What if I told you the biggest contributor to death and pollution in the United States wasn’t cars or cancer or clickbait, but rather cheeseburgers and other foodstuffs? Yes, we love food, but if we we really care about the world we’d ban eating.
I know what you’re thinking: “Can’t we just make food safer and healthier and better through regulation and technological advancement? Clearly we can’t ban food!” You are wrong. We must ban eating. We can, and we should. I’m not saying it would be easy, but there are clear and better alternatives.
Reports show that the production of food leads to insane amounts of pollution, specifically when it comes to raising livestock. According to the UN, roughly 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to livestock like cows and goats and delicious horses.
But that’s not all, the CDC says that in the United States nearly 611,105 deaths can be attributed to heart disease, compared to just 33,804 annually for cars. The amount of money we’re spending every year so you can enjoy those fatty horse steaks is just too much. It’s irresponsible to eat.
And there are alternatives.
As this Fusion article points out, young smart tech entrepreneurs have figured it out and have created a healthy and cheap alternative: Soylent! Soylent is a powdered food product that maybe makes you feel great, probably tastes like it could be food, and has no real side effects. I’m pretty sure in the year or so since that Fusion article ran most people have switched over to drinking all their food, although I just hastily Googled shit to support a premise I’d already decided on before writing an article so I can’t be 100 percent sure that’s true.
Sure, we have a lot of people who work in the food industry and who serve hamburgers or whatever, but a lot of people used to drive carriages and they became cab drivers. Hamburger flippers can become cab drivers, too.
While it’s possible that we’ll see a long term transition to liquid-based super diets as the impacts of eating real food become obvious, we can really only assure that the grey paste we’ll be eating is of high quality if we ban actual eating.
It’s a hard thing to swallow, I know (Pun!).
I love eating. Nothing is better than slurping down noodles slathered in a rich, meaty equine bolognese. But I can’t be trusted to make good decisions, which means no one else can. As I typed this I’ve actually consumed six packets of Jack’s Super Salty Pony Jerky and had a minor myocardial infarction.
Don’t let this happen to you!
As the guy who made Soylent has made clear, food is objectively inferior to a goopy, semen-like stew. Food has made us lazy and wasteful:
We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. I have no use for bulging biceps. No one in the United States plows fields or hammers steel by hand. It has all been automated. We need mental strength. We need creativity, patience, discipline, and humility. If people had more self-control obesity would take care of itself.
Exactly.
President Obama and Oprah and Congress and Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon should ban eating. Fuck, that last dude has Ban in his name.
BAN FOOD!
Contact the author at matt@jalopnik.com. Photo Credit: AP