NItrogen Fertilizer Decrease, Healthy Americans Increase

Enriching the Earth chapter 8 we see that it touches base again on the U.S. and what we would face when nitrogen based fertilizer is no longer available. Smil hits on the fact that the US currently supplies 3600 kcal/capita, our need is about 2000 kcal/capita. This is quite a difference and shows that if we did lose our nitrogen fertilizers it wouldn’t effect us negatively. In fact we would still have leftover food after our specific need.
So it brings up another point, America needs to slim down and when we are faced with a tightening of food supply I think it could be in one sense or another good for the people. You always hear people talking about obesity trends in the US but there hasn’t been any huge change to reverse this trend. The first day in my nutrition class this semester Dr.Wulff put up several slides to show the change. Over a period of 18 years some states have increased from 10% obesity rate to 30% obesity, that is a huge difference. How can it be that some countries are starving while the US gets almost double what it needs which results in a large amount of obese people. In chapter 8 Smil says that soon we will have to adopt a Mediterranean type diet, which is not a bad idea at all. A Mediterranean diet includes healthy fats (olive oil, canola oil) , lots of fruits and vegetables, healthy grains such as pasta and rice, and emphasis on the small amount of red meat you are allowed to consume. If America was put on this type of diet we would see the obesity rates falling because a large part of our diets consist of red meat which is high in saturated fat which ultimately contains high calorie content.
So once agriculture has to tighten their belts they will no longer be able to sustain the meat industry since so much of its cereal and legume production, around 70%, goes directly to feed for animals. When it is no longer plausible to expend so much of a harvest to feeding the animals cut backs will have to happen so animal meat will not be so readily available. The new goal will to make sure the people are fed and it will have to be that in order to do that we have to make some changes. I think the changes will not be so bad on the people. Even though Americans are so dependant in their lifestyles to food always being there and in abundance that once food production decreases we have the opportunity to grasp a new healthier lifestyle.

Sources
Enriching the Earth- Smil
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4644