Before talking about vegetariansim, I must say that I don't see anything wrong in eating meat. If a living thing tastes good, if you can run faster than it and catch it, I would say have fun eating it! I think killing a plant is no different than killing an animal. It is natural that carbon-based life forms depend on each other for nutrition and survival. However, I do believe that vegetarianism (or reducing our dependence on animal protein) is cheaper and is good for the planet.
In a world of $1 double cheeseburgers, it's no wonder that many people suspect that a vegetarian diet is more expensive than one that includes meat. But that's generally not true. And though it's difficult to tally the savings of illnesses or diseases avoided with a plant-based diet, the financial worth of good health is unquestionable. Vegetarianism could extend your life by several years, as well as lower your risk of heart disease, cancer and dementia. It's better for the planet, reducing water usage and global-warming gases.
A vegetarian diet uses considerably less water than a meat based diet. This is because to produce meat, water must be used in the production of feed for animals, which must be fed to the animals during their entire life. The loss of water (and energy) between trophic levels is very large. When the grains go directly to humans this inefficiency is avoided.
As an illustration, the water needed to produce a pound of wheat in the USA is 14 gallons whereas the water needed to produce a pound of beef is 441 gallons. More than half of the water use for all purposes in the USA is used for livestock production. For reasons of inefficiency similar to that of water consumption, animal protein demands far greater expenditures of fossil fuel energy — eight times as much for a comparable amount of plant protein.
Petroleum is one of the resources freed up for other usage by a vegetarian diet: Within the Pulitzer-winning book by John Robbins, "Diet for a New America," which uses data primarily sourced from the world's largest body of scientists, AAAS, Robbins explains how the petroleum used in the transportation of farm-animals, the later processing of them, and the raising and harvesting of the vast amount of crops fed to farm-animals (which is much greater than the amount of crops people would need if we were to eat the crops directly, rather than feeding them to animals, then eating the animals), adds up to greatly increase the amount of petroleum used. So, if more people adopt a vegan diet, not only is more food available, but more petroleum to deliver that food is.
2 comments:
Thanks, Gopa; quite a lot of interesting info.
One of my pals used to say that he had no qualms eating meat as the animals have been raised specifically for that purpose, like so many vegetables.
Raama, I agree with your pal. Just because plants do not have a central nervous system like you and me, we can't say that they don't feel pain and fear of death. They probably have an alternative pain transmission mechanism.
Re: Animals = red vegetables, I heard people here say, "I harvested a good bit of venison this hunting season". Hunters here call themselves conservationists as they control over population of deer. They say that if deer population is not kept in check, they could die of sickness and starvation.
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