George Monibot and Gigi Kraynick

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?  I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God.  I could be eating a slow learner.  ~Lynda Montgomery

      George Monibot created a column for The Guardian that addressed the real issue of hunger, the damage meat is causing to the environment, and how not eating meat can do the entire world some good. After reading his article, I felt that my views were quite similar to George's, as well as Gigi Kraynick's! I met Gigi through my environmental issues class, and through several class discussions during our week on the question of the animal, I discovered her views on being a vegetarian and eating meat in general. Gigi is twenty years old and became a vegetarian her sophomore year of college. Like George, Gigi could not be a vegetarian for very long."I have family in France and considered it rude to refuse the food they made me..also I wanted to follow the customs in Morocco and eat what was offered." Gigi says she became a vegetarian not only because of the way meat is processed, but because she feels a difference needs to be made. She considers herself environmentally conscious, which is what I believe aligns her with Monibot. In his column, George states that "for both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out." Gigi would argue that as Americans, we have so many options for food sustanence without eating meat. This is the main point of Monibot's argument. Monibot claims that eating meat is not sustainable for humans in the long run, and that either way you slice it, the equation comes up environmentally unfriendly. He offers some proof based upon the projected population growth and just how much it will take to accommodate out meat endeavors. 

                            "The UN expects the population to rise to 9 billion by 2050. These extra people will require another 325m tonnes of grain. Let us assume, perhaps generously, that politicians such as Ruth Kelly are able to "adjust policy in the light of new evidence" and stop turning food into fuel. Let us pretend that improvements in plant breeding can keep pace with the deficits caused by climate change. We would need to find an extra 225m tonnes of grain. This leaves 531m tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a sustainable consumption level for meat and milk some 30% below the current world rate. This means 420g of meat per person per week, or about 40% of the UK's average consumption."

As you can see, living sustainably and eating meat, according to Monibot and Gigi, don't really fit together. Instead, Monibot suggests being a vegetarian, or eating as little meat as possible. For a meat substitute, Monibot recommends tilapia. It is a freshwater fish that is able to be raised entirely from vegetable matter. It is "about as close as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh eating". Gigi says she tends to stick to oatmeal, salads, rice, beans, and lots of humus. However, when she wants to satisfy her cravings, she says she heads to Sonic. "They don't fry there stuff in animal fat and they will take the meat out of anything you order".