Changing diets to reduce climate change possible

By Letter to the Editor on November 25, 2021.

Editor:
Ranchers and cowboys represent the Alberta brand. This letter probably makes hard core Albertans upset, I’m afraid.
I now know cows are the big producers of methane gas which is a worse greenhouse gas than C02. I heard that when President Ronald Reagan was making fun of environmentalists referring to the gas from the rear end of cows as bad as oil and gas. I didn’t take it seriously then. I thought it was a joke. I wonder if it’s why the menace of methane gas is not mentioned prominently. The Oct. 28 Lethbridge Herald printed an article about “beef” in relation to “climate change.” It was written by Amanda Stephenson of the Canadian Press (Page A5). She says that the beef industry is 30 per cent responsible for emissions of greenhouse gas, because methane gas is better than CO2 at trapping heat. The British weekly Economist (Oct. 2) echoed the same fact.
Ranching goes back a century in Alberta. We have celebrated the “Cow Town” brand during the Calgary Stampede since long before “Oil Patch.” Cow defines Alberta’s identity. It also means that we are facing a big pressure to change our beef-featured diet if we are concerned about climate change. The idea of diet change is upsetting. I have to make a radical change because of diabetes. I had never thought that giving up some food caused so much misery.
But it is possible. The trick is to discover new food which will make it easier to give up old favourites. I’m sipping Earl Grey not Single Malt. I am beginning to enjoy it: I can do this. Coffee for example was introduced in our lives relatively recently. Who can imagine the life without coffee?! It came from Ethiopia. Arab people have been enjoying it long before Europeans.
 Nowadays sushi is on the shelf at every super market. But until recently Japanese people had faced insulting comments about eating raw fish. It was the same contempt the Indigenous northern people suffered.
They were called “Eskimo – uncooked meat eater” as though they were savages. The Franklin Expedition tragedy did not have to happen, if those English sailors were open-minded and enlightened enough to learn from the wisdom of the North: eating raw seal meat.
Imagine our dinner without potato! But there was a time when we didn’t know such a thing. There is no potato mentioned in the Bible. Jesus did not eat it. He ate pita bread. Europeans found potato in America only 500 years ago. Imagine Italian food without corn (to make polenta), pasta, or tomato? Italians did not know corn or tomato before Europeans got lost trying to find a way to India, and landed in America by accident almost a half millennium ago. Spaghetti was brought back to Italy by Marco Polo from China in the 17th century.
Diets are changing all the time. We will have to give up some favourites but we will learn to love the new. We have done it with coffee, corn, pasta, potato, sushi, and tomato. We will find happiness in exotic food and may save our environment.
Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui
Lethbridge