Star Trek Edition

Let's pretend for a moment that we're living on a planet of 7 billion people in which 1 billion of us were hungry and a half billion of us obese (which, of course, we are). Let's also say that the population was set to increase by another two billion by 2045 (which it is). In this kind of scenario, it seems obvious that access to food and fresh drinking water would become more crucial with each passing day. 

Now let's say there was a type of food that we'll call "meat" just for the sake of familiarity. This food called meat was produced using huge amounts of the fresh drinking water needed by the 9 billion humans on the planet, produced record amounts of pollution in the form of methane and other less desirable effluents as well as 18% of all greenhouse gases annually on our dangerously warming planet, provided both a negative caloric return and a negative protein return compared to the food you had to put in to make it, not to mention it caused three times the risk of Alzheimer's disease and featured a means of production which institutionalized universally abhorrent animal cruelty. What kind of a chance do you think a food product like that would have of still being consumed by humans in the "Star Trek" era future?

None, as it turns out. Thanks to Netflix, our family has recently been watching some of the classic episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a short speech by Commander William Riker jumped out at me the other day. The Enterprise is transporting some delegates from a backward race of aliens to a peace conference and they insist on bringing some of their livestock on board ship for themselves to eat. Commander Riker tells them:

"We no longer enslave animals for food purposes... You've seen something as fresh and tasty as meat, but inorganically materialized out of patterns."

The crew of the Starship Enterprise were eating veggie burgers and other fake meats! Because at some point, we all just agreed it was the right thing to do. And what if the movement towards that more enlightened future began with something as simple as cutting out meat one day a week? I believe that the reason that MM is so successful is that people see the writing on the wall for meat consumption -- the outlook for humans eating meat has a shelf life, if you'll pardon the pun. 

So it's official... The United Nations and the United Federation of Planets agree that Meatless Mondays are a great thing for this planet and all the others as well. And I just happen to have a new meatless recipe for the week that received both Picky Person Approval and Kid Tested Thumbs up! Christina calls this recipe, "The Best Vegan French Toast You'll Ever Have" (pics here). May it bring you much enjoyment. And may you also Live Long and Prosper.