IS DIET TREND A NEW FAD OR COURSE CORRECTION?

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Is being vegetarian or vegan the next fad or is the trend driven by an awareness of how certain practices are harming the planet?

Young artists, actors, authors and musicians profiled in recent issues of Desi News in the Meet section have picked going meat-free or consuming less meat as one of the ways to help our planet.

A sampling of what some of them had to say on tips to save the planet. 

Priyana (April 2023): I think if people tried to be a little bit more vegetarian in their everyday lives, that could help the environment a lot!

AP X (May 2023): Perfect the taste and texture of lab grown meats.

Krishma Tuli (June 2023): Save the ocean floors from fishermen destroying vital sea life by spreading awareness.

Sonya Faruqi wrote a whole book on it. The Grant’s Desi Achiever was so troubled by what she witnessed on factory farms that she went on covert missions – often at great personal risk – to uncover unethical and frankly gut-wrenching practises which she later wrote about in her acclaimed book, Project Animal Farm.

She grew up in a meat-eating family but turned vegan and though she claims no part in her husband following suit, he gave up eating meat, too.

But it’s not about getting people to go meatless, she says, it’s about raising awareness about the toll massive scale farming operations have on the animals and their ecological impact.

An article by Bill Kearney in The South Florida Sun Sentinel details how alarm bells are going off in the scientific community at the levels of drugs being found in fish.

“Redfish, one of the most popular and delicious inshore gamefish in Florida, are contaminated with pharmaceuticals... The research states that pharmaceuticals enter bays and estuaries through wastewater discharge, sewage leaks and spills, and seepage from septic tanks.

“Ninety-four per cent of the redfish sampled had pharmaceuticals in their systems, and 26 per cent had concentrations in their blood that researchers consider to be concerning.

“A study found cardiovascular medications, opioid pain relievers and psychoactive medications and more.”

 In fish.

“Researchers also detected flupentixol, which is used to treat schizophrenia and psychosis, at above safe levels in 20 per cent of the redfish sampled. Caffeine was also quite common, found in 43 per cent of the fish.

“These can delay hatching and increase boldness and asocial behaviours in fish...Caffeine causes fish to explore less and move erratically. It can also cause skeletal deformations. Other drugs found in the redfish induce aggression and muscle weakness, and cause tissue damage, and suppress escape reflexes and reduce fertility. In other words, the stuff we flush down the toilet can become a stew of potential problems in the fish’s bloodstream.”

A scientist quoted in the article was particularly concerned about the vast unknown of drug interactions within the fish.

Prescription drugs and even over-the-counter medications come with warning of drug interactions – don’t take this if you are taking that, and so forth. There are no such warning labels for the poor fish. 

“The paper said the fish are exposed to the drugs both through passing water over their gills, and by eating prey, such as shrimp and crabs, that have been exposed.”

While Kearney writes that “you would have to eat 48,000 redfish filets to consume a full dose of haloperidol, the schizophrenia/ psychosis treatment that had the highest concentration levels found in this study,” it is troubling, nonetheless.

Specially if you factor in what David Suzuki wrote about biomagnification in The Legacy.

“Then extremely high levels of DDT were found in the breasts and milk of women. The explanation was a phenomenon called biomagnification, or the increase in concentration of a substance as it moves up the food chain. Thus, while an insecticide might be sprayed at low concentrations, micro-organisms absorbed and concentrated the molecules. When the micro-organisms were eaten by larger organisms, concentration was amplified again. So in top predators like raptors and humans, pesticide concentrations could be hundreds of thousands of times greater than when the pesticide was sprayed.”

So even those who don’t really care about what happens to Florida’s redfish or the insects in our gardens should perhaps be concerned about the levels of dangerous, toxic stuff they are consuming when they consume fish that has consumed what we dish out.

Suzuki was inspired by the Aboriginal way of life and thinking, as he wrote in another book, The Sacred Balance. Aboriginal people do not believe that they end at their skin or fingertips. The Earth as mother is real to them... The aboriginal sense of the interconnection of everything in the world is also readily demonstrable and irrefutable scientifically.

Kabir’s immortal lines come to mind.

Jaise bhojan khaiye

Taisa hi man hoye

Jaisa paani peejiye

Taisi baani soye

The mystic poet-saint was talking about the impact of what we consume six centuries ago.

You are what you eat is a not-so-new concept.