Where Can I Get a Good Burger?
Where Can I Get a Good Burger?
Exploring responsible meat production, meat alternatives, and the joy of veggies through the lens of a Disney theme park.
Some Time in School Last Week
Welcome back to Quarantine Creatives! I didn’t have a chance to publish last week as I was away with my family on a staycation in Rhode Island. We spent a few nights in a renovated schoolhouse that my wife found on Air BnB. If you click the photo above, you can read more and see additional photos from the trip on my Instagram.
Speaking of vacations, today I have an essay about the various ethical and environmental considerations that go into a simple decision, like what to eat for lunch in a theme park. This may seem like a silly premise, but I’m hoping it can make this otherwise dense topic a little more accessible, or at least a little more fun.
My relationship to food is always evolving, and I want to share some of the things I’ve learned, along with some resources, with the hope that it will inspire you to learn more and give even simple meals a little more consideration.
How Housing Turned Me Organic
For most of my childhood, food was utilitarian; raw calories that kept the lights on. I didn’t consider diet an important part of my identity until the last decade or so, perhaps because I mostly ate fast food and sugar.
Strangely, what got me eating better was not a desire to be healthier, it was learning more about sustainable home building practices when I worked at This Old House.
Assessing the environmental impacts of the way we build and use our homes isn’t about one big decision, but instead is the sum of many small decisions. The type of windows, the thickness of a wall, the style of insulation, the source of heating and cooling, and the controls of those systems all have an effect on the overall energy performance, and thus sustainability, of a house.
Realizing this about housing also showed me that every decision we make in our lives, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, mattered to my health and the health of the planet, from what car I was driving (and how far and how often) to what I was eating for dinner. This notion continues to shape my perspective, a 15 year learning process so far that I expect will never have a true end.
Looking specifically at dietary choices can be a minefield, in part because they are so complex and very personal. Whether we are omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, or something else, there are a myriad of reasons for those distinctions: cultural, religious, economic, environmental, health, animal welfare, etc.
Vacation Food
As somebody who enjoys spending time in theme parks and also enjoys thinking about his food choices, when I saw this tweet earlier this month, it made me stop scrolling for a moment:
The tweet links to an op-ed piece published in the Orlando Sentinel that describes one of the contradictions of Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park- its dining options.
Animal Kingdom, located at Walt Disney World in Florida, is partially an amusement park and partially a zoo. It has a large veterinary program that cares for the thousands of animals on site. It also serves meat in nearly every form- spit roasted, barbecued, in rich curries, and as burgers.
The editorial contends that if Disney truly cared about animals, they would cease serving meat in the Animal Kingdom theme park. All meat. As soon as possible.
If you need a quick primer on the problems with modern meat, The New York Times recently launched a video series all about this topic. One of the videos looks at the conditions on commercial chicken farms. It provides a very graphic (and rarely seen) depiction of the abuse these birds suffer, while also assessing the challenges of reforming that system:
About 70% of cows, 98% of pigs, and 99% of chickens consumed for meat in the U.S. come from factory farms, so there’s more than a good chance that most of the meat served at Disney is coming from industrial producers like the ones featured in the NYT video. Disney does sell a random smattering of grass-fed beef across their sprawling theme park complex, but it is clearly the exception.
According to the op-ed authors in the Sentinel, the solution is to swap out the meat on the menus with meat alternatives like Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger. They argue that it’s better for animal rights and better for the environment.
The commentators don’t address that there are already Impossible Burgers on offer at several locations in the park, yet meat dishes still dominate menus.
This issue can get complex quickly, so I recommend listening to my conversation with filmmaker and author Diana Rodgers, reading some of the work she’s published on meat alternatives, or watching her film Sacred Cow. As a nutritionist with a farming background, Diana looks at this topic from a health and sustainability point of view.
From a dietary standpoint, these meatless burgers are lower in saturated fat than beef, but higher in sodium. They also use genetically modified ingredients and are highly processed, which some nutritionists shun and others embrace (I tend towards the former in my own diet).
The environmental benefits that faux meat producers tout seem to rely on the assumption that the animal alternatives are being fed industrially produced grains (high in synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides), pumped with antibiotics (necessary when animals are crowded on feedlots), and creating stockpiles of manure that have no use other than to pollute our air and water. These assumptions are true for much of the meat we now consume, but perhaps the problem isn’t that Animal Kingdom serves meat at all, it’s that it serves the wrong meat.
Happy Chickens
Even if you didn’t click on the NYT video above (and you should- it’s a good watch, here’s the link again), you can tell just from the thumbnail that the animals in that video are overcrowded.
Contrast that to the image above, taken at Codman Community Farms, one of several amazing local farms that we have here in Eastern Massachusetts where I have started buying all of my meat. The chickens in my photo have space to move, aren’t living with burns from their own feces, and can walk while supporting their own weight. They are outside in full view of farm visitors, not hidden in windowless barns.
Codman Community Farm (and many other farms like it, including Clark Farm and Lilac Hedge Farm) take a very different approach to raising meat, whether chicken, beef, or pork.
The animals are raised on pastures, where they forage on grasses, insects, and other bugs. Rotational grazing is used, where portable fences control where the animals eat. Their manure stays in the area where it was dropped, fertilizing the ground and making the pastures more productive. It can also be collected, composted, and then used as a natural amendment for food crops.
The animals live a healthy and happy life. It is seriously picturesque. There is no need for antibiotics, as the animals are fed a diet similar to what they would eat in nature and are kept at a lower density where disease is less likely to spread.
Do the animals still have to be killed at some point? Yes, they do. Is that ethical? For much of my life, I felt like Fern in Charlotte’s Web, who saw the killing of a baby pig to be so unjust that she kept him as a pet.
But lately, my perspective on animal slaughter has evolved, in part thanks to Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (shoutout to my aunts who recommended the book).
In this memoir, Kingsolver describes moving to a farm in Virginia and resolving to eat as local as possible for an entire year. Her family is a part of the process too, and it involves growing and preserving food crops, raising chickens for eggs, foraging for mushrooms, and raising poultry (chicken and turkey) for slaughter.
There are many passages that deal with the ethics of killing animals, but I found this one particularly useful:
Most nonfarmers are intimate with animal life in only three categories: people; pets (i.e., junior people); and wildlife (as seen on nature shows, presumed beautiful and rare). Purposely beheading any of the above is unthinkable, for obvious reasons. No other categories present themselves at close range for consideration. So I understand why it's hard to think about harvest, a categorical act that includes cutting the heads off living lettuces, extended to crops that blink their beady eyes. On our farm we don't especially enjoy processing our animals, but we do value it, as an important ritual for ourselves and any friends adventurous enough to come and help, because of what we learn from it. We reconnect with the purpose for which these animals were bred. We dispense with all delusions about who put the live in livestock, and who must take it away.
Kingsolver makes a clear distinction here between wildlife that we see in a zoo like Animal Kingdom and animals that we raise with the intent to slaughter. By removing our agrarian proximity, we may struggle to see that distinction, but from her point of view on the farm, there is a big difference.
Are we treating animals as a means to an end in this scenario when we raise them for meat? Yes, and that could raise some ethical red flags. But Kingsolver, Diana Rodgers, and others would point out that these species co-evolved with humans and our relationship is symbiotic. We provide the animals a place to live, food, and protection from predators. They provide us with fertilizer (manure) and protein (in the form of their edible bodies).
Can Beef Solve Global Warming?
The idea of cows aiding in the fight against global warming sounds really radical, especially since the beef industry has been vilified in the climate change debate (those darn methane-laden cow burps).
As I mentioned, 70% of beef comes from factory farms, so perhaps at least some of the vilification is warranted. I still feel minor pangs of guilt when I eat beef, even when it’s grass-fed from local farms, probably from years of conditioning.
However, I recently watched the film Kiss the Ground (streaming on Netflix), and it flipped my understanding of the role that regenerative farming can have on our planet. It’s a documentary that features stars like Woody Harrelson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mraz, and Tom and Gisele (as a Bostonian, I feel no last names are needed on the last two).
Here’s the trailer:
You’ve probably heard the term “carbon sequestration” used as a way to combat climate change. I always imagined it had something to do with somehow harnessing the carbon in the atmosphere and pumping it into the ground with a contraption resembling an oil derrick, but in reverse. The whole idea seemed very sci-fi and high tech, the purview of folks in lab coats, not overalls.
But the film beautifully and simply shows that carbon sequestration is a natural process that has been happening since life started on this planet and it is done by plants every day.
All plants remove carbon dioxide from the air. The carbon within that carbon dioxide travels through the plant, some of it going to the leaves, flowers, and fruit, but much of it actually going to the roots. From there, the carbon becomes a food source for microbes in the soil, where it can remain for years if undisturbed. When it’s in the soil, it’s not in the atmosphere contributing to global warming.
Modern agricultural techniques like tilling the ground every year releases some of that carbon to the atmosphere and spraying indiscriminate pesticides and herbicides kills the microbes in the soil that helped keep that carbon in place. The conventional way of farming is destroys our natural carbon sequestration machine more every year.
Even if the idea of carbon sequestration is new to you, I think most people understand that more plants and trees = less global warming. So can’t we just grow more food crops and get the same results? Why do we need beef (and all those cow burps) at all?
There are places all around the world that are inhospitable to growing food crops. It may be too hot, too dry, have rocky soil, or have terrain that makes food production difficult. Many of those sites are the right habitat for grass, and thus, pasturing livestock.
The filmmakers show that grazing livestock on grassy pastures can have a beneficial effect on the plants there. The data in the film also suggests that by increasing grazing land and cover crops, we can begin to reverse global warming in our lifetime.
This is not the only solution. We would still need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and transition to renewable sources of energy, work that is (slowly) taking place on a parallel path.
Theme Park as Test Lab
Disney has always been a laboratory for new ideas that vacationers can then take back to their hometowns.
In the early 80s, Epcot Center showcased the latest technological innovations coming from the labs of industry. These days, a large solar farm is located in view of guests and shaped like Mickey Mouse, a gimmicky but attention-grabbing way to showcase the power of renewable energy and provide electricity to the resort complex. For many suburbanites (my own kids included), a trip to Disney may be one of their few experiences with mass transit like buses, monorails, and urban gondolas.
Imagine the impact of forgoing factory farmed beef and instead opting for pasture-raised at a single Disney park like Animal Kingdom! Millions of people per year would be exposed to this idea, and maybe learn a little more about this issue, which is clearly very complex. It may even lead to behavior changes once some of those guests return home.
Another Alternative
As a person who forgoes meat a few nights a week, going meatless for me is not about finding something that gives me the taste and experience of meat without the flesh. Instead, I prefer dishes where vegetables shine on their own merit: a seasonal salad, a plate of roasted root vegetables, or a stir fry with fresh mushrooms and fragrant spices.
At Disney, nearly every entree at every meal has meat as the feature and vegetables relegated to sides. Using sustainable meat is good, but reducing animal proteins at some meals would also help promote health and environmental sustainability. I would love to see Disney incorporate more plant-based entrees that are so good on their own that they don’t need to imitate meat.
If you’ve never been to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, there are areas in the park that are themed to real-world locales like Africa and Asia. The Asian section takes cues from India and Nepal. It also features a pan-Asian restaurant with a meat-heavy menu, including Indian inspired dishes like Chicken Tikka Masala.
Americans eat plenty of Indian-inspired entrees like aloo gobi (cauliflower with potatoes), bhindi masala (okra cooked in spices), or saag paneer (spinach and cheese) that are completely vegetarian. Imagine if more entrees like this made their way onto Disney menus, in flavorful ways that would make people not even consider that they’re missing meat.
In the case of Animal Kingdom, serving these dishes would reduce overall meat consumption (whether factory-farmed or pastured) and fit the theme of the park in an authentic way.
The First Steps
If this is your first time diving into the issues of factory meat, pastured meat, and faux meat, I really appreciate you sticking with me for this long. As I stated at the beginning, this is a complex issue that I have tried to make as succinct and accessible as possible.
If you have time, scroll up and find a video to watch, a link to click on, or a book that you want to add to your reading list. Education is the first step towards action. It may take a long time before you get where you want to be (remember, I’ve been learning about these topics for 15 years now and still barely know anything), but the most important action is taking some kind of first step.
I also know this is a departure from the usual content of the newsletter, but I’m hoping to start exploring broader topics like this from time to time that are of interest to me, even if they’re outside the realm of media and entertainment. Would that be of interest? Let me know!
If you have questions, comments, thoughts, ideas, or anything else that you’d like to share, please feel free to email me anytime.
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Stay Safe!
Heath
Excellent research and presentation. I have been vegan for about 14 months. I only recently started purchasing some frozen processed meat alternatives. I did this knowing that they are processed and just trying to ignore the implications of what we might be ingesting. After reading this article I'll forgo the convenience of processed foods and get back to making my meat alternatives from scratch. Thanks for the info! And I'm glad you enjoyed Batbara Kingsolver's book. That's my next project, to try a year of vegan seasonal eating.