Skip to main content

Meatless Monday

Chris and I gave up meat for Lent, and since Easter we have started eating it again; however, we have cut back quite a bit. We often go meatless several days each week, and today was one of those days. The ironic thing was that I spent most of the day working on a case study about pork production--specifically, on Chipotle's use of naturally raised, antibiotic-free pork. The evolution of agriculture over the past century has been drastic, and while some of the practices have had unintended detrimental consequences for animal, environmental, and human health, the farmers I know (my wonderful grandfather, uncles, and cousins) are conscientious people whose livelihood has come from raising healthy animals and abundant crops to feed people all over the U.S. and around the world...so I'm confident that continued improvements are ahead.

 My studies of population and environmental health, clinical medicine, and now food technology, have led me to believe that reduced meat consumption and eating "lower on the food chain" is one of the best things a person can do to improve his or her overall health while reducing the impacts of food production on the environment. This is not to say that we should abandon farmers or demonize all meat products. Rather, we should try to be aware of what we are eating and what went into its production. In the words of Michael Pollan, we should: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

{Meatless Monday: a health initiative started in
the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health}
(this school is definitely top ten!)
Sometimes Chris and I use the Catholic definition of meatless, meaning that we eat fish...and other times we use the lacto-ovo-vegetarian definition. Either way, I am very lucky to have a husband who is an amazing cook...but I do think "anyone can cook," as long as you have good recipes, the right ingredients, and no fear!
(I do have fear, which is why I'm glad to have Chris...but if I were married to a non-cook, I think I would work to overcome that fear in order to eat well!) 

{a delicious salade nicoise by Chris}
Labels:
Location: Baltimore, MD, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

For my dad

{Dad, third from right, breaking ground at the site of his clinic, ~1987.} On June 24, I graduated from family medicine residency and became the fourth family physician/general practitioner in three generations of Dorwarts. A week later, on July 1, our family gathered in Sidney, Nebraska, to celebrate my dad's retirement after 35 years as a family physician there. I couldn't be prouder of the work my dad has done throughout his career, his dedication to our hometown, his persistence through difficult times, and his unwavering insistence on doing the right thing even when it's not the easy thing. Even though I considered forays into surgery and gynecologic oncology (among other things), I am happy to have found my way to family medicine and to my father's footsteps. Although my dad worked long hours throughout my childhood, I never felt like I was missing out because I appreciated the importance of what he was doing. My perception was that he was spending his d...
Post a Comment
Read more

5 years later

Somehow five years have passed since I finished residency and since my dad's retirement party (though he had the party, he has yet to fully  retire). The passage of time is a funny thing...often when I'm running behind in my clinic schedule or when a patient arrives at 10:30 for their 8:15 appointment, I'll say something about time being a social construct or, "What even is time?" One of my coworkers and I often misquote Friedrich Nietzsche by saying, "Time is a square circle," which is our way of saying that time is meaningless or nonsensical. (I have just emerged from a deep dive into the Friedrich Nietzsche Wikipedia page where I learned or was reminded that the actual quote is "time is a flat circle" meaning essentially that history repeats itself.) Philosophies about the nature of time notwithstanding, for some reason I've decided to write a post. (Incidentally, I now have a 3-year-old daughter who occasionally uses the phrase "...
1 comment
Read more

From Valentine's Day to International Women's Day

On Valentine’s Day, as I was walking back toward the hospital after buying a Coke from the Red Cross canteen (a little shop adjacent to the hospital “car park” where they sell snacks, soft drinks, and sadza ), a man about my age walked briskly toward me, saying, “Hi doc, I’m sorry to interrupt you but can I ask a personal question?” My mind jumped to: where’s the rash? Instead, he continued, “It’s about my wife. She was admitted to the labour ward for an induction today, but now they’re sending her back to the antepartum ward because she isn’t having contractions.” (The labour ward has a strict no visitors policy, which also means no husbands.Throughout the rest of the hospital, visitors are only allowed for two hour-long periods each day.)  He went on to tell me about the recent course of his wife’s pregnancy, and I was becoming curious about what the “personal question” would be. After a few minutes, he asked simply, “Do you think she’ll be okay? Do you think the baby will be ...
2 comments
Read more