See Hans.
See Hans skip.
Skip, Hans, skip.
Why is Hans skipping?
Because he is a happy, healthy, frugal, green-minded vegetarian.
Or at least his country’s federal environment agency is begging him to be– both for the sake of the planet, and presumably his health, and his wallet.
According to a January 23rd article in the Guardian, it appears that there is a quasi-moratorium on schnitzel consumption in Germany, a nation that, since the end of the war, has ratcheted up the quantity of meat it eats. I thought we Americans were bad; the article indicates that Germans get 39% of their total calorie intake from meat or meat products. Of course, what goes with schnitzel and wurst? Potatoes. Noodles. Spaetzle. Sweet and sour red cabbage. Strudel from the long-closed Mrs. Herbst Bakery in Manhattan. All the stuff that I love. But that’s not on the table for discussion.
What is, though, is the plea from Andreas Troge, president of the government’s advisory board on environmental issues, to limit meat consumption to special occasions, like the Sunday roast, and to take it off the daily menu of the average German. Why? Troge, like Mark Bittman, points to greenhouse gases, and the hideous effect on the environment that industrial meat productions appears to have. The flipside, of course, is that industrial meat production results in vaster quantities of the stuff, at cheaper prices. And if you’re trying to put food on the table in this economy, odds are, you’re going to go cheap. So what does a health-minded, environmentally-conscious, food-loving shopper on a limited budget do?
A few posts ago, I commented on a shopping trip I took to my local supermarket; days before a major storm the place was jam-packed with shoppers filling their carts with enormous shoulders of pork, gigantic packs of chicken and beef, whole legs of lamb, all at outrageously low prices. Wheeling over to the vegetable section, I was stunned: it was empty. Not a soul. Crickets. It spoke volumes.
Will the average meat-loving German (or American) change their ways? Will schnitzel seitan suddenly start to show up in German markets the way, say, Tofu Pups and veggie burgers have infiltrated American meat cases?
Only time will tell.
