How Can Eating A Vegetarian Diet Save the World?
February 3, 2010 by Tracey
Filed under Sustainable Living
Since the 1970s, those who avoid eating meat have been evangelizing the virtues and benefits of a vegetarian diet. Not only are the benefits to human health clearly demonstrated, given the naturally cholesterol-free regimen, but the amount of energy and bother involved in growing grains, fruits and vegetables is far less than producing a similar weight or caloric measure of meat.
Though people who’ve grown accustomed to having a hamburger whenever they like would chafe at the mere notion, cutting out just a few meat-based meals per week can actually save quite a significant amount of energy and pollution. For example, it takes more than 50 times as much energy to produce a pound of red meat compared to a pound of organic vegetables.
Also saved in an acre by acre comparison of confinement animal production versus organic vegetables are the energy and harmful side effects of the systems. For instance, both the pesticides and inorganic fertilizers that are used to control weeds and insects in conventional livestock operations, including the grain that such animals spend much of their lives eating, are significant.
Also consider the amount of petroleum-derived carbon that is liberated into the atmosphere when transporting such animals from farm to feed-lot to slaughter – it’s not just the trip from the slaughterhouse to the grocery store that counts where climate change is concerned. Meat, as well as eggs and diary (to a lesser extent) are highly energetic foods. It has been proven that the amount of these foods that are useful for human health is far less than many North Americans consume.
Reducing one’s consumption from the typical twice per day to twice per week could save far more money, fuel and pollution than buying a hybrid car or switching to buying energy from 100% renewable resources such as wind and solar. It is not necessary to eliminate meat entirely from one’s diet to make a significant impact – just reducing your personal intake of red meat by a fraction has a tremendous impact when done half a billion times over.
Part of the major increase in the severity of the climate change problem is due to other very populous parts of the world switching from their traditional vegetarian diets to a more “American,” meat-based diet. Nations such as India, China and Pakistan that account for nearly half the world’s population are adopting the lifestyle that the more developed world has touted as an ideal for a hundred years. The result is a system that is quickly being strained to the point of breaking, as evidenced by skyrocketing commodity crop prices and food riots as those seen in early 2008 all over the world.
The fragile state of the world’s water resources is also significant, and a vegetarian diet, even part of the time, can save a considerable amount of it. In a 2001 Scientific American article, it was revealed that while one pound (.45kg) of maize takes between 100 and 250 gallons of water to produce, that same pound of beef will take between 2,000 and 8,500 gallons of water. That represents between 20 and 40 times more water that must be pumped from fragile rivers, groundwater supplies and estuary environments that are already in trouble.
Even if you don’t take into consideration the impact the loss of freshwater has on the health of the environment or billion or so people who don’t have access to sanitary freshwater, that the aquifers in North America have begun to run dry should give anyone pause. While it is very common for fruit orchards and vegetable field to be watered with very efficient systems that water the ground where it’s needed most, most crops for animal feed are grown with inefficient overhead watering that encourages pest problems and looses a great deal of water to evaporation before it even reaches the plant.
A vegetarian diet has also been proven to be far healthier. Given that the largest killer of people in North America and the most developed world are diseases brought about by consumption of animal products and tobacco, it should be a national priority to get people to eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible, but there are powerful business and cultural forces that prevent many people from even considering it.
However, for one’s own health and the state of the environment we must all share, it is becoming increasingly important and apparent that choosing to eat vegetarian meals as often as possible really could save the world.
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