On the Subject of Cow Farts
That got your attention, didn’t it? More on this topic below the fold.
I ran my errands early enough yesterday that I missed most of the traffic in Kalispell. Friday afternoons in town are a nightmare. This was my haul:
I got the Slabtown pattern printed, picked up more foam, and grabbed this Simplicity pattern for $1.99 at Joanns along with some thread that was on sale. I have this image in my head that won’t go away of a jacket like this made from a white broken twill-type fabric. Where that image came from and why it persists is a mystery. I would never make myself a jacket out of white fabric. I live in Montana, not Manhattan. But I can see the fabric very clearly.
The hens cooperated by providing enough eggs for another batch of zucchini bread. Elysian grew cabbage this year. She borrowed my cabbage shredder the other day and brought over a bag of cabbage for us, so I planned a stir fry for dinner last night. While I was in the kitchen baking and doing prep work, I listened to the most recent We Drink and We Farm Things podcast. The more I listen to these two women, the more impressed I am.
This episode was entitled” It’s Being Yodeled at You.” The topic of discussion was a new Burger King commercial that has the farming social media community in an uproar. I follow a few farming accounts on Instagram and Twitter, but apparently not the ones that were upset about this commercial. Also, we don’t watch network TV and we have ad-free YouTube accounts, so the chances of me seeing it in the wild are slim to none. I had to go look it up and watch it.
[Warning: The commercial is pretty cringe-worthy, but watching it is helpful to understanding the discussion.]
This is what I love about the hosts of this podcast, Bev and Sam: They took apart this topic and looked at it critically and dispassionately. They drilled down and read the research behind it. They don’t take anything at face value, which is a refreshing attitude in this climate of constant and instant outrage. They raised the following points:
Using kids in propaganda is generally a bad move.
Farmers do not like being made scapegoats (no pun intended).
The problem is actually not cow farts, but cow belches, and Bev and Sam noted that they also got this wrong in a previous podcast on this subject.
The research behind using lemongrass in cow diets to reduce methane emissions appears solid and deserving of more attention (emphasis mine), but to use it to support a marketing campaign seems premature.
This commercial looks to me like an epic fail by BK’s marketing team. I agree that they could have made the point that this is an area of research with some promise, but without the hyperbole and the horrible country music theme. It’s condescending.
I know a lot of people who evangelize about plant-based diets. I am all for eating healthier and eating more vegetables—have you seen the size of my garden?—but the husband cannot get 5000 calories a day from plants, although he does love his salads. I am not a big red meat fan, but even I have noticed that if I go solely plant-based for a few days, I really start to drag. Human beings are complex organisms. I am convinced that everyone has differing nutritional needs. I like it when we all have the freedom to choose what works best for us as individuals.