By replacing just one meat-based meal with a
vegetarian dish, you can save the
10 pounds of grain and
2,500 gallons of water required to produce a single pound of meat. That's more water than you'd save by not showering for a whole year! You can also prevent the clearing of
55 square feet of rain forest required per pound
to provide grazing for cattle.
For many of us, eating meat is a habit we don't really think about. But meat consumption is taking a toll on humans, animals and the planet.
Animal activists believe that there are many reasons to reduce (or eliminate) our consumption of meat and choose more vegetarian meals:
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More than 70 percent of the grains and half the water consumed in this country are used for livestock. Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared for livestock grazing; worldwide, farmers bulldoze the equivalent of seven football fields of land every minute for that purpose. Meanwhile, livestock
overgrazing contributes to the
extinction of
many animals and plants..
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Farm animals in America produce 86,000 pounds of excrement per second — about
130 times as much as is produced by all the humans in the United States. Not surprisingly, that pollutes our soil, water and air.
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Meat production is an inefficient use of resources.
(Meat "production" is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating
competition for grain between affluent meat eaters and the world's poor.) With a diet that relies on animal products for about a quarter of a person's calories, only 3.2 billion people can be nourished on this planet. Vegetarian diets improve that number dramatically. In fact, if everyone adopted a
vegan diet, the planet could nourish
more than 6.3 billion people —
more than the world's entire current population.
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Farm animals are the unhappy recipients of a great deal of
abuse, particularly on
factory farms. Eight billion animals are killed each year in this country alone for food, and the
Animal Welfare Act does not protect them.
The good news is that eating more vegetarian dishes does not have to be an all-or-nothing proposition.
Rather than become completely vegetarian overnight; perhaps choose vegetarian dishes whenever you can. The more vegetarian foods you eat, and the less meat you use, the better it
can be for you, animals, and the planet.
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Eat vegetarian dishes whenever you can! There are countless delicious recipes out there for vegetarian meals such as
vegetarian chili and other tempting ideas. For vegetarian recipes, consult vegetarian websites such as
VegWeb, the The Vegetarian Resource Group, the
Vegetarian Society and the
International Vegetarian Union, or search
for vegetarian dishes on cooking websites such as
All Recipes and
Cooks.com.
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Choose restaurants with a good selection of vegetarian meals. Listings of
vegetarian-friendly restaurants can also be found at
VegDining.com and
HappyCow.net.
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When you're cooking, consider using substitutes for at least some of the animal products in your favorite meals, even if it doesn't make them totally vegetarian. For
vegetarian substitutes, visit the
Compassion Action Institute,
VegSource, the
Vegetarian Society or
NoMeat.com.
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Once you've become comfortable cooking and eating vegetarian food, consider taking the vegetarian "plunge" and committing to vegetarianism full-time. Information and support for new vegetarians is available from the
Vegetarian Society,
EatVeg.com and
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
