By Talon McKee
These days people are told to enrich their diets with seafood for its great nutritional value. But when everyone is listening to these directions what happens to the populations of sea wildlife? Is this food source sustainable? Or is it just something we label as sustainable in the eyes of consumerism? These are all important points that are discussed in Seaver’s presentation. Barton Seaver is a chef that focuses on finding a happy medium of healthy food that is also sustainable to his customers. Seaver presents the issue of over harvesting of sea life and overconsumption of seafood in people’s diets.
During the span of his presentation Seaver tries to explain one important perspective of people’s diet. This important perspective is simply that eating is a privilege and that common day people need to treat the choices they make with their diet with this perspective in mind. The recent trend of incorporating more seafood into our diet has caused detrimental effects on the ocean wild life. Because of this some species have become threatened or endangered. For many people the solution to this problem is to choose species that are not threatened to use in their diet. But Seaver points out an important problem with this mode of thinking. “If everyone decided to choose from a small list of non-threatened or non-endangered species for food what would happen to the population of these species over time?” The answer to this question is that those species would find themselves on the the red lists or the endangered/threatened lists. The reason for this is that there has not been a production of sustainable populations of these species. The demand outweighs the availability of the supply. This is an important problem for Seaver, and he aims to inform people on how to make simple changes to improve this situation.
Seaver spends a large portion of his presentation on informing the solution and reiterating it multiple times for affect. He provides that solution is the realization that most people’s diets are supplemented with excessive seafood and not a healthy balance of calories. He proposes that if people focused on eating their greens more than eating sea food, and if people reduced the serving size and frequency then they will find themselves healthier and having a less negative impact on the wildlife. This is the main focus of his presentation and most of the time provided is dedication to this portion.
Seaver’s presentation in not particularly motivating and does not provide a large amount of information in the given time. Instead there is a lot of reiteration of the same ideas and solutions. He does not follow many of his ideas with evidence or supporting stories. Instead it appears that he has found several different ways of stating the same thing repetitively. I was hoping for a more compelling presentation that invokes action. But he did accomplish giving the audience a new healthy perspective that is not entirely clear or powerful. Maybe with more consideration to impact Seaver would find more support for his proposed go green with veggies ideas. Until then I feel most people will be able to walk away with a new perspective that they may or may not decide to act on.
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