2009 Project: Meatlog and Soda-log
I’m not the kind of person to make New Year’s resolutions, but the opportunity for self-renewal is tempting. As such, I have decided that:
- I will try as hard as I can within reason to not drink soda. What does this mean? If I go out to eat, I won’t order a soda. I won’t drink soda at home. I won’t take a free soda if they’re offered at work. The only times I will drink soda is if there’s no other option available (unlikely, but possible at a few restaurants). I will post catalog every soda I drink so that it may be a mark of shame. As such, I will make a post on this very blag so readers will know how well I’m doing. I will call this effort Soda-log (as Sodalog doesn’t quite look right).
- I will record every time I eat meat. This will actually be less strict than the whole Soda-log, as I know I will be eating some meat at holidays. We also have an entire turkey in the freezer that my wife’s work handed out at Thanksgiving. We also have plenty of leftovers from the other turkey we already cooked the day after Thanksgiving (she took one from a friend who wasn’t going to use it). I will try to oder vegetarian dishes at restaurants when possible. I will call this effort Meatlog (appetizing, don’t you think?). Fish counts as meat, in this context. Eggs and dairy do not.
My main motivations for these projects are sustainability and health. Meat production uses a disproportionate amount of resources compared to the production of fruits and vegetables. Soda is made from high fructose corn syrup, which is of course made from corn. The production of corn is the cornerstone of the modern agriculture industry, and there are many bad environmental effects of producing so much corn for such useless purposes as feeing livestock and making sugar when all that land could be used to more efficiently grow food directly for humans, or to be returned to the wild. The health effects of soda and meat consumption are well-known so I won’t go into them.
Links:
