The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causingby indulging in food so expensively produced.Meat and other imported foods are luxuries because they requiremore energy and resources than the traditional vegetables and grainsproduced locally. It follows that people who limit themselves to a simplelocal diet need do less work and use less land than those with an appetitefor luxury.If people continue to eat meat and imported food, within ten years itis certain that Japan will fall into a food crisis. Within thirty years, therewill be overwhelming shortages. The absurd idea has swept in fromsomewhere that a change from rice-eating to bread-eating indicates animprovement in the everyday life of the Japanese people. Actually this isnot so. Brown rice and vegetables may seem to be coarse fare, but this isthe very finest diet nutritionally, and enables human beings to live simplyand directly.If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiencyof nature's productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.104