Thoughts on Food: A Kantian Diet?

Read an interesting article in the Atlantic today. It was an excerpt from The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann, depicting the life and work of Norman Borlaug and William Vogt. William Vogt's in his book The Road to Survival introduced the concept of carrying capacity, arguing that with the aide of modern technology man was exceeding the carrying capacity of the natural environment. Norman Borlaug was one of those technologists helping man live in excess. He helped develop dwarf wheat among other things.

Growing up, one of my friends was heavily influenced by William Vogt and the work of his disciples. He was, in many ways, a conservative. He ate lower on the food chain, foregoing meat, dairy, and eggs and advocated others do so, but he wasn't militant about it -- except when calling out the hypocrisy of liberals.

I often think of him when confronted by so called liberals stuffing their face with whatever the latest fad demands. They talk about how everyone should give of carbohydrates or the like. Billions of people couldn't afford to do so, and if they could, we'd all suffer. I know it's strange to object to a diet on the grounds of Kantian ethics, but I do.

Despite all that, I have always been more on the side of Borlaug. If it weren't for the Haber-Bosch process for artificially fixing nitrogen, three billion people would die. The only possible way to sustain our current population is to embrace technological change and development. Switching from wheat to potatoes or cassava isn't going to do it.

In any case, I've been toying with the idea of limiting my expenses to $42 a week, which is the weekly unemployment benefit it Puerto Rico. I don't think it would be all that challenging at all in China. In point of fact, I've been living off 200 RMB, roughly $32, a week for the last two weeks now. This week I'm toying with the idea of halving that amount to $16. Evidently, 80% of mankind lives on less than $10 a day, and something like half the world lives on $3 a day.

I'll be eating a lot of potatoes if I decide to follow through. I suppose I ought to -- it being Lent and all.