Why aren't more environmentalists vegetarians?
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Interesting article from the Enviromental Magazine:
PART 1:
"There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming -- which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in close confinement -- has given rise to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. At press time, the first discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to plummet in Japan and many people to stop eating meat.
All this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50 years. There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth, more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for human dinner tables has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef and pork consumption has tripled since 1970, during which time it has more than doubled in Asia.
Americans spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and its growing popularity around the world may be a factor in dramatic increases in global meat consumption. © Jason Kremkau
One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation, "Americans now spend more money on fast food -- $110 billion a year -- than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music -- combined."
Strong growth in meat production and consumption continues despite mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and that just about every aspect of meat production -- from grazing-related loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to pollution from "factory farms" -- is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems."
The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.
According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain -- with 56 million people -- could support a population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European meat eaters' grain consumption is indirect (first being fed to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain in underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.
Somalian famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets aggravates world hunger.
While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that is incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."
Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note that a pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water, whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.
Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the destruction of rainforests.
McDonald's took a group of British animal rights activists to court in the 1990s because they had linked the fast food giant to an unhealthy diet and rainforest destruction. The defendants, who fought the company to a standstill, made a convincing case. In court documents, the activists asserted, "From 1970 onwards, beef from cattle reared on ex-rainforest land was supplied to McDonald's." In a policy statement, McDonald's claims that it "does not purchase beef which threatens tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," but it does not deny past purchases.
Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers and lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result can be environmentally catastrophic.
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human population, some 87,000 pounds per second. The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.
More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation's entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year." Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year.
"We definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat," says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation. "I think it's consistent with environmental values to eat lower on the food chain."
There is some evidence to suggest that the human digestive system was not designed for meat consumption and processing (see sidebar), which could help explain why there is such high incidence of heart disease, hypertension, and colon and other cancers. Add to this the plethora of drugs and antibiotics applied as a salve to unnatural factory farming conditions and growing occurrences of meat-based diseases like E. coli and Salmonella, and there's a compelling health-based case for vegetarianism.
The factory-farmed chicken, cow or pig of today is among the most medicated creatures on Earth. "For sheer overprescription, no doctor can touch the American farmer," reported Newsweek. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the use of antimicrobial drugs for nontherapeutic purposes -- mainly to increase factory farm growth rates -- has risen 50 percent since 1985.
Ninety percent of commercially available eggs come from chickens raised on factory farms, and six billion "broiler" chickens emerge from the same conditions. Ninety percent of U.S.-raised pigs are closely confined at some point during their lives. According to the book Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, pork producers lose $187 million annually to chronic diseases such as dysentery, cholera, trichinosis and other ailments fostered by factory farming. Drugs are used to reduce stress levels in animals crowded together unnaturally, although 20 percent of the chickens die of stress or disease anyway.
One result of these conditions is a high rate of meat contamination. Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected with Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the meat is not heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen, Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings with deadly results.
In 1997, more than 25 million pounds of hamburger were found to be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, which is spread by fecal matter. The bacteria are a particular problem in hamburger, because the grinding process spreads it throughout the meat. E. coli, the leading cause of kidney failure in young children, was the culprit when three children died of food poisoning after eating at a Seattle Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993.
Business as usual at the animal farm: From left: chicken debeaking, cow confinement, poultry transport and hog crowding.
The British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which began in 1986 and has affected nearly 200,000 cattle, jumps to beef-eating humans in the form of the always-fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The CDC reports that an average of 10 to 15 people have contracted CJD from meat in Britain each year since it was first detected in 1994. In 1998, the British Medical Association warned in a report to Members of Parliament, "The current state of food safety in Britain is such that all raw meat should be assumed to be contaminated with pathogenic organisms." In 1997, it added, Salmonella or E. coli infected a million people in Britain. BSE spreads through cattle that are fed contaminated central nervous-system tissue from other animals. "Its future magnitude and geographic distribution...cannot yet be predicted," the CDC reported. In the U.S., deer have been affected with chronic wasting disease, which has many similarities to British BSE, though a definitive link to humans has not been established.
In the book Eating With Conscience, Dr. Michael W. Fox reports that what is known as "animal tankage" -- the non-fat animal residue from slaughterhouses -- is used in a wide variety of products, from animal feed and fertilizer to pet food. Dr. Fox adds that hundreds of cats in Europe (and several zoo animals) that ate tankage-laced food have contracted forms of BSE. The Japanese outbreak is believed to have originated in BSE-contaminated feed imported from Europe.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 10 million animals that were dying or diseased when slaughtered were "rendered" (processed into a protein-rich meal) in 1995 for addition to pig, poultry and pet food. Animals that collapse at the slaughterhouse door or during transportation are called "downers," and their corpses are routinely processed for human consumption. A 2001 Zogby America poll conducted for the group Farm Sanctuary found that 79 percent of Americans oppose this practice, which could be an entry point for BSE into the U.S. meat supply. Farm Sanctuary petitioned the USDA in 1998 to end processing of downer meat for human consumption, but its petition was denied.
Europe will spend billions of dollars bringing a virulent epidemic of yet another animal-borne disease -- foot-and-mouth -- under control. In the last two years, 60 countries have had outbreaks of foot-and-mouth, which kills animals but does not spread to people.
One of the major western exports is a taste for meat, though it brings with it increased risk of heart disease and cancer. Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with a diet and food production system resulting in such waste, endemic disease and human health threats.
continued...
PART 1:
"There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming -- which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in close confinement -- has given rise to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. At press time, the first discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to plummet in Japan and many people to stop eating meat.
All this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50 years. There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth, more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for human dinner tables has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef and pork consumption has tripled since 1970, during which time it has more than doubled in Asia.
Americans spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and its growing popularity around the world may be a factor in dramatic increases in global meat consumption. © Jason Kremkau
One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation, "Americans now spend more money on fast food -- $110 billion a year -- than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music -- combined."
Strong growth in meat production and consumption continues despite mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and that just about every aspect of meat production -- from grazing-related loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to pollution from "factory farms" -- is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems."
The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.
According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain -- with 56 million people -- could support a population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European meat eaters' grain consumption is indirect (first being fed to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain in underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.
Somalian famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets aggravates world hunger.
While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that is incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."
Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note that a pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water, whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.
Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the destruction of rainforests.
McDonald's took a group of British animal rights activists to court in the 1990s because they had linked the fast food giant to an unhealthy diet and rainforest destruction. The defendants, who fought the company to a standstill, made a convincing case. In court documents, the activists asserted, "From 1970 onwards, beef from cattle reared on ex-rainforest land was supplied to McDonald's." In a policy statement, McDonald's claims that it "does not purchase beef which threatens tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," but it does not deny past purchases.
Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers and lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result can be environmentally catastrophic.
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human population, some 87,000 pounds per second. The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.
More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation's entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year." Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year.
"We definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat," says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation. "I think it's consistent with environmental values to eat lower on the food chain."
There is some evidence to suggest that the human digestive system was not designed for meat consumption and processing (see sidebar), which could help explain why there is such high incidence of heart disease, hypertension, and colon and other cancers. Add to this the plethora of drugs and antibiotics applied as a salve to unnatural factory farming conditions and growing occurrences of meat-based diseases like E. coli and Salmonella, and there's a compelling health-based case for vegetarianism.
The factory-farmed chicken, cow or pig of today is among the most medicated creatures on Earth. "For sheer overprescription, no doctor can touch the American farmer," reported Newsweek. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the use of antimicrobial drugs for nontherapeutic purposes -- mainly to increase factory farm growth rates -- has risen 50 percent since 1985.
Ninety percent of commercially available eggs come from chickens raised on factory farms, and six billion "broiler" chickens emerge from the same conditions. Ninety percent of U.S.-raised pigs are closely confined at some point during their lives. According to the book Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, pork producers lose $187 million annually to chronic diseases such as dysentery, cholera, trichinosis and other ailments fostered by factory farming. Drugs are used to reduce stress levels in animals crowded together unnaturally, although 20 percent of the chickens die of stress or disease anyway.
One result of these conditions is a high rate of meat contamination. Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected with Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the meat is not heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen, Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings with deadly results.
In 1997, more than 25 million pounds of hamburger were found to be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, which is spread by fecal matter. The bacteria are a particular problem in hamburger, because the grinding process spreads it throughout the meat. E. coli, the leading cause of kidney failure in young children, was the culprit when three children died of food poisoning after eating at a Seattle Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993.
Business as usual at the animal farm: From left: chicken debeaking, cow confinement, poultry transport and hog crowding.
The British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which began in 1986 and has affected nearly 200,000 cattle, jumps to beef-eating humans in the form of the always-fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The CDC reports that an average of 10 to 15 people have contracted CJD from meat in Britain each year since it was first detected in 1994. In 1998, the British Medical Association warned in a report to Members of Parliament, "The current state of food safety in Britain is such that all raw meat should be assumed to be contaminated with pathogenic organisms." In 1997, it added, Salmonella or E. coli infected a million people in Britain. BSE spreads through cattle that are fed contaminated central nervous-system tissue from other animals. "Its future magnitude and geographic distribution...cannot yet be predicted," the CDC reported. In the U.S., deer have been affected with chronic wasting disease, which has many similarities to British BSE, though a definitive link to humans has not been established.
In the book Eating With Conscience, Dr. Michael W. Fox reports that what is known as "animal tankage" -- the non-fat animal residue from slaughterhouses -- is used in a wide variety of products, from animal feed and fertilizer to pet food. Dr. Fox adds that hundreds of cats in Europe (and several zoo animals) that ate tankage-laced food have contracted forms of BSE. The Japanese outbreak is believed to have originated in BSE-contaminated feed imported from Europe.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 10 million animals that were dying or diseased when slaughtered were "rendered" (processed into a protein-rich meal) in 1995 for addition to pig, poultry and pet food. Animals that collapse at the slaughterhouse door or during transportation are called "downers," and their corpses are routinely processed for human consumption. A 2001 Zogby America poll conducted for the group Farm Sanctuary found that 79 percent of Americans oppose this practice, which could be an entry point for BSE into the U.S. meat supply. Farm Sanctuary petitioned the USDA in 1998 to end processing of downer meat for human consumption, but its petition was denied.
Europe will spend billions of dollars bringing a virulent epidemic of yet another animal-borne disease -- foot-and-mouth -- under control. In the last two years, 60 countries have had outbreaks of foot-and-mouth, which kills animals but does not spread to people.
One of the major western exports is a taste for meat, though it brings with it increased risk of heart disease and cancer. Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with a diet and food production system resulting in such waste, endemic disease and human health threats.
continued...
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400 animals during his or her lifetime. Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter, which is something not clearly evident in the neatly wrapped packages of meat offered for sale at grocery counters. Given the information, many Americans -- especially those with an environmental background -- recoil at knowing they participate in a meat production system so oppressive to the animals caught up in it.
The family farm of the nineteenth century, with its "free-range" animals running around the farmyard or grazing in a pasture, is largely a thing of the past. Brutality to animals has become routine in today's factory farm. A recent article in the pig industry journal National Hog Farmer recommends reducing the average space per animal from eight to six square feet, concluding "Crowding pigs pays." Morley Safer reported on the television program 60 Minutes that today's factory pig is no "Babe": "[They] see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they cannot even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits."
Beef cattle are luckier than factory pigs in that they have an average of 14 square feet in the overcrowded feedlots where they live out their lives. Common procedures for beef calves include branding, castration and dehorning. Veal calves, taken away from their mothers shortly after birth, live their entire lives in near darkness, chained by their necks and unable to move in any direction. They commonly suffer from anemia, diarrhea, pneumonia and lameness.
Virtually all chickens today are factory raised, with as many as six egg-laying hens living in a wire-floored "battery" cage the size of an album cover. As many as 100,000 birds can live in each "henhouse." Conditions are so psychologically taxing on the birds that they must be debeaked to prevent pecking injuries. Male chicks born on factory farms -- as many as 280 million per year -- are simply thrown into garbage bags to die because they're of no economic value as meat or eggs.
Some 95 percent of factory-raised animals are moved by truck, where they are typically subjected to overcrowding, severe weather, hunger and thirst. Many animals die of heat exhaustion or freezing during transport.
Some of the worst abuse occurs at the end of the animals' lives, as documented by Gail Eisnitz' book Slaughterhouse, which includes interviews with slaughterhouse workers. "On the farm where I work," reports one employee, "they drag the live ones who can't stand up anymore out of the crate. They put a metal snare around her ear or foot and drag her the full length of the building. These animals are just screaming in pain." He adds, "The slaughtering part doesn't bother me. It's the way they're treated when they're alive." Dying animals unable to walk are tossed into the "downer pile," and many suffer agonies until, after one or two days, they are finally killed.
The threat to slaughterhouse workers' safety is largely underreported or ignored in the media. For example, Mother Jones magazine, in an otherwise admirable story on slaughterhouse workers, barely mentions the frequent injuries caused by pain-wracked animals lashing out inside the slaughterhouses. Despite the existence of the Humane Slaughter Act and regular USDA inspection, animals are often skinned alive or -- in a major threat to worker safety -- regain consciousness during slaughtering.
Vegetarianism is not a new phenomenon. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras was vegetarian. Famous vegetarians included Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein. The word "vegetarian" was coined in 1847 to give a name to what was then a tiny movement in England.
In the U.S., the 1971 publication of Diet For a Small Planet was a major catalyst for introducing people to a healthy vegetarian diet. Other stimuli included Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation, which gave vegetarianism a moral underpinning. In the U.S., according to a 1998 Vegetarian Journal survey, 82 percent of vegetarians are motivated by health concerns, 75 percent by ethics, the environment and/or animal rights, 31 percent because of taste and 26 percent because of economics.
Is the vegetarian diet healthy? The common perception persists that removing meat from the menu is dangerous because of protein loss.
But Reed Mangels, nutrition advisor to the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG), says vegetarians can meet their protein needs "easily" if they "eat a varied diet and consume enough calories to maintain their weight. It is not necessary to plan combinations of foods. A mixture of proteins throughout the day will provide enough 'essential amino acids.'"
Although meat is rich in protein, Vegetarian and Vegan FAQ reports that other good sources are potatoes, whole wheat bread, rice, broccoli, spinach, almonds, peas, chickpeas, peanut butter, tofu (soybean curd), soymilk, lentils and kale.
Supermarket shelves overflow with soy- or seitan-based meat substitutes. The soybean contains all eight essential amino acids and exceeds even meat in the amount of usable protein it can deliver to the human body. Animal rights advocates also claim that, contrary to the urging of the meat and dairy industries, humans need to consume only two to 10 percent of their total calories as protein.
How many vegetarians are there in the U.S.? It depends on whom you ask. A PETA fact sheet asserts that 12 million Americans are vegetarians, and 19,000 make the switch every week. Pamela Rice, author of 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian, puts the number at 4.5 million, or 2.5 percent of the population, based on recent surveys. Older counts, from 1992, put the number of people who "consider themselves" to be vegetarians at seven percent of the U.S. population, or an impressive 18 million.
Women are more likely to be vegetarians than men; and -- surprisingly -- Republicans are slightly more likely to abstain from meat than Democrats.
The American Dietetic Association says in a position statement, "Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." Vegetarians now have excellent opportunities to put together well-planned meals. Diverse veggie entrees are now available in most supermarkets and on a growing list of restaurant menus.
It's never been easier to become a vegetarian, and there have never been more compelling reasons for environmentalists to make that choice. It's not always easy to do -- most environmentalists still eat meat -- but the tide is beginning to turn."
the other foot in the gutter
sweet smell that they adore
I think I'd rather smother
-The Replacements-
Check your teeth, brother, carvnivores, incisors and pre-molars = omnivivorous dentition.
And stuff your moral superiority too !!!!!
Our model wasn't made that way.
bullshit. show me some of these studies that prove that any of what your saying is true. (and make-believe studies financed by the meat industry don't count)
cause what i've heard directly from three different nutritionist with degrees from the University of Washington has been totally opposite of what you claim above
angels share laughter
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
This above section has absolutely nothing to do with environmentalism. It is talking about animal rights- and that is completely seperate to environmentalism.
With regards to the rest of the article, I would suggest that the biggest problem is over population of Humans. Humans have the physiology of an omnivore, and that was fine until we started breeding like rabits. Now the planet is having difficulty supplying the resources needed for everyone to eat meat, and eventually we will have to eat less meat or start dying at an increased rate. That may be the best argument for turning vegetarian. The health argument does not stack up in my opinion- a balanced diet including moderate amounts of meat is still the healthiest diet (from what I have read).
Maybe the ones you know didn't know how to do it properly. I know plenty of people from India, who have never had a taste of meat ever, and never want to. For Hindus its against their religion.
http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/hinmeat.html
edit - I see there are other articles that say its not against their religion; however I still know many Hindus who say it is.
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
it is something i have a hard time grasping ... i have reduced my meat consumption significantly over the years and the meat i buy tends to be organic and naturally raised but i eat out a lot too and you just can't be sure where the food comes from ...
my focus these days is trying to eat less meat and eat as much local stuff as possible ...
Do Hindus eat lamb, goat, fish, chicken or other meats? I was just under the assumption that they just didn't eat beef, but I don't know if they (or most of them) are vegetarians.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
second; animal waste is fertilizer essential to the survival of the earth. chemical fertilizers strip the soil of necessary biologicals. enviornmentalists realize we must keep the balance of nature and the necessity of animal waste.
next; enviornmentalists realize that because we have encroached on the animals habitat and killed thier preditors; animals will quickly over-populate then starve from the lack of food.
a veggie eating for health will eat organic food. you can't have organic without animal waste.
eating grass fed animals will increase your CLAs reducing your risk of cancer by 74%. it will increase your selenium giving you a better mood and increase your absorbtion of beta carodine; and other vitamins.
enviornmentalists believe in a BALANCE with nature. if people continue to buy meat fed land-fill waste; medicines and steriods; the industry will continue to produce them.
bovines are sacred in the hindu religion. other meats can and are eaten.
we eat way too much meat (as a general indicator) in the west, way too much for the environment and way too much for own health. I fail to understand the thought behind non religious vegeterianism (?), but there is definitely a matter over consuming. In france we have nice little messages from our government which ask us not to eat "too sugary, salty or fatty" (which is a bit stupid, but that's not the point) but nowhere is to be seen prevention on meat consumption.
So many facts wrong on this, but I will just focus on one. Humans are not carnivores. Humans are omnivores. If we were carnivores I would have died many years ago. I have been a vegetarian since 1988. I am a triathlete and can outrun women many years younger than I am.
http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm
Lower in Fat and Calories. There are a number of nutritional differences between the meat of pasture-raised and feedlot-raised animals. To begin with, meat from grass-fed cattle, sheep, and bison is lower in total fat. If the meat is very lean, it can have one third as much fat as a similar cut from a grain-fed animal. In fact, as you can see by the graph below, grass-fed beef can have the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast, wild deer, or elk.[1] Research shows that lean beef actually lowers your "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.[2]
Because meat from grass-fed animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to lean grassfed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change in your eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you'll lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grassfed meat, our national epidemic of obesity might diminish.
In the past few years, producers of grass-fed beef have been looking for ways to increase the amount of marbling in the meat so that consumers will have a more familiar product. But even these fatter cuts of grass-fed beef are lower in fat and calories than beef from grain-fed cattle.
the link will take you to the full article and you will find countless other studies on the site. lucy is 100% right.
show me what's not accurate in your opinion and i will back every word with scientific research. some people are lucky and show the damage from a veggie diet early; while they can correct it. unfortunately; others can live on a veggie diet 25 years plus before thier bodies show signs of damage. normally; at this point; the damage cannot be reversed.
humans are omnivores in that they can digest plants; but as the captioned study shows; meat is the basics of the human diet. because humans need certain vitamins and minerals only obtained from meat; humans are really carnivores.
Actually there is a shit-load of evidence to point to above average lifespans and superhuman strength and the ability to alter time for those who are vegetarian. (I wont put links to these facts either)
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
yes it does. but if you look at the post i replied to; you will see it was a question about meat and asking proof of a meat diet being good for you. this site does just that. if you look further; you will find additional information like:
CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) is a cancer-fighting fat that is most abundant in grassfed products. Two new European studies link a diet high in CLA with a lower risk of breast cancer. In Finland, researchers measured CLA levels in the serum of women with and without breast cancer. Those women with the most CLA had a significantly lower risk of the disease. Meanwhile, French researchers measured CLA levels in the breast tissues of 360 women. Once again, the women with the most CLA had the lowest risk of cancer. In fact, the women with the most CLA had a staggering 74% lower risk of breast cancer than the women with the least CLA.
The most natural and effective way to increase your intake of CLA is to eat the meat and dairy products of grassfed animals.
A. Aro et al, Kuopio University, Finland; Bougnoux, P, Lavillonniere F, Riboli E. "Inverse relation between CLA in adipose breast tissue and risk of breast cancer. A case-control study in France." Inform 10;5:S43, 1999
the point here being that properly raised meat IS good for you.
Don't forget the superior intelligence.
look back a page; i posted the evidence to back lucy's statement.
That is not evidence.
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
I don't doubt that this CLA stuff is good for you, but because it gives some level of protection against breast cancer doesn't mean it will protect against other forms of cancer, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't increase your risk of something else going wrong. We can't begin to tell people that a vegetarian diet or a meat-eating diet will make them live longer or protect against certain diseases, there are too many variables involved to make that claim.
so scientific studies by dozens of scientists and nutritionalists is wrong but you're right even though you can't produce evidence of your claims?
once again; read further. the study posted ONLY dealt with breast cancer. CLA is a cancer fighting fat. proven to help fight all types of cancer and in some cases; cure cancer all together.
Facts from "eatwild.com" strike me as tilted towards the meat industry. Would you believe any facts posted from a PETA website? How about if a cigarette company posted there are no scientific facts connecting smoking and cancer?
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
for sure.