Healthy for you and the planet
Consider meatless meals
Ella Laloba
If every American skipped one meal of meat each week the reduction of carbon dioxide would be akin to taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads. A United Nations report called the meat industry “one of the top contributors to the serious environmental problems.”
Switching to a vegetarian diet is a most effective way to “go green.”
Livestock production requires more land, water, fossil fuels and other resources than the production of edible crops. A staggering 70percent of the deforestation in the once mighty Amazon; 64 percent of all the acid rain-producing ammonia; and 15 of the 24 global ecosystems in decline can be attributed to the effects of livestock production.
The World Health Organization estimates one in three people are affected by malnutrition. Yet, one third to one half the world’s edible harvests are fed to livestock. During the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, the country was still exporting feed crops to Europe. During severe food shortages in North Korea in 1997, it exported 1,000 tons of maize to Japan for poultry feed.
Brazil clears vast expanses of rainforest to grow soya beans to feed to chickens in Europe and Japan. Conservative estimates predict that a fifty percent reduction in meat consumption in developed countries could save 3.6 million children from malnutrition.
If environmental or ethical concerns, don’t’ cause you reconsider more meatless meals, what about your body?
A study by the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health, published in March by the Archives of Internal Medicine, showed increase in death from cancer and heart disease associated with red and processed meat. It revealed that men eating the equivalent of a quarter-pound hamburger daily had a 22 percent higher risk of dying of cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease. Women who ate large amounts of red meat had a 20 percent higher risk of dying of cancer and a 50 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease.
Ella Laloba has been a vegetarian for 22 years, and feels as healthy as a horse.
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Click Here to Add a CommentWhy have we become such a planet of meat eaters? I just saw the movie Food Inc. I am giving away all steaks in my fridge to my neighbors who haven't yet seen the movie!" - margaret cook (2009-11-21)
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