Things you didn't know until very recently...

I didn't know that the dollar sign ($) was originally the letter "U" superimposed over the letter "S", standing for "United States".

I didn't know that grass farming > corn farming. Corn farming is seriously bad for the economy and the environment.

The US government subsidizes corn farmers to cause overproduction in the corn market. Corn prices fall and small farmers are put out of business, since the only way to make up the difference is to ''sell more corn''. Those who do plant and harvest more corn drive corn prices even lower. Failure Is the Only Option, indeed.

To help offset the cheap corn problem, the entire US food industry has tried to come up with as many uses for corn as possible, even branching into other industries = feed for livestock, ethanol-based fuel, artificial sweeteners, heck you could probably make anything out of corn. Since it's so cheap, the food industry now makes everything out of processed corn.

Also, they feed chicken poop to cows.

How could they feed chicken poop to cows? I mean... do they just use it as fertilizer for the grass which the cows eat? That I can understand... but... feed cows chicken poop?

Apparently they grind up anything that's either cheap, full of protein, or both, grind it up, and mix it with the grain they feed to cows.

They also used to feed cows ground-up parts of other cows. Technically it's banned now, but loopholes allow them to use cow fat still. Not only is it cannibalism, but cows are herbivores.

A lot of stuff goes into animal feed. Bonemeal (which is what it sounds like) was a popular additive, for example, until it was identified as a mad cow vector.

And there's the trick of feeding ground-up cattle to chickens, and feeding the ground-up chickens to cattle...

Wah!

EDIT The author of the book I was reading took a Mc Donald's meal to get analyzed in a mass spectrometer. Every item (salad, drinks, fries, burger, chicken nuggets) turned out at least 20% corn. The soda was 100% high fructose corn syrup.

edited 11th Jun '09 4:42:58 PM by melloncollie

Christ.

I learned that this is a very good time to go vegetarian. Oh great, are you guys going to squick me out of that one too?

edited 11th Jun '09 4:42:19 PM by Metacifer

1. That Laurel and Bay were the same plant. 2. That those huge bumblebees in my garden are social (I thought they were one of the solitary species) and live in a big, subterranean base next to my fruit bushes.

I love my garden. It teaches me loads of stuff.

I learned that a holographic will has nothing to do with holograms. (It's a handwritten will written by the testator with no witnesses)

Well, in biology you learn that 90% of the energy in the food you eat is lost as heat, metabolic processes, etc. So when you eat a cow, you only get 1% of the original energy the grass got from the sun. If you just eat the plants, skip the middleman animal, you get 10%.

Disclaimer: my numbers may be off, it's been a long time...

Of course, that's assuming the cow's grass fed.

Now if the cow was fed by chickens who were fed by cows who were fed by chickens who were fed by pigs who were fed by other pigs, the energy it would get would be only- *head explodes*

edited 11th Jun '09 4:48:46 PM by melloncollie

Being vegetarian sounds really really good now. If I learnt anything in my major, it's that being a vegetarian is not only more healthy and less squicky, but also it helps the environment because there are much more plants than animals and energy we get from an animal is, as mentioned, is acquired by eating 10x our consumption.

Well, vegetarianism is healthier than the average American diet. It isn't healthier than a properly balanced diet. As for squick...well, we banned most of that stuff over here. But, yeah, cut down on the beef. As much as I love cows, I'd rather not replace all the world's forest with fields for breeding them.

edited 11th Jun '09 5:02:05 PM by Inverurie Jones

Point taken, but it's more energy-efficient to just eat plants instead of passing them through animals first. ...Or So I Heard.

That the [+ +] markup has a limiting cap, but if you manage to get just below that limiting cap it can screw up the forum's format. I did a test over at the sandbox.

(This is something that needs to be fixed, obviously...)

edited 11th Jun '09 5:29:12 PM by Eriksson

To buggery with the environment, I like my beef. Even though I don't actually eat very much of it.

How do fish fit in to this? For the purposes of the exercise, assume sustainable fishing stocks.

The massive amounts of fertilizer used to grow the corn to feed livestock washes down rivers and eventually into the ocean, causing an algae bloom that kills most fish. Pesticides, which are basically poison, also get into rivers, lakes, and the ocean. God knows what harm they do.

They make it so people can have all the corn syrup and beef they want!

Hooray! We're all going to die because of bloody sweetcorn!

• Is miffed*

We're all going to die sooner or later.

EDIT The book I was reading is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

edited 11th Jun '09 5:59:07 PM by melloncollie

And now we get to take everyone and everything else with us! WIN!

edit: How far are you in The Omnivore's Dilemma? What do you think about it?

edited 11th Jun '09 5:59:51 PM by English Ivy

Yes, but I don't want to get poisoned by the nefarious minions of the Green Giant, thankyou very much!

Seriously, though: permaculture is the way forward. No nasty chemicals and four times the yield.

edited 11th Jun '09 6:02:18 PM by Inverurie Jones

Well, vegetarianism is healthier than the average American diet. It isn't healthier than a properly balanced diet.

Are you implying that a vegetarian diet can't be "properly balanced?"

Personally, I don't eat meat because it messes up my digestion, so vegetarianism works better for me. Plus, I think most meats are kinda gross as it is, and not just for the reasons listed above.