My personal reasons for becoming mostly vegetarian
Before I go
into some of the benefits of a plant-based diet, let me say a just few words on
why I am mostly instead of completely vegetarian or vegan. My real interest in
food began in 2000, when I first started cooking for myself in college and
bought an old macrobiotic cookbook.
Around this time I also started practicing yoga, and gradually
gravitated toward its recommendation of a diverse lacto-vegetarian diet for
health and other reasons. But eggs and fish and any meat are not recommended in
yogic traditions, and yet I still eat these a few times a month. Eating organic
yogurt from grass-fed cows and humane free-range eggs for now seems like a
passable omnivorous concession, as arguably the animal doesn’t suffer and the
environmental impact is lower than that of meat. If invited to a meal prepared
by someone else where meat is the main course I will eat a bit of it out of
respect for the host and culinary curiosity. I will also eat some fish or
chicken if my partner, who sometimes gets a craving for these, prepares a fun
non-vegetarian recipe.
It’s not that I
especially enjoy these animal products or would miss them if one day they
disappeared from tables everywhere, but frankly I just don’t want to be too militant
with my family members, friends, or even myself. I truly believe that if 3 or 4
out of 5 people adopted planet-friendly diets in which, for example, they
reduced consumption of animal products by 80%, we would do a much greater
service to our collective and environmental health than if only a minority
became 100% vegan while the rest carried on as is. And as my nutrition teacher
once said, flexibility is key to a sustainable relationship with food.
Now, what’s so good
about eating in a plant-based way?
Plant-based foods are full of nutrients and,
being lower on the food chain, have costs and environmental impact that is many
times lower than animal-based foods. Plants nourish us in a cleaner, more
direct way with the sun’s energy and the earth’s minerals, without the
saturated fats and toxins that accumulate in animal flesh.
Personal wellbeing: I simply feel better, more energetic, and
less hungry eating unprocessed plant-based foods than I did when I was eating a
balanced, home-cooked, whole-foods-based diet that included meat almost every
day. Good plant based-diets have proven preventative and therapeutic effects,
so it is also comforting to know that I am improving my chances for a longer
life free from obesity, cancer[1],
diabetes, heart-disease, digestive problems, liver malfunction, and antibiotic
resistance. A recent Tufts University study showed that the less animal
products you eat, the lower your risk of being overweight in middle age (25%
for lacto-vegetarians vs. 60% for omnivores)[2].
From a more aesthetic and nutritional perspective, because plants are lower on
the food chain and get their nourishment from sun and soil, there is abundance
of vitamins and other essential nutrition in them without the concentration of
toxins that occurs as you move up on the food chain. There’s literally a limit
to how high on the food chain humans can eat – no one eats carnivores like
tigers or hyenas, and there are stern medical warnings on limiting your
consumption of fish high on the food chain. Even though animal foods may have
fairly high concentrations of protein, they are lacking in many essential
nutrients and fiber, and are full of problematic components like saturated fats
that humans just can’t process in large quantities.
Enjoyment: I simply enjoy the taste and texture of beans and tofu more than that
of meat (have you ever noticed the need to floss immediately after eating even
tender meat but not after a vegetarian meal?). Picky eaters will especially
appreciate the fact that there aren’t any stringy/squidgy/fatty parts in
plant-based meals. The range of exciting vegetarian meal possibilities seems to
me much greater than what’s present in the ‘SAD: standard American diet’ or
meat & potatoes-oriented traditions.
Ease of handling/simplicity in the kitchen: I used to like the taste of meat but was
always put off by handling raw animal products in preparation, the need to
ensure meat is very fresh and fully cooked to prevent poisoning, the need to
take the trash out promptly if it contains meat packaging or scraps, and the
tedious clean-up of greasy dishes and cookware…so much so that I barely ever
cooked until discovering the possibilities of vegetarian cuisine. Storage of
most vegetables is much more forgiving in terms of refrigeration, raw or semi-raw
consumption, and disposal.
Saves money: Shifting toward plant-based foods while
using even some of the principles from this book is sure to shrink your food
bills.
Less waste: If you recycle and start a composting bin for vegetable scraps you’ll
be amazed at how miniscule (and non-smelly) the amount of trash you produce
will be – a family of 2-3 cooking most meals at home will produce as little as
½ a small grocery bag of actual “trash” per week as there is no meat scraps or
cartons from packaged meals.
Agriculture yields and
food storage and transportation in North America are impressively efficient. On
each hectare of farmland we grow enough food to feed 16 people for a year (at 2700
kcal per day), more than double of what less developed countries are able to achieve.
Yet in reality only 5 people are fed from that hectare because so much goes to livestock
(which is 4 to 40 times less efficient than feeding humans) and the rest is converted
to fuel or simply wasted by the retailers and consumers.
Critical environmental concerns: Even health and environment-conscious
people are usually not aware of the degree of ecological devastation the modern
meat-oriented diet is causing. Buying less meat helps slow global warming much
more effectively than buying a hybrid car or solar panels, and saves more
resources than other conservation efforts.
It’s fairly well known
that raising animals for food is a costly and inefficient way to feed people,
but before writing this book I could not have guessed the extent of those
costs. At present, 92.5% of U.S. farmland is devoted to grazing animals and producing
feed-grain: corn, soybeans, wheat, rye, oats, barley and cottonseed for
confined cows, hogs, chickens and turkeys. Only 7.5% of U.S. farmland produces
grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries for direct human consumption.[3]
Overgrazing has turned millions of miles of grasslands into deserts. The United
Nations report Livestock’s Long Shadow[4]
estimates that raising livestock is responsible for 70% of forests cleared in
the Amazon Rain Forest. The same widely-cited 2006 UN report calculates that
raising cattle emits more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation
combined. Another estimate made in 2009 by a former senior World Bank
scientist, incorporating breathing and other factors into the UN calculations, reveals
that farming emits 51% of the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gasses every
year[5]
(more than all other industries and
transportation combined!).
And how many animals
do we actually eat? Per-capita consumption of meat has doubled since the middle
of the 20th century[6]. Worldwide,
there are 70-90 billion animals
slaughtered for meat every year (about 12% of this is in the US, even though
the US houses only 3% of the world’s population). Nearly a billion are raised
for dairy products.[7] In
the US, 90% of animals are raised on CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations,
aka factory farms). Feed for most of these animals is grown in the conventional
way with excessive use of chemical fertilizer, herbicides, tilling – which
further exacerbates greenhouse emissions, water pollution and soil erosion. In
addition, animal waste and antibiotic-and-hormone-infused runoff from factory farms
is scarcely regulated and pollutes ground water on a horrific scale.
A serving steak
requires 16 times more fossil fuel to produce and releases 24 times more
greenhouse gasses than a serving yielding the same amount of calories of grains
and vegetables[8].
When it comes to fresh water, it takes on average 15,000 liters to produce a kilogram
of beef[9],
but only 1900 L to produce a kilo of beans and 850-1200 L for a kilo of wheat[10].
To put this in
perspective, if you religiously took extra
short showers for a full year you might save as much water as you use up by
eating just one beef-centered dinner
(or two pork or three chicken meals). So substituting even some meat with
plant-based food is more impactful (and much cheaper!) than a myriad of other
noble conservation efforts.
Global health: Obesity and related disease epidemics
afflict over 1 billion people, while chronic undernourishment cripples another
billion. Both result in tremendous personal suffering, shorter life expectancy,
higher medical costs and lower productivity. In the US, for example, obesity
and excess consumption of processed and animal products is implicated in over half
of all deaths (from heart attacks, cancer, stroke and diabetes), with at least
15% - that’s 360-400 thousand deaths every year - directly caused by improper
diet and physical inactivity[11].
Ethical/Humanist: Reducing meat consumption and waste would
liberate global resources that could be used for hunger alleviation. We dote on
and lavish tens of billions of dollars on our pets and certain ‘cute’
endangered animals, and have laws to protect them, but farm animals are
hypocritically exempt from animal cruelty laws. Only by means of reverence for life
can we establish a balanced and humane relationship with other people and all
living creatures within our reach.
Why
not eat in a way that’s kind to yourself and others?
[1] Cho
E, Spiegelman D, Hunter D, et al. Premenopausal fat intake and risk of breast
cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2003;95:1079-85.
[3] NASS,
USDA Land-Use statistics, 2002-2008.
[7] Goodland,
R., Anhang, J, 2012. Response to “Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: The
importance of getting the numbers right,” by Herrero et al.
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