Two more days left for our plege project, but the work will indeed continue and we are still very happy to start a pledge period with new volunteers! For those who have just discovered this blog, Meaty Matters is part of a university project from Denmark that’s looking at our relation to meat in general, and the impact this has on our environment – the imbalance of nitrogen in particular. We’ve been conducting a pledge period with several volunteers who have been eating less or no meat for at least 4 weeks, and telling us about how it’s going for them. Our project is in cooperation with Cork Environmental Forum and with Cork Healthy Cities, and we’re going to be uploading a lot of this material on the Horsens Healthy Cities website in Denmark later in the year.
European Healthy Cites Network is part of the World Health Organization and has several strategies for, logically enough, making life more healthy for the citizens of the member city. We’ve come to Cork because the Cork Healthy Cities program (http://corkhealthycities.com/ ) is working together with the Cork Food Policy Council and the Cork Environmental Forum, all of which are run by active and very helpful people. They’ve graciously opened their website and facebook pages for our blog project and given us extensive information about how the Irish nutritional situation is looking.
Turns out, according to the Irish Universities Nutrition Alliance, that over 98 percent of you Irish love your meat, mostly beef and bacon, as our little survey a few weeks ago indicated. And at 71 grams daily, adults under 65 on average eat more than they should. Unfortunately, almost half of the female population aren’t getting enough iron.
While almost a quarter of the iron Irish women get is from meat, less than 5 percent comes from grains, beans, legumes, etc., all of which are a good alternate source of nutrients and fiber. And we all need fiber, especially the 77 percent of the population who aren’t getting enough. So check out some vegetarian recipies, ladies, or substitute some of that minced beef with cooked quinoa, lentils, or the like!
On the other hand, who are we to tell you that? Denmark has a much higher average of meat consumption, and our factory farm production is less healthy than much of the Irish grass-fed beef and lamb. Sorry, but this must be a case of do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do….
Send us any tips or comments about the meat-eating situation in Ireland. We only have a couple of days left for this blog, but the project will continue!