Response to Omnivore's Dilemma

Few books have changed the way I think about the world so much as Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Every piece of food I eat is a representation of some quantity of pesticides, oil and carbon emission, and I am voting with every bite I take.

On the one hand, this makes me feel empowered. What I chose to eat can affect the foods that are offered, and companies do respond to consumer demand.

On the other hand, I have never felt like a process so central to my well being was so out of my control. What goes into making my food is hidden away very securely.

I was definitely glad I was a vegetarian this quarter, as the movies and books we read did not want to make me eat meat, and OD was no exception. For example, I read the section where Pollan hunts the pig while eating lunch one day. If I had had any meat on my plate, I would not have been able to stomach that combination. These books, OD in particular, have convinced me that my lifestyle change was worthwhile and something I should continue.

While Pollan’s last meal, that he completely harvested himself, was impractical, I am glad he showed the full spectra of meal sources, from completely fast food to completely slow food, with some options in between. While the in between options, such as the food from Polyface Farms, seemed like the best and most practical choices, the book would not have had as much of an impact without the contrast of the other meals.

I only hope that I will be able to eat as well as this book suggests I should. I am staying on a meal plan for one more year, but after that I will have more control over where my food comes from. Also, this summer, when I am at home, I will be able to influence the types of food my mother purchases and cooks.

I think everyone should read this book, as it forces one to seriously reconsider his or her food choices. I know I will be passing it on to my friends and family, and I am hoping it will inspire them to change their lifestyle as I did. I can’t imagine how someone could read this book and not be inspired to change, if not from desire to be a good person, then from disgust with where his or her food currently comes from.

Vegetarianism is Contagious

My best friend at UCLA is a vegetarian. I didn’t think much of it until I was deciding on my project for this seminar. I thought, “If Amy can easily be a vegetarian, so can I.” Having a friend who supported my decision made it that much easier to know where to begin.

As the weeks went on and I learned more and more about vegetarianism and the food system through this class, I became extremely grateful that this is the project I chose. Every movie we watched and book we read made me more convinced to stick with this diet after this class is over.

Eventually, this mentality began to rub off on two of our other friends, Lila and Emelia. Two out of the four of us were vegetarian, so it was a natural decision for the other two to try it out. While one remained pescetarian and one continued to eat meat once a week, many of our meals were completely meatless. I do not think they would’ve decided to try out vegetarianism without the influence of my project, and I would not have been inspired to become vegetarian without Amy.

This concept reminds me of a blog by Derek Sivers about leadership (http://sivers.org/ff). A strong leader is not the most important element. The key components of a successful movement are the first followers. They transform the lone nut’s philosophy into a legitimate idea, and that is how vegetarianism is moving through my group of friends.

While I try not to preach to my omnivore friends, it is difficult not to share the knowledge I’ve acquired through this adventure, and I’m glad that the message of sustainability has reached not only me, but a few of my close friends as well, and I have Amy’s vegetarianism and Brian’s seminar to thank for that.

Vegetarianism: Getting old…

I am beginning to think that being vegetarian in the dining halls is not as easy as I thought. First of all, Café 1919 doesn’t have very good vegetarian options. The tomato pizza has too many different flavors of tomatoes, I don’t like artichokes, and the panini has SIXTY-SEVEN grams of fat, more than twice as many as a Big Mac. In the dining halls, my options are often limited to salad bar, pasta, pizza and grilled cheese. The food is starting to get quite repetitive. However, I’m not going to give it up. I don’t really have any desire to continue to eat meat. I do miss fish, and sometimes I just want a chicken caesar salad, but I also continually desire chocolate ice cream and doughnuts, and I don’t give in to those cravings.

I do wish the vegetarian options included more variety. I am ready to go home and try out all of the delicious vegetarian recipes I have uncovered this year. Most of all, I want this quarter to be over so I can go back to eating fish. I love seafood, and definitely miss it the most. Tilapia, salmon, sole, halibut, swordfish- it’s all delicious. I know there are environmental problems associated with many fishing practices, but there are also sustainable sources of fish, particularly my favorite, tilapia.

As you can probably tell by this post, I am hungry for non-vegetarian foods. I think I am having trouble getting enough protein and iron in my diet, which is causing me to crave healthy meats like salmon. I have been making a conscious effort to eat more spinach, tofu, and fake meats, and to drink more milk. However, it’s still hard, and it’s hard to tell if I’m getting enough.

My project keeps evolving. I am now attempting to put together a small guide to being vegetarian at UCLA. I have asked some of my friends who are vegetarian/pescatarian/vegan for suggestions and tips, and if you have any I would love to hear them! I am also trying to find good vegetarian restaurants and recipes. I haven’t exactly decided the extent of the guide but it’s coming along. Also, I am no longer making rice but VEGAN COOKIES for my presentation. I was inspired by the delectable vegan cookies at BCaf! I had one today; they are absolutely amazing.

This experience has really changed the way I look at food. I am so grateful for this class and the lessons it has taught me. I used to feel like my personal efforts to be sustainable didn’t really change the way the world worked, but I am started to realize that every effort I make helps some small part of the world and inspires others to do the same. I definitely plan to continue my effort to live more sustainably, both for the health of the planet and my own health.

Daily Bruin Article

Hey guys,

There is an article about Brian in today's Daily Bruin

http://www.dailybruin.com/articles/2010/5/17/grad-student-dies-climbing-accident/

Eating Green in the Dining Halls

As I mentioned earlier, being a vegetarian in the dining halls at UCLA is easy, and eating green appears to be getting easier every day. Just today they introduced cage free eggs. Also, by the way, UCLA consumes 1.5 BILLION EGGS PER YEAR. Just thought I’d share that. Anyway, today I went to dinner with a few of my friends and people on the sailing team. There were six of us and three of us were vegetarians, and two were pescatarians. That left all of ONE meat eater, and let me tell you, he felt a little uncomfortable looking at our plates. He even threw some tofu in his salad out of shame.

Out of the six of us, only one started this year vegetarian. She was my inspiration for choosing vegetarianism for my project. I was next, dropping meat from my diet and risking ridicule from the six-foot tall sailing kids who can pound back two burritos from Chipotle (yes, they’ve done it before). “If it doesn’t have meat, it’s just a snack,” they’d say. Soon after, however, people began to join us. A few of my friends just decided to try dropping meat a couple days ago, with the intention of reintroducing the foods they truly missed, like fish, and I’d like to think my personal journey into sustainability helped influence them. The six-foot meat eater also started ordering vegetarian fajita burritos at Chipotle. While I don’t broadcast my vegetarianism, having friends who support your decisions make it much easier to achieve.

It is inspiring to see people attempting to be greener. While we have so, so far to go and so little time, at least there is an effort being made, and it is inspiring. Sorting through the propaganda surrounding the green movement is a daunting task, and there is so much misinformation being put out by both sides (The Story of Stuff, anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM). These issues are complicated, and it’s not surprising that most people don’t take the time to understand all the implications. Even I don’t understand all of the arguments, and I am about to finish a full year studying them! The fact that people do care, and once they know the facts will attempt to change, is a ray of hope in the dire discipline that is environmental studies.

The past week has been tumultuous, and retackling my sustainability goals has become more than just a class project. Living sustainably is more than saving myself money or saving resources for my children and their children; it has taken on a personal meaning that elevates it above the material repercussions. I have become more focused on achieving these goals and continuing them into the future, and the recent changes in the dining halls have served to inspire me further. So to all of those attempting to go green, good luck! Do not be swayed by those who say what you are doing makes no difference, that the sacrifices you are making are not worth it. If you are ever feeling like the challenges we face are too great, just watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY&playnext_from=TL&videos=oBKBqHyImn4, not for its political implications, but for its message. Our country has tackled big problems before, and this issue of sustainability is no different. If you need inspiration, just look around you. Look at the garden growing in Sunset Recreation Center, look at the new recycling bins on campus, look at your classmates who are going vegetarian, starting compost piles, and reducing their trash.

Oh, on an unrelated note, I have decided to make my favorite vegetarian dish for my presentation- Indonesian fried rice with tofu. This recipe was actually shared with me by one of my friends who is the biggest meat eater I know, and one of the main sources of ridicule I face for being vegetarian. Who knows, if one vegetarian could convert four out of five of us in a quarter, maybe we will be able to convince him also.

Brian's Obituary

I can't write anything yet but I did find this from the Sacramento Bee

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?n=brian-glidden-ellis&pid=142688540

How Our Kids Are Eating

I coach a soccer team comprised of girls from Palms Elementary. We work all week to teach them about staying healthy and encouraging physical activity, and on Friday afternoons they play the other teams. After the games, various ice cream carts swoop in, and the students (and even the coaches) treat themselves to big scoops of ice cream, or corn on the cob smothered in butter, or chips and processed foods. I just want to yell at the kids, "Don't you know that 1 out of 3 of you will end up with diabetes? Don't you know how much fat and sugar and sodium those things have?" Of course, an elementary school kid would not understand those things; few of their parents even do. It is too easy to give in to a crying toddler, or a begging third grader, to just hand them the candy they want. I know my parents did that, and I'm sure I will too.

While after a soccer game on a Friday afternoon might not be the best time for a nutrition lesson, I do feel that schools are inadequate in teaching and encouraging healthy eating habits. In elementary school, lunches are comprised of foods like french fries and chicken nuggets, heavily processed and full of cheap calories. School vending machines are stocked with candy and sodas, and in the case of my middle school, donuts. The cheapest things to buy for lunch in high school are pizza and hash browns. The salads and sandwiches are at least twice as expensive. What kind of message is this sending children?

While some legislators are attempting to fix this, many of the solutions have not been working. Eliminating sodas, for example, simply led to students drinking equally sugary and fake juices. Requiring students to buy a full lunch including a main dish, two sides, and a drink, as they did at my school for a few years, led to students buying a piece of pizza, two bags of cookies, and a can of fruit juice with thirty grams of sugar rather than the lone slice of pizza they would've bought. Finding ways to encourage kids to eat better and teaching nutrition in class are two ways for schools to improve in this area. While I was educated in things such as the food pyramid, I was never taught about processed foods or the impacts of eating meat.

One things schools are afraid of is being "biased." Statements about healthy eating are seen as an attempt to convince good, American meat eaters to join some crazy, leftist commune of vegans. One of the hardest parts I have found about being vegetarian is telling people about it without provoking a defensive rant. Any explanation of why I pursue a vegetarian diet is not seen as a defense or a statement of facts, but as an attempt to convert others. Schools have to strike a balance; if they focus too much on eating healthily, they risk alienating and upsetting parents who don't want that "agenda" taught to their kids. If schools don't teach students how to eat right, we will have a future generation of fat and diabetic Americans.

Going Vegetarian

For my experience diving into sustainability, I chose to go vegetarian. I told this to my mom today and she replied with the expected skepticism. There was a long pause and then a “Really?”

Really, I am going vegetarian. Earlier, one of my friends tried to convince me to eat some meat. “It’s not like your teacher is going to know,” she replied when I told her, and it’s true. No one would know if I slipped a piece of bacon or ate some meat sauce, except me. This is something I am tackling for myself, to show that I have the ability to change my lifestyle to make the world a little more inhabitable. So far it has not been all that difficult. Sure, sometimes I see my friends eating meat that looks good, but I have not yet been seriously tempted to break the vow, with the exception of one time.

Last weekend I went to Coachella in Indio, California. There were quite a few vegetarian options, as it was a gathering of well to do hippies. One particularly hot afternoon, after waiting in a crowd for a band to start on one of the outdoor stages, my lack of sleep and dehydration caught up with me, and I had to abandon my spot and seek refuge in the misty and shady rest areas. I believe that my change in diet had to do with this temporary weakness, as I had gone vegetarian only a few days before and my body was still adjusting to different types and amounts of protein and fats. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than a good American hot dog, or even spaghetti and meatballs, and the food vendors at the festival offered more than enough meat options to tempt me. I resisted and got a delicious falafel instead, but it got me thinking. If it was hard to be a vegetarian at a festival like Coachella, there must be some situations in which is seems near impossible.

The dining halls at UCLA are a great place to be vegetarian. There are always vegetarian options and plentiful salad bars. There are even a lot of vegan options, and it takes no extra work or special planning to simply ask for the vegetarian sauce. However, the real world is not like this. Not every culture is so willing to accept someone who says no to meat. Even going to a backyard barbeque is difficult, and the California tradition that is In-N-Out is greatly diminished without the hamburger.

This effect of culture on our food patterns is something that I find interesting and would like to explore as part of my project. From the American obsession with red meat to the Hindu aversion to it, where we grow up and what society says about eating influences what we choose to eat. This is a topic I will explore in further posts about the status of my adventure. As of now, I am on week two of being vegetarian and going strong!

Response to Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel is aptly named. Merkel's journey into sustainability and living a bare bones life is at some points inspiring and others merely terrifying. He earns little, spends little, and tries to use as few of the earth's resources as possible. While it is a noble endeavor, it isn't something that any old person can go out and do. You have to have enough money stored up to buy a house and live mostly off the interest from the rest of your savings, and that is not an easy amount to come by. You also have to have an objective view of your place in society and on earth in order to be able to make the necessary sacrifices, and that is something that is even harder to come by. You need to be able to recognize that currently we are skydiving without a parachute; we are using resources at an unsustainable rate and assuming that we’ll be gone before it becomes an issue.

At the heart of the problem is the idea that we can be anything, do anything, and have anything we want, but in reality this is not the case. We cannot all become Nobel Prize winning scientists, or else the Nobel Prize would no longer hold prestige. We cannot all become rich, because there is a finite amount of money in the world. If we had all the money we wanted, money would no longer hold value. However, that rarely translates that to the idea that I personally should take less so that others can have more. Merkel is able to understand that idea and apply it to his life, something that few others are capable of. Many people never learn that what is best for them may not be best for humanity as a whole, and that lesson is central to living as Merkel does. Rarely is it mentioned that succeeding in following your dreams usually means that someone else failed in pursuing theirs.

I know that my footprint of over twenty acres is unsustainable, and that it means that someone somewhere else must live off of much less, but my personal goals get in the way of being able to accurately weight the costs and benefits of my lifestyle. I want to become a physicist, a career path that isn't conducive to 20-hour workweeks. I want to live in the city and travel across the world and pursue a Ph.D. None of those things fit into a simple life a la Merkel, and he understands that. He knows that very few people are going to abandon their dreams in order to live a more equitable life, because that’s just not the way humans are programmed. In the long run, we must be willing to reduce our population by extreme measures like government mandated family planning or else alter the idea that hard work and professional success are goals to strive for. Personally I would push for the first of those options, but it would be a very unpopular campaign.

While I may not drop out of college and go live in the woods, Radical Simplicity has given me some ideas for making my life more sustainable. I can’t implement many of the ideas just yet, as I live in university housing and eat in the dining halls and don't own a car or control where my tuition dollars go. However, in the future I can grow a garden, ride my bike, and buy fewer packaged goods, and I plan on doing all of those things. While I probably won't give up my car or live on $5000 a year, I already have started thinking twice before purchasing goods, especially those that come in a lot of packaging. I have gotten ideas about how to live more sustainably, but in the end, I do not want to live in the woods like Merkel does. I want to accomplish certain things in my life, not just survive, and on some level all humans have that desire. Unfortunately that leaves us in a bit of a bind, and eventually we will have to sacrifice control over some aspects of our lives, either in the area of reproduction or productivity.

Ecological Footprinting

First of all, there is an awesome site called worldmapper.org that has a whole collection of cartograms, maps where the size of each country is not determined by land area but by another variable, from the basics such as population to more specific but interesting data such as patents granted, or in the case of the map below, ecological footprint.

Technical notes for this map.

Notice that this is total, not average, ecological footprint, which is why India and China are on par with the United States. They have larger populations and smaller average footprints than the Americans' 24 acres. If everyone lived like Americans, we would need over five earths to sustain us. Considering that I share a bedroom with two other people in a building that houses over a thousand people and that I don’t have a car, I thought my ecological footprint would be significantly below the average American’s, even if it was more than the world average. However, after calculating my footprint, I discovered that mine, at 25.6 acres, was not only larger than the world average, but also larger than the average American’s. Housing and transportation, two factors that I thought would take up much of footprint as they do for the average American, were not the biggest contributors to my footprint. Instead, my largest footprint contribution came from monthly goods and services, especially from my spending on education.

The footprint from college was bigger than any other category, including food, and was much bigger than any other single item on the list. This made me wonder how the footprint factor for education was calculated; what items were included? The buildings and grounds? The research labs and textbooks? I cannot imagine how going to college creates a bigger footprint than all of my food. I also wonder about using how much we pay for education as an indicator of its footprint. Do private schools have significantly bigger footprints because tuition is higher? Or is the responsibility for the footprint simply shifted from the government to the individual tuition payer? The way the footprint calculator is set up, the responsibility for the footprint lies with the individual who financed it, not necessarily who uses or demands it.

The process of calculating my ecological footprint brought up many questions for me. I realized how little I know about what contributes to my footprint. I had to call my parents to ask about our insurance and phone bills, and look up information about my dorm to answer many of the other questions. I take many of the material goods in my life for granted and never stop to question where they came from or whether I really need them.

The other thing I noticed about my footprint was that there aren’t many small changes I could make that would have a significant impact on my footprint. Producing less trash perhaps, or using a little less electricity might save a few square meters, but without changing my lifestyle, such as eating less or dropping out of college, my footprint won’t change dramatically.

There is, however, one change I could make now that would affect my footprint, and that is going vegetarian. My meat consumption accounted for over half of my entire food footprint, and accordingly I am trying out vegetarianism for my class project, and have just completed week one. Going vegetarian alone will cut four acres off of my footprint.

In the “medium” term, such as in the next few years, I plan to reduce my footprint by reducing my waste output and eventually moving into an apartment, where I will have more control over where my food comes from and what goods I purchase to use. While my short-term plan of going vegetarian may or may not last, I am confident that I will be able to reduce my meat consumption significantly, if not completely.

In the long term, after college, I would like to live in a city. While growing my own food may be difficult, hopefully I will be able to take part in a community garden or at least have access to farmers’ markets. Living in an apartment will reduce my housing footprint, and biking or taking the metro around the city will keep my transportation footprint low.

Overall, this process was frustrating and while I’m not entirely convinced it accurately describes my footprint, it was worthwhile and opened my eyes to many aspects of my consumption that I rarely considered. As I grow older and begin to settle into a lifestyle after college, aspects of the process of foot printing will influence the choices I make and the way I consume.

Trash Inventory

I never really thought about how much I throw away, and not just paper. Tossing an empty container or a bit of tinfoil is something that happens out of habit and ignorant bliss. As part of an ongoing effort to make my lifestyle more sustainable, recognizing exactly what I use up was the first step, and toward that end I recorded everything I threw away for an entire week.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would I turn out to be like the average American, throwing away 4.6 lbs of garbage a day[1]? Would my habit of getting food to go push me over that amount, or would my bare bones college lifestyle land me below average?

This is what I ended up throwing away last week:

While I was recording my garbage amount, I felt like I wasn’t writing very much down, but when I tallied it at the end of the week, I realized that even a little bit each day adds up. While I am well below the average of 4.6 pounds a day (I probably had less than 4.6 pounds for the whole week, and much of it was recycled), over time my garbage will add up and add significantly to landfills.

The issue of only seeing our impacts in small doses leads to the mindset that it doesn’t much matter what we do because we are such a small part of the world. I didn’t think I was producing that much trash when I only saw the amount for each day, but when I added it up at the end of the week, I realized that it was quite a lot. Many people don’t think about how all the miles they drive and all the plastic they consume and throw away adds up to full landfills and global warming because each individual decision they make, such as whether to ride the bus a couple miles to the mall or to take a car, doesn’t make much of an impact. It’s the aggregate of all of those decisions that determines one’s effect on the environment, and many people fail to think about that.

Most of the garbage I produced had to do with the transportation of food, such as cups, wrappers, and containers. It is easy to get a bagel in a bag with a small container of cream cheese and disposable knife, and when one lives in the dorms, it is the only way to get food to eat later. Since I am not allowed to take food out the dining halls and I do not have space to store food in my room, I am forced to use the take out options if I want to eat anywhere but in the dining halls. On occasion, the option is available to bring your own supplies, like your own cup to get coffee. However, as soon as I realized that bringing my own cup would mean carrying it around all day, as I go straight from breakfast to class, and washing it everyday in the common bathrooms, I went back to getting paper cups and throwing them away.

We toss these resources because we are forced to make the decision between having more time in the present and having a trash filled planet in the future, and humans really blow at planning ahead. What is one more coffee cup in the landfill if it means we don’t have to do as much work now? The immediate benefits of disposables appear to outweigh seemingly miniscule long-term consequences, but those small consequences add up and create big problems.

[1] Annenberg Foundation. Garbage. Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/intro.html