Letters for March 20, 2016

Letters for March 20, 2016

Plant-based foods should be part of diet

After another winter of severe snowstorms and floods, I look forward to March 20, first day of spring, balmy weather, and blooming flowers.

Hundreds of communities welcome spring with an observance of Great American Meatout, asking neighbors to explore a healthy, compassionate diet of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and grains.

Indeed, 56 percent of respondents to a GlobalMeatNews poll said that they were or are reducing meat intake. U.S. per capita red meat

consumption has dropped by more than 16 percent since 1999.

Mainstream publications like Parade, Better Homes and Gardens, and Eating Well are touting vegan recipes. Even the financial investment community is betting on plant-based meat start-ups, like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, while warning clients about the upcoming “death of meat.”

The reasons are ample. Last year, the World Health Organization found cancer to be associated with consumption of processed meats. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended reduced meat consumption. The media keeps exposing atrocities perpetrated on factory farms. And, animal agriculture remains chief contributor to climate change and water scarcity and pollution.

Each of us should celebrate our own advent of spring by checking out plant-based foods at our supermarkets and vegan recipes on the internet.

Landon Goto

Lihue

Forum page is great for discussion

Thank you Editors, for the wonderful Forum page, Thursday, March 17.

Gene Lyons’ column is always a joy to read. He has many admirers all over the country. He’s articulate, funny, serious and profound. (Hope you read The Hunting of the President.) To Google “Battle of the billionaires” — that “fool thing” — would be, “… several minutes of your life you’ll never get back,” is so perfect I, as a writer, am green with envy.

Also, in case you didn’t know, Gene Lyons loves horses, cows, and dogs. If my memory serves me, he has Great Pyrenees and his house, which makes his wife happy, too, looks a little bit animal worn and torn and friendly. How could anybody help but love a guy like that? I know he’d love my house. Anyway, I hope everyone read “Trump’s brand is chaos.”

One suggestion: Editors, please restore the discussion site. I think we’ve all grown up enough we could handle it well. It’s so wonderful to respond to other letter writers — politely, reasonably, with passion — it’s so much what America was and what it could be again.

By the way, your “Other Voices” column is always a pleasure to read.

Even if we don’t agree, what’s fascinating is how often we to find a moment when we do agree with the person with whom we disagreed. We’re multi dimensional folks. We’re not gingerbread men. Wouldn’t it be a dull world if we all agreed about everything?

Please give us another chance.

Bettejo Dux

Kalaheo