19:00.000,0:19:04.000
and that's the hard part -- but by improving our own.

0:19:04.000,0:19:06.000
And that happens to be quite easy.

0:19:06.000,0:19:09.000
Less meat, less junk, more plants.

0:19:09.000,0:19:11.000
It's a simple formula: eat food.

0:19:11.000,0:19:13.000
Eat real food.

0:19:13.000,0:19:17.000
We can continue to enjoy our food, and we continue to eat well,

0:19:17.000,0:19:19.000
and we can eat even better.

0:19:19.000,0:19:22.000
We can continue the search for the ingredients we love,

0:19:22.000,0:19:27.000
and we can continue to spin yarns about our favorite meals.

0:19:27.000,0:19:31.000
We'll reduce not only calories, but our carbon footprint.

0:19:31.000,0:19:34.000
We can make food more important, not less,

0:19:34.000,0:19:36.000
and save ourselves by doing so.

0:19:36.000,0:19:39.000
We have to choose that path.

0:19:39.000,0:19:41.000
Thank you.