Our demand for meat, dairy and refined carbohydrates - the world consumes one billion cans or bottles of Coke a day - our demand for these things, not our need, our want - drives us to consume way more calories than are good for us.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that our consumption habits are driven by desires rather than actual needs, leading to unhealthy dietary choices.
Mark Bittman's quote underscores the distinction between our wants and our needs in terms of food consumption, specifically pointing out that the high demand for meat, dairy, and processed sugars, such as those found in soft drinks, contributes to overeating and unhealthy lifestyles. By focusing on our desires for these items, rather than what our bodies truly require, we end up consuming more calories than is beneficial, ultimately impacting our health negatively.
In practice
In a health and wellness seminar to illustrate eating habits.
Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.
People need help to change the way they eat... this is what government is for in my opinion.... We should make food an issue for everyone who runs for office.
I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure, but I do think that for the benefit of everyone, the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly
The craving for 'the return of the day', which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.
What's the ultimate price I'll pay if I don't stop this indulgence now? By asking questions like this, they'll associate pain to overeating, and their behavior will change immediately.
There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.
Societies that eat unrefined foods produce large stools and build small hospitals; societies that eat fiber-depleted foods produce small stools and build large hospitals.
Many of our problems in US maternity care stem from the fact that we leave no room for recognizing when nature is smarter than we are.
It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.
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