When I lived in South Africa, the staple food of the people in the townships (the shanty towns homing those living in poverty) was mealie pap. Basically, just corn mashed up and boiled in water with some salt if it was available. Meat was extremely, extremely rare.
But apart from what the poor eat, what I think is disgusting is the fact that 3rd world countries, particularly the Latin American states, export grain to the United States and elsewhere to feed the livestock industry. The starving people of those states are being overlooked by both governments, Latin American and Northern American, for an unhealthy, unsustainable diet which requires the starving to starve - destroying both human and non-human life.
I've heard that a similar shift to export food rather than feed the local population is happening in India.
It is true that in some places, the land is almost entirely unsuitable for growing crops and basically the only option apart from leaving (which isn't viable for most) is to get some goats.
I was watching a doco on permaculture, called Bill Mollison - Global Gardener, where they were transforming near desert landscape in India into lush gardens. It was amazing what they achieved in a short time ... but without the know how, yes it is very difficult.
We're very fortunate in Australia - we have some many easy options that mean we don't have to hurt animals for food/clothing/etc. I think with that privilege comes the responsibility to set a good example for other developing nations.
One of the scary problems we're facing in the world at the moment is the impact that a developing China and India will have on the world, with them buying more cars, more consumer goods and eating more meat. Of course they only want this stuff because they see that this is how affluent countries like the US and Australia live. We can hardly blame them for wanting what we've already got. But we can certainly do a better job of leading by example.
Indeded.
"developing" countries like China and India are adopting a more western way of life - cars, capitalism etc. Even their diet is changing to become more Western and so rapidly it's scary.
Anthropoligally this will be very interesting to watch pan out but as far as the health of the environment, the health of the animals and even the people it's not going to end well.
There was a study on milk/dairy consumption done in the last decade called the China Study. This looked at the health of various regions of rural china and compared those regions which consumed many animal products with those that consumed few or none at all.
The results were alarmingly one sided - where animal products were most unhealthiness. I think it was mostly concerned with milk and what will shock you (if not you then most people) was that where none or very little milk was consumed the incedence of osteoporosis was virtually non-existent where as in high consuming regions... you guessed it.
In the past 20 years China has become dramatically more americanised/westernised. As we see China follow the american model we will see a nation with four times as many people as the US continue down the same path as irreconcilably destructive US - deforestation, mass scale farming, mass scale animal agriculture, mass scale heart attacks and, for a minority, mass scale money..
Now the question is...... how do we stop it?
