Why go Veg
The old adage “You are what you eat” still makes a lot of sense. Would you rather be organic rice with curried vegetables or a quarter-pound of hormone-laden, toxin-packed dead cow? The benefits of a vegetarian diet abound...
Heart Disease
Heart disease is the
leading cause of death in the United States. A person on a typical American
meat-eating diet has a 50 percent higher rate of heart disease than a person on
a 100 percent vegetarian diet.
A 100 percent vegetarian diet is significantly lower
in saturated fats (which mainly come from animal fat) and cholesterol (found
only in animal-based products). Saturated fats and cholesterol are major factors
in heart disease. Strict vegetarians have lower blood pressure and
lower rates of hypertension. A low-fat 100 percent vegetarian diet combined with
stress reduction techniques can actually reverse hardening of the
arteries.
Cancer
Instances of breast cancer are
dramatically fewer in countries where a plant-based diet is common. Vegetarians
have a 40 percent lower chance of breast cancer and in some studies consistently
demonstrated lower rates of colon cancer.
Diabetes
Meat-eaters have an 80 percent
higher chance of getting diabetes than vegetarians do. Recent studies found that
type 2 diabetics can significantly reduce their need to take medicine while
following a strict vegetarian diet (and participants also reduced their
cholesterol and weight).
Body Mass
A low-fat vegan diet with moderate
exercise can decrease body mass and make it easier to maintain a healthy weight.
A vegan diet is a practical and sensible diet, as opposed to fad diets that
encourage unhealthy eating habits.
Calcium
Absorption and Protein
Humans are the only animals who drink
the milk of other species. Human bodies have no need for cow’s milk.
Conventional cow’s milk is full of hormones, steroids and other toxins that
weaken human immunity systems and may even contribute to cancer.
Cow’s milk contains pus (somatic cells). The average liter of milk in
the Untied States contains 323 million pus cells, well over the “safe” level of
200 million! Even organic milk contains dioxins, cholesterol, fat, blood and
pus.
Too much
protein, especially animal protein from meat and dairy, can cause the excretion
of calcium through urination and increase the risk of osteoporosis. Too much
protein also strains the kidneys, possibly leading to kidney disease. Most
Americans get twice as much protein as they need. Adequate amounts of calcium
are easily obtained through plant foods such as broccoli, beans, grains, kale
and spinach, and such calcium is more easily absorbed by the body than calcium
from cow’s milk.
Pregnancy and Raising Children on a Vegetarian Diet: What the Doctors Say
Children and pregnant mothers are especially susceptible
to dietary dangers. Both groups should avoid the drugs, hormones, pesticides and
other detriments of a meat- and dairy-based diet. In a 20-year study of 17,000
vegetarian pregnancies, only one in 100 births were by Caesarean. In the study,
there was only one case of hypertension. All pregnant women need more calories
and extra protein. Foods such as tofu, tempeh, beans, grains and nut butters
contain plenty of protein to satisfy this need. Expectant mothers should consume
adequate amounts of plant-sourced calcium, as well as iron, folic acid and
vitamins. One of America’s most respected pediatricians, the late
Dr. Benjamin Spock, recommended that parents raise their children on a
vegetarian diet.
“We now know,” he wrote, “that there are harmful effects of a meaty diet.
Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats
have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight
problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms of
cancer...
“I no longer recommend dairy products... There was a time
when cow’s milk was considered very desirable. But research, along with clinical
experience, has forced doctors and nutritionists to rethink this
recommendation.”
Pediatricians have found that chronic ear infections
and respiratory problems are aggravated when dairy is part of a child’s diet.
Children can get all the calcium they need from plant foods such as broccoli,
chickpeas, almonds, black beans, tahini and kale.
The American
Dietetic Association says, “Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian
diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during
pregnancy, lactation [i.e., breastfeeding], infancy, childhood, and
adolescence.”
Further Reading
The Food
Revolution by John Robbins
Raising Vegetarian Children by Joanne Stepaniak and Vesanto Melina
The Vegetarian Way: Total Health for You and Your Family by Virginia and Mark Messina
Raising Vegan Children in a Non-Vegan World by Erin Pavlina
Eat Right, Live Longer by Neal Barnard, M.D.
Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery by Dean Ornish, M.D.
Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock, M.D.
These
restrictions often prohibited “using hoses to wash paved areas, limits on car
washing and filling or refilling swimming pools, and restrictions on planting
and/or watering new sod.” During recent years parts of Southern California have
asked citizens “not to wash their cars… and to use low-flow showers and
toilets.” Some Coloradans might remember suggestions that people shower for just
one minute less each day in order to save water or when many restaurants only
served glasses of water upon request. However, most people probably haven’t
heard that to produce one pound of beef between 441 gallons of water (National
Cattleman’s Beef Association estimate) and 5,214 gallons of water ( University
of California Agricultural Extension estimate) are
needed.Even
using the NCBA’s estimate, more water is needed to produce one pound of beef
than is needed to provide water for a seven minute shower each day for a month
with a 2 gallon per minute flow rate shower head.
While there is some
disagreement over how much water is needed to produce beef, one thing cannot be
disputed: even by the most conservative estimates it takes far more water to
produce a pound of beef than a pound of even the most water consuming fruits or
vegetables. However,
beef is not the only food requiring large amounts of water; other meats, such as
chicken and pork, also take require more water than equivalent amounts of plant
based foods. This is largely because the amount of grain eaten by an animal is
larger than the amount of meat produced by that animal.
Currently, around eighty percent of
American grain is used solely for animal feed. In Colorado, 25% of water goes to
alfalfa crops. Crops used to feed farm animals need water just like any other
crops, but they are not producing nearly as much food for humans as crops raised
for direct human consumption. Thus, meat consumption becomes a rather
inefficient use of water.
Meat
production doesn’t only use up water; it also contributes greatly to water
pollution. In Colorado alone 19 million tons of cattle waste is produced each
year. Feedlots often place animal waste in “lagoons” due to the extremely high
costs of other solutions, such as using a portion of it as natural fertilizer.
This leads to pollution in a couple of ways.
First, if no
natural fertilizer is being used, then chemical fertilizer must be sprayed onto
crops. These fertilizers are often washed away by rain, polluting nearby water
supplies. Second, piles and “lagoons” of animal waste sometimes spill or wash
away polluting water.
When a North Carolina hog farm spilled 25 million gallons of waste
into a nearby river, causing an outbreak of an organism known as the Pfiesteria
piscicida , 10 to 14 million fish were killed. Fisherman, as well as people using
the river for recreational purposes, began to develop sores and other strange
symptoms after contact with the Pfiesteria infested
water.
Water pollution is also caused by cattle that are
allowed to graze on natural growth in the American West. Allowing cattle to
graze in a more natural environment seems to eliminate the problems of having to
grow crops for feed as well as the problem of what to do with their waste.
However, cattle are native to moist riparian areas, not the arid
climates of the American West where they are so often put out to graze.
Cattle seem to prefer areas more similar to their native
environment: a study in Eastern Oregon showed that cattle greatly preferred
streamside vegetation over other grazing areas..
Cattle eat the
streamside plants and break down the ground near streams, causing erosion of
dirt into the streams. This can often cause water to flow more slowly,
increasing the opportunity for bacteria and algal to
grow.
Additionally, cattle pollute natural waterways by depositing unnatural
amounts of fecal matter and urine into streams (not to mention the occasional
carcass left to rot by ranchers who may not check their cattle for weeks at a
time).
Not
eating meat may not have as much on an immediate effect on the water supply as
other conservation methods, but the long term effects of reduced meat production
could be phenomenal. With important water sources such as the Ogallala aquifer,
which provides water to several Midwestern and Western states (including
Colorado), shrinking away, long-term water conservation is something that every
citizen must take seriously. Few, if any, methods of conservation could save as
much water over time as simply reducing one’s meat intake.
Topsoil does not tend to be in one’s
consciousness, but it is a precious resource that is not any more replaceable
than air or water. Topsoil is an essential element for growing
crops and preventing flooding. Although the natural development of one inch of
topsoil takes at least one hundred years (and may take up to eight hundred
years), it is being lost at an alarming rate. In the United States, an estimated
six inches of this precious soil has been lost since the country’s founding,
much more than nature could have produced in such a short time.
Topsoil is being lost in many different ways, but the
production of meat and animal products contributes significantly to the problem.
One way topsoil is lost is through erosion by wind and water. Large grazing
livestock such as cattle increase the rate of erosion by trampling and eating
away the plants that were holding the soil together.
Additionally, as plants are removed the topsoil is exposed to unusual
amounts of sun and heat, which can damage the roots of the remaining plants and
stunt the growth of trees, leading to even more erosion.
A study in
Northern California of land grazed by sheep showed zero oak saplings per acre,
whereas a study of a similar acre of land that was not being grazed had 554 new
saplings. Eventually, this amplified pattern of erosion has the power to turn
areas rich with vegetation into desert.
Feedlots
and factory farms are similarly pernicious. In the United States there are
currently more than nine billion chickens, as well as millions of turkey, hogs
and cows; and a 1999 Time magazine article estimated that, in the
United States, livestock produce 130 times as much waste and humans.
Although animal waste can be a useful natural fertilizer, such an
unnaturally large amount of waste has no natural use. Former cattle rancher
Howard Lyman writes that, while running a feedlot, to save costs on transporting
cattle waste his business “simply created mountains of waste inside and outside
the feedlot.”
Of
course, such waste attracts flies. Lyman states that chemicals had to be sprayed
“constantly to fight [them].” Because little animal waste is used as a natural
fertilizer, crops are sprayed with large amounts of chemicals. These chemicals
contain large amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium but no “trace
minerals such as zinc or selenium.” This not only has the potential to decrease
the nutrition of crops, but it also changes the soil texture leading to more
erosion.
As
we aim to save the planet and conserve our resources it is important that rich
healthy soil is not forgotten as a resource, for it is just as important to
healthy crops as water and sunlight. Reducing or eliminating the amount of
animal products consumed by humans would have enormous long-term benefits for
our soil.
Resources:
John Robbins.The Food Revolution,Conari Press, Berkeley, California, 2001.
Douglas S. Kenney, Roberta A. Klein, and Martyn P. Clark, Use and Effectiveness of Municipal Water Restrictions During Dought in Colorado, <http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-296-water_restrictions_jawra.pdf>.
Howard Lyman, Mad Cowboy, Scribner, New York, New York, 1998.
George Wuerthener and Mollie Matteson, Welfare Ranching, Foundation for Deep Ecology,: Sausolito, California, 2002
Top of Page
Numerous wildlife species are threatened by modern meat production.
In addition to suffering major biological impoverishment because of livestock’s
damaging habits, the West’s wildlife faces death at the hands of ranchers and
Wildlife Services, a deceivingly named agency of the U.S. federal
government.
In Colorado, few
animals are as threatened as the black-tailed prairie dog, which occupies less
than 2 percent of its historical habitat. Perceived as competition for livestock
forage, tens of billions of prairie dogs have been killed in the past
century. Because so many species rely on the existence of prairie
dogs, the effects of this slaughter are immense.
Other
animals killed to “protect” livestock—at taxpayer expense—include black bears,
mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and red foxes. As more and more people become
vegetarian, fewer and fewer of these animals will be killed—lands currently used
for rangeland and for raising feed could be restored (at some level) to their
native states, in which wildlife and ecosystems thrive.
A plant-based
diet is not only beneficial for your health, but it also saves the lives of
prairie dogs and the ecosystems they live in.
The
facts:
Countless prairie dogs are killed each
year as more and more land is plowed for grain production to feed
livestock.
• More than half of the harvested
agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow livestock
feed.
• For every 16 pounds of
grains and soybeans fed to cattle, only one pound of meat is
produced.
• To supply one person who eats the
standard American, meat-oriented diet with food for a year requires 3 1/4 acres
of land. Supplying one lacto-ovo-vegetarian with food for a year requires 1/2 of
an acre. Only 1/6 of an acre of land is required to supply one pure vegetarian
(vegan) with food for a year.
• In other
words, a given acreage can feed 20 times as many people eating a pure
vegetarian-style diet as it could feed people eating the standard American
diet.
• In 16 western states, 307 million
acres of federal lands are leased for grazing. That is an area the size of the
Eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida.
• Ranchers fear that prairie dogs will destroy the rangelands
used by their cattle for grazing. Although it has been demonstrated for more
than 20 years that prairie dogs do not pose a significant economic threat to
ranching, prairie dogs are continually poisoned to make way for grazing
cattle.
• Although cattle and prairie dogs
do have a mutually beneficial relationship, cattle are a poor substitute for the
environmental benefits of prairie dog-bison societies.
Excessive cattle-grazing can ruin the prairie dog’s native
habitat.
Prairie dogs are a keystone
species of the grasslands, so their existence is incredibly important to all
species. Implementing a plant-based diet is an important piece of interrupting their rapid decrease in population.