A homemade lunch
Jul 9th, 2011 by moniquewong
Today, some real food. Not only do the contents of my lunch include veggies (specifically Kai Lan), rice, egg and chicken, but of course a loving gesture from mom.
Having talked a bit about animals already (in my yogurt post), I’m going to skip out on eggs and chickens and instead focus on the role of imported East Asian foods – rice and Kai Lan in this meal. Before I delve deeper into this topic, it’s worthy to take a look at a recent article in the Richmond Review – “Should Canadians be eating rice?” by Arzeena Hamir
Let’s also take a look at a part of the rice growing process – flooding.
She asks a very controversial question – should we – and as she points out in the article it’s not “can we”. We here in Canada will be able to afford to transport rice from Southeast Asia for a long time, but the environmental problems with rice is abundant. Not only transportation, but the water and pesticides involved in rice paddies is immense. Of course,the pesticides involved come from oil. This article, amongst the different circles of colleagues and friends, was met with vastly different responses. Some just called the idea outright crazy while others … well, I’ve heard no other response.
My perspective? I think the habit of eating rice is something that needs to be waited out. It will inevitably die down from 1st generation immigrants to 1.5s to 2nd to 3rd generation. And I can speak on behalf of my family – my parents come to Canada not knowing the language have a hard enough time dealing with the new rules and regulations, the new taxes, the system, the environment … It’s a bit much to ask them to relook at their diet. It is without doubt that when I build my family, I’m not going to eat as much rice and similarly my children.
Kai-lan too, an imported food from Southern China, quite often makes it into my family’s meals. I wasn’t able to find any information on growing kai-lan, so other than the fact it travelled a long way, that’s about all I know.
Before we end this post – a brief comment on the chicken and eggs. Chickens are a primary predator, meaning some energy is wasted from the chicken’s food up to the chicken. This means that eating chicken is 10x less efficient than eating a plant. My mom does buy, however, free range eggs and chicken. Now with the questionable USDA regulations of specifying “access” to the outdoors, it’s hard to speculate whether my chicken was running around or just looking at the scenery.