Quite frankly, as a vegan who is transitioning towards local food sources and away from store-bought (imported) goods, I'm recognizing how much of a disconnect there is between the messaging that hails veganism as the ecologically sustainable option and the reality.
@siin I totally hear you here. I live in grow zone 4, which means the entire growing season is 90 days, and my options are severely limited. I'd say its neigh impossible to eat vegan sustainably all year in my climate
@Cat_LeFey Yes, and as was pointed out elsewhere in the replies, preserving foods while they're in season is a massive help and was crucial for people in those zones prior to the global shipping of produce and the availability of ready canned goods. However, to claim that this is the entire nutritional story for everyone is to ignore the reality of people who inhabited, say, modern day Michigan, or Alaska. There's a reason that the native diets of the inhabitants of these areas rely on animal protein, especially in the winter.
@SpiritBearDreaming@Cat_LeFey Please don't apologize, this was lovely. It's fascinating to consider how recently our diets changed, how recently our packaging has changed, and how recently everything has begun to have been shipped from across the world to land on our grocery shelves. Those grocery stores you mentioned probably got everything they had from within a few states at most, but maybe I'm wrong.
I lived in Michigan for a long time, and most of the people there who grew up during the same time period canned and hunted to get through the winter. My grandfather grew up on a small farm, and by the time he'd married my grandmother and joined the military, they ate differently. But when he was a kid, nearly everything they ate or used came from their property. The exceptions were mostly clothing, shoes, tools, and glassware.
You're absolutely right: most meals would have been vegetarian. Meat with every meal is a recent invention in most places on earth, and in my opinion it's way too much. We've begun adding in some meat and eggs (maybe a meal or two a week with meat OR eggs) because we found a local ranch to purchase meat from for our dog, and generally it's more cost effective to buy more meat when already purchasing quantity, and freezing some for the next weeks than to purchase some meat alternatives (I make a lot of my own meat alternatives, like falafel, and get a lot of our protein from legumes and vegetables, but some of the protein-rich nuts and legumes we get we have to order online and can't source locally, which does feel like a sustainability issue I haven't come up with a solution for yet).
You bring up an interesting point also: eating local, in the modern era, is not ideal for everyone. We're lucky enough to live in California and have access to organic staple crops year-round, and an overabundance of vegetables in the summer and spring that are easily preserved for the slightly sparser winter months. However, where people used to supplement their diets with hunting, regulation and disease makes that way of life difficult or impossible for many now. I know that in Michigan, it's recommended to not eat venison because wasting disease has become so rampant. A lot of hunters there are simply doing it for sport, and population control to try to manage the disease vector (the deer). So I certainly recognize that eating local is a privilege, and urge anyone to consider their level of access before taking anything I say as "this is the only Way To Be Good".
I could definitely rant about the plastic thing for a while, though, so I won't even touch that topic right now. But yes, you're right. We try to avoid as much as possible. It seems like the industrial food system couldn't exist without it, though, so unfortunately I don't think its overuse is going away anytime soon.
Thank you again for your thoughts and if you've read this far into my rambling response, thank you :)
@siin@SpiritBearDreaming I'm actually enjoying these long posts about little family histories, this is great! As a yooper, I can confirm that yes, there are still a lot of people living off the land here in Michigan, almost every home still has a garden and does canning. Hunting is considered a rite of passage. The first day of hunting season is a public holiday, and the kids even get a day off school, so they can go hunting.
@arratoon Ultimately, the broader issues of sustainability aren't solved by arguing vegan vs. not vegan. It is more complicated, but also, in a way, simpler. To really answer the sustainability issue, we have to answer issues of industrialization and globalization and reconcile the fact that many of the issues caused by colonization for previously completely self-sustainable locales can't be rectified overnight (or even perhaps in a generation or two).
But, little things, like "I can get butter from a local dairy that ethically raises goats but I can't get coconut oil without some kind of exploitation of [usually] labor & resources in the Philippines or Thailand" can usually be answered by the individual willing to think through things in this way.
In the meantime, enjoy your meal! Sounds lovely :)
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