Hello Stephen, Wonderful eye-opening analysis and article! Thank you for sharing it. I'm passing it on to my students, and other readers via my blog as well. You have now got me not only examining my plate (and food labels) even more closely than I already do, but also thinking this could be a good exercise to have students do for a class project! Similar to ecological footprint exercises many of us do in our classes. Have you thought about developing this into a lesson module? I think that would be a fantastic thing to start doing, even in grade school. What a way to bring the concept of biodiversity home to people, and getting them to think about how we interact with other species in this most intimate of ways.
thanks again, Madhu On Sep 10, 2010, at 6:31 AM, Stephen Hale wrote: > There is nothing more fundamental about our relationship with Nature > than the species we eat. > > One evening, while trying to discern exactly what was in the bean > casserole my traveling wife had kindly left in the fridge, I wondered: > What is the biodiversity of my diet? How many plant and animal species > do I consume regularly? And where did they come from? > > > Later, I compiled a species list from one typical day for four meals: > breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner. Then, using food labels > and knowledge of where I bought the food, I tracked down their origin > and ecological niche. > > > If variety is the spice of life, we Homo sapiens are the spiciest of > species. I calculated that in 24 hours, I ate 53 species spanning four > biological kingdoms and five continents. Here’s why our diet > biodiversity matters: > www.grist.org/article/food-the-omnivores-delight-one-day-four-meals-and-53-species/
