Belches, fatuous claims and meat.

I don’t usually object to the Beeb; its reporting is carefully checked and succeds in offending almost everyone equally. The claim, however, in Costing the Earth on 8 May that

“There is a further hiccup with the vegetarian option: most of those who avoid meat source their protein from dairy foods.”

really gets up my snout. Who’s the ‘most’ here? Most vegetarians in the world are found in…South Asia and East Asia. They certainly do not eat a dairy-based diet, and in fact, I’d be curious to see the numbers on pulse-and-rice based vegetarians in the UK over against cheesetarians (as they have been called). I emailed them to complain, and the producer, Maggie Ayre, responded quickly (15thMay):

‘Thanks for your email.  Point taken. The presenter is aware of this and we should have phrased it differently.’

I’m not sure whether to be more pleased that they responded or annoyed at the distorted reporting. How would you phrase that differently? ‘Most upper-middle-class white vegetarians…’? Even that seems fallacious to me. Most of the vegetarians I know eat a very broad diet, whatever their tint or presumptive background. Tofu, peas, mushroomy things, soy-based shop-bought treats.

The next move in this windy goffling was Rajendra Pachauri’s call to eat less meat because, according to IPCC estimations, the livestock industry produces some 18% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, compared to just 13% for transport. Clearly Rajendra wasn’t thinking to substitute dairy for meat — no improvement in the gaseous impact there, just as Costing the Earth had noted months before.

And the last move in this debate goes to my daughter, Eleanor. When she went in for her pre-school checkup courtesy of the NHS, she was given a lovely book in which she was asked to pick her favourite foods. Lots of pictures of burgers and lamb chops and fish and chicken fingers and sandwiches and chips and pasta. Not a single plate of the rice and beans we eat every day, whether in Scotland or Nepal or California—and she was very confused by this.

Life ahead of the curve means you never see yourself in the popular media: and that is painful for children.