Mark Bittman gave a talk at TED last December.

My familiarity with Mr. Bittman was strictly as a fond reader of his Dining & Wine "Minimalist" column in The New York Times (and watcher of related how-to videos). I am very glad to know that his words add up to more than what he eats. I am even more glad to know that his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (sequel to How to Cook Everything) is a bestseller -- particularly interesting considering he is not a vegetarian. (Neither am I, yet I very much want this book.) Not long after this talk, Bittman's related article "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler" was also published in the Times.

While there are certainly lots of folks talking about this sort of thing (this talk might be considered a la the likes of Michael Pollan and Al Gore [links to his most recent TED talk]), he smacks two things over our heads worth noting: livestock production is the second highest contributor of atmosphere altering/climate altering gases -- its impact is higher than that of transportation. The idea that industrialized food causes more harm to the environment than cars really stops the traffic. I mean, we don't have to drive a car in order to live. But we do have to eat.

The second point is how the American collective consciousness about how we eat actually means something -- what I eat directly affects the environment.

Yeah, okay; duh. But for many people, that reality just isn't something they think about when reaching for a bag of chips, can of soda or frying up some burgers. And for the majority of my life, I have been incredibly guilty of this mindlessness because eating is easy. I can walk into a Wendy's with $1* in my hand and buy six chicken nuggets [*plus a few cents for tax]. Easy.

While I appreciate this talk on a googly level -- it's always nice when the course of one's celebrity manages to reveal that he is actually a decent human being -- I also appreciate that it waxes plainly, honestly. It also continues the mark of a trend that I can only hope continues: the popularity of books like The Omnivore's Dilemma (or any of Pollan's other bestsellers) means that at least people are curious, they are thinking about where there food comes from. The next part involves increased frequency of assertions of Mark Bittman et al that our eating habits and climate change are inextricably linked.

Sure, more duh stuff, but the hammer is just not hitting hard enough. While writers/journalists/scholars may have the onus of delivering facts, it is ultimately in the hands of consumers to affect any sort of change -- there is still way too much money involved to get this going by any means other than from the consumer, up. And it is only if this impact can be viewed in dollars by the companies responsible for putting food on our plates as a mass loss of profits that will convince them to develop any sort of alternative corporate model. This requires a huge commitment on a vast scale, but the good news is that if everyone is, if I am, just a tiny bit more mindful of how we consume our food, we will make giant strides towards revamping the current system.

This is maybe the first thing in my life that I've felt like I could actually do; that could mean as much personally as it could on a much larger scale. I am only hoping that way more people than me feel that way, too.