I eat a plant-based diet but I do this primarily for my own health benefit more than environmental purposes. Heart disease runs rampant in the men in our family and under the advice of my doctor I eat a low-fat plant-based diet. I am in my 50's now and have normal weight ( I lost 45 pounds), blood pressure (from 135/85 to 110/65), cholesterol (I never checked this before so I have no idea but it is at the bottom of the scale now), blood sugar (I used to be severely hypoglycemic and was on the verge of Type 2 diabetes) so it must be working.
I do share concerns with others about what factory farming and unnatural livestock practices are doing to the environment I live in. This link goes to an article on this problem in the New Scientist magazine. Unlike some of the vegan and vegetarian publications they have no axe to grind, they are just reporting facts. It is short and straight to the point with references to the back-up research. I did find it interesting that a bovine fed naturally (grass-fed), rather than a concentrated feed diet (cattle yards), emits 40 per cent less greenhouse gases (methane) and consumes 85 per cent less energy during its growth cycle. That's a considerable difference. Multiply that by the millions of cows in feed yards and you can see this is a substantial amount of avoidable energy usage.
Meat is murder on the environment - earth - 18 July 2007 - New Scientist Environment
Note: The packing is nearly done and the days have finally arrived to actually move all the crap that owns me from one house to another. I have been filling my blog with articles of interest of late and will do so for the remainder of the week since I will be very busy. I'll get back to normal posts next week.
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Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg :
“Vegetarianism is literally about life and death — for each of us individually and for all of us together.
Eating animals simultaneously contributes to: their suffering and death; the ill-health and early death of people; the unsustainable overuse of oil, water, land, topsoil, grain, labor, and other vital resources; environmental destruction, including deforestation, species extinction, mono-cropping,
and global warming; the legitimacy of force and violence; the mis-allocation of capital, skills, land, and other assets; vast inefficiencies in the economy; tremendous waste; massive inequalities in the world; the continuation of world hunger and mass starvation; the transmission and spread of dangerous diseases; and moral failure in so-called civilized societies.
Vegetarianism is an antidote to all of these unnecessary tragedies.”
Dan Brook, Ph.D.
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