Demitarian - Honestly?

I love meat, but understand that it is hard to square eating it several times a day with our knowledge of the world and the way it is heading. Not on moral grounds about our rights to eat animals, though anyone with a mind at least considers that aspect of the thing; but for environmental reasons. Producing meat takes up a lot more of the earth's resources than its benefits justify.

But as with every moral dilemma there is complexity here. Meat raised on grain is frankly daft, we use about 4kg of food that humans could eat to make 1kg of meat. But there are many marginal places - hill farms, sparse grasslands - where not much else can be farmed. Then again, it is such a good source of the protein we need to thrive that meat makes life easy for the nutritionally aware cook (vile phrase but useful). Add to that the damage cow farts etc do to the atmosphere and stir. But don't forget to include the sensual side of the argument - for the carnivore there is nothing more toothsome than a well-hung piece of sirloin griddled rare.

A half-way point between vegetarianism and its opposite is now being touted and it seems made trendy (though philosophically eating a bit of meat makes you a carnivore still), the idea of demitarianism - eating meat occasionally, and not in massive lumps if that's not putting it too technically. I just wonder about such a position: practical yes, but honest? Nevertheless it is, though I loathe the ugliness of the word, kind of where I intend heading in dietary terms. More fish (sustainably sourced etc etc), more vegetables (with our own to the fore), more mushrooms and other fungi, more tofu if I can find the good stuff locally (the honeycomb variety not the nasty soggy slabs). And, though they may be a concern for the cholesterol in them, more eggs given we have our own hens.

The practical worry I have about this is that as many have lost the ability to cook for themselves in any meaningful way (i.e. they may feed themselves, but it is by reheating what another has cooked) and a slab of protein is so simple to serve, a lot of people will be considering themselves demitarians, but like a few vegetarians I've known who have the occasional burger, they really won't be. Which leaves the environment just as knackered as it was before the idea started to trend - moreso as we will surely soon see a flood of celebrity demitarian tomes ("Film actress Lula Schachter-Bonk tells us she has always been a demitarian, and her new book [by Lula and someone who can write and cook] gives her favourite recipes."