thanks for your careful attention to word choice and precise expression.

As you so colorfully observe, some grass-fed beef uses far less water than the average quoted. Though we’ve discussed this in previous posts here, I wish I’d taken the opportunity in this post to discuss how pasture-raised cattle can have less environmental impact than feedlot-raised cattle (and conversely,how grazing onpublic lands appears to have correlated with increased erosion, increased soil depletion/watershed destruction and – in te Southwest – accelerated drought: a set of consequences often described as “welfare ranching”).

Good on your neighbor for managing his/her lands so carefully as to return “gin clear” streams to their local biosphere.

For their sake, I hope they are meticulous in their choice of words and verbal expression.

I apologize for the evident distress resulting from my imperfect word choice.

Good thing I only omitted a modifier. Heavens forfend had I make an error with a verb!

On the not bathing every day issue, we are there, too. I think that a good part of the problem of getting people to walk or bike to work is that we are so brainwashed by advertisers into being so ‘overly-sanitized’ that we (women especially but certainly not exclusively) would never consider arriving at the office with hair or skin damp with perspiration, let alone some good old healthy sweat. My god, think of the clothes, people! Think of the hair!

That was another thing I liked about S. Korea, at Dad’s engineering office no one wore suits, not even upper management. People were in neat short sleeved shirts, much more comfortable, affordable and condusive to concentrating on the job at hand rather than the image projected. They also at least once a day had exercise breaks which were lead by someone over the office intercom. Some pretty good, practical ideas.

That’s BS, Kirk. I eat local, grass-fed beef.

“That’s about 4,000 gallons.”

Not mine, so labeling an average as applying to “every kilogram” is stupid, dishonest, or both.

“That works out to nearly 110 gallons per ounce of beef.”

That average is because typical supermarket beef is fattened on government-subsidized grain (the production of which uses enormous amounts of water) in feedlots, where enormous amounts of water are used to deal with concentrated waste.

So the adjective “typical” would be correct, while what you wrote is grossly misleading. Tell me, Kirk, is there any issue that you can see in some other way than a simplistic, binary one?

“So every pound of beef we bring home requires over 1,800 gallons of water. Which — for baby fish — can make the difference between surviving and perishing.”

So how is it that I can fish for trout in a gin-clear stream on the same ranch from which I buy my beef (the ranch owner is a retired ecologist), while the silty river closer to my house has been made uninhabitable for native trout by the runoff from irrigating barley fields?

folks, I’m gonna wander off for (locally sourced) dinner….look forward to rejoining the thread later. Thank you all for your interest, time, and ideas.

Have fun upstairs with Thers!