Agreed that the LA city council is composed of idiots and are elected by voters who are even dimmer than they are. However, my inclination is to stop on the way home from the office for a burger or two. By the way, apple juice is fructose which does not require insulin to digest. Most fruit juices can be enjoyed without the body needing to produce insulin.

Is there any evidence that eating less meat is associated with a greater risk of diabetes? Is there any evidence that the meal that they are going to replace the usual Monday meal with is going to be high in starch or carbohydrates?

Isn't there a lot of evidence that decreasing meat consumption does decrease one's carbon footprint? Given that you drive a prius, Amy, don't you at least agree with this goal of the council?

Bar Sinister, best to not weigh in on things you don't know about. Apple juice is terrible for you. I am on deadline and my Time Warner "turbo" is more like Time Warner dialup today, so can't look up references for this now. Perhaps someone else will post them.

Do a search on the web and you'll find lots of evidence to show that type 2 diabetes can be reversed by being on plant based diet. Going meat-free for one day a week might not make much impact on one's health ( bit like a smoker reducing from 20 a day to 19 a day) but it's a start. And yes, it is better for the planet to reduce meat intake.

And yes, it is better for the planet to reduce meat intake.

The usual claim is: feeding grain to cows to grow meat is less efficient that eating the grain directly.

The problem with this reasoning is: cattle can graze natural fields and pastures, and in much of the country they do. They do not eat grain for most of their lives, and hence the reasoning above does not apply.

Further, the cattle arguably serve a very important purpose: maintaining parts of the Great Plains, which was once the job of the buffalo herds. In the absence of grazing, the pastures would turn into scrub.

Calling people idiots isn't the best way to educate. You're mean instead of edgy more and more often. And while lack of starch may be good for ones bmi, it's terrible for ones mood. Please eat a sweet potato or something.

The usual claim is: feeding grain to cows to grow meat is less efficient that eating the grain directly.

I love it when vegits/vegans try this.
My argument is if it takes four pounds of grain to create one pound of meat with the correct balance of nutrients, wouldnt humans would need to eat four pounds of grain to get the same amount of nutrients?

Besides humans arent herbivores, we dont have the digestive tract, enzymes, or bacteria to process plant matter. What vegitation we do eat is usually the fertilised ovum which is designed to rapidly decay to provide the embbeded seeds nutrient rich material to foster growth of a new plant.

The Vegetarian Myth

http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarian-Myth-Sustainability-ebook/dp/B003PJ7JXY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1352734669&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Vegetarian+Myth

Only a small fraction of the sugar in apple juice is fructose.

Don't worry about the LA City Council. Being part of the problem, their economic policies will have you ALL meatless in no time.

Word to snoosnoo: life is mean. There is only so much nutritive value in bullshit, generated by everyone who has read a magazine article, and I'm tired of it, too. There's only so many times one can say, "Sorry, but that's not true", then fight a war against the expert claiming ear candling works, Bush flew into the WTC and fat girls are hot before you just cut them off at once.

And it is the City Council's job to tell people what to eat why?

Exactly. Who made it ANY City Council's job to tell people what to eat?

Fact: Ain't nobody's bidness what you eat 'cept you and your doctor. And even your doctor can be wrong sometimes. Your city council is no better, and in fact, probably way less educated than your doctor. Unless they have doctors on the city council? Hmmm? No? Then shut up, city council.

Snoosnoo? Amy didn't call anyone an idiot, and she wasn't being mean. She only told Bar Sinister it was "best not to weigh in things you don't know about". People spout off about things they don't know about all the time. She's just trying to educate some of us.

Maybe YOU'RE the one who needs to eat a sweet potato.

I can really do without social-director busybodies either within or without office.

Easy-peasy for any bloggers or j-school students who want to make a quick splash: Go to council next week, follow councilmembers to lunch and take note of what they order.

"Isn't there a lot of evidence that decreasing meat consumption does decrease one's carbon footprint?"

Ehhhhh, it depends on the set of assumptions you use. If you're assuming that you're eating a grain-finished cow instead of corn from the same location, then yes, it probably would reduce your carbon footprint. However, doing without meat wouldn't decrease your footprint if instead you were eating fresh vegetables from Argentina because it's wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere. Nor would it be decreasing your carbon footprint if you were instead eating a frozen vegetarian lasagna sourced from who knows where, processed, and then shipped again.

"...it is better for the planet to reduce meat intake."

Raising cattle done right - in a cow-friendly, pasture raised, grass finished method - is tremendously nourishing for the fields where they live. They do not tear up the grasses' roots and they can add nitrogen and nutrient rich topsoil by inches. Cows are also amazingly good at turning food we can't eat from land we can't farm into food we can eat. They can even reverse desertification in some biomes.
http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2011/06/greener-pastures/

Farming done right - crop rotating, modern plants to maximize output - is tremendously damaging to fields and the environment. They strip nitrogen and nutrients from the soil. For all the numbers about how much rainforest is lost to cow farming, here in America we have about 1% of the prairie land left (and less than 0.1% of the tallgrass prairies). The rest has been plowed under to make farms. That doesn't include waterways rerouted for irrigation, chemical fertilizers trucked in, pesticides sprayed, or the millions of native creatures that are killed in every harvest.

"you'll find lots of evidence to show that type 2 diabetes can be reversed by being on plant based diet"

Oreos and Mountain Dew are plant based - vegan in fact.

Eating plants is as much murder as eating meat. That's why I'm a Sunnist. I get all my nutrients from the sun.

Amy. I don't know if blog is making money for you nowadays, but you've been kicking editorial ass lately.

Purplepen, I know you're being facetious but Breatharianism is actually a thing. (A pants-on-head-stupid thing)

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/breatharian.htm

If you have to explain to a grown adult that they need to eat to stay alive, they're to stupid to be worth talking to or saving.

Darwinism at work.

"By the way, apple juice is fructose which does not require insulin to digest. Most fruit juices can be enjoyed without the body needing to produce insulin. "

VERY wrong. Fructose is hard on the liver especially in concentrated forms. It may not give the same immediate insulin response; however, it is a fat producer. Fruit juice is one of the worst things to drink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

"I'm becoming a vegetarian ... not because I love animals, but because I hate plants." ~ Unknown

=========================

As of the last election, single-payer healthcare is the law of the land.

The federal government will be that single-payer.

Get ready for a lot more legislation telling you what you can eat, drink, and smoke - and how much - coming from all levels of government.

meatless Mondays? How about soon to be mealless days!

Hey, LA Council - no jobs - no meat - there that fixed that "problem."

Maybe all the depressed and anxious among us just need to get more ketones to their brains.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201104/your-brain-ketones

(Hi there, Raddy!)

Fructose may not directly trigger the release of insulin, but it's very rapidly converted to glucose and fat in the liver. Then it does increase insulin and contributes to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and obesity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20086073

"Get ready for a lot more legislation telling you what you can eat, drink, and smoke - and how much - coming from all levels of government."

This. Today it's just "advice", but tomorrow it will be rationing. (The elites, of course, will have exemptions.)