Veggiesaurus

Enjoy, and I’d love to discuss if you have related thoughts after reading.

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I’ve been a pescovegetarian since February 2008 — the only meat I eat (with the exception of the occasional accident, such as the Chicken Incident of 2008 and the Sausaging of 2010) is fish*, and even that in moderation. I chose to become a vegetarian because I’m concerned about the amount of resources and energy the US demolishes at an alarming rate. I wanted to make a greater personal effort toward protecting our resources, and a little research showed me that this would be a worthwhile way to do that.

Yes, that's me.

When I tell people that I’m a vegetarian for ‘ethical reasons,’ they usually assume I’m talking about animal cruelty issues, et cetera. While those types of issues are certainly causes for concern, they don’t move me the way worry for our planet’s future does. However, I get pretty tongue-tied when I try to explain my reasoning behind cutting out most meat. I might be awesome, but I was an English major and Communications minor for a reason — I do a little better explaining through the written word. Or, even better, by researching and pointing you to the right information from experts. So, I’ve collected some sites that do a pretty good job of explaining why I’ve made this decision.

Many of these links will give you more or less the same information, though it’s worth skimming through all of them, as some give more statistics while others give more explanation.

Diet, Energy and Global Warming
(Though dense, this provides a useful quantitative and ‘why does this work’ analysis that most of the other sources lack)

• ‘We conclude that a person consuming a mixed diet with the mean American caloric content and composition causes the emissions of 1,485 kg CO2-equivalent above the emissions associated with consuming the same number of calories, but from plant sources. Far from trivial, nationally this difference amounts to over 6% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.’

Vegan Outreach | Why Vegan? | Resources and Contamination
(This page most succinctly explains my decision, although much of the research cited here is a bit dated)

• ‘It takes more land, water, and energy to produce meat than to grow vegetarian foods. It’s several times more efficient to eat grains directly than to funnel them through farmed animals. According to the Audubon Society, roughly 70 percent of the grain grown and 50 percent of the water consumed in the United States are used by the meat industry. A Minority Staff of Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry report states the beef in just one Big Mac represents enough wheat to make five loaves of bread.’
• ‘The typical North American diet, with its large share of animal products, requires twice as much water to produce as the less meat-intensive diets common in many Asian and some European countries. Eating lower on the food chain could allow the same volume of water to feed two Americans instead of one, with no loss in overall nutrition.’
• ‘The industrial [livestock] system is a poor converter of fossil energy. Fossil energy is a major input of intensive livestock production systems, mainly indirectly for the production of feed.’

Why be a vegetarian?
(Pretty straightforward information about health, animal cruelty and ecological impacts of going veggie)

• ‘Worldwide petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 11 years if the rest of the world ate like the U.S. The least energy-efficient plant food is 10 times as efficient as the most efficient meat food. A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60 percent.’
• ‘It takes ten times as much land to produce food for an average American compared to a pure vegetarian.’
• ‘Around 85% of topsoil loss is directly associated with raising livestock. The USDA says crop productivity is down 70% as a result of topsoil loss. It takes nature 500 years to build an inch of topsoil. Vegan diets make less than 5% of the demands on the soil as meat-based diets.’

Excerpts from Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment
(A pretty wordy explanation, but worth a read or skim if you have some free time)

• ‘Livestock create an array of problems not because cows, pigs, and chickens are hazards in themselves, but because human institutions have driven some forms of animal farming out of alignment with the ecosystems in which they operate. While there may be benefits in that the industry creates jobs for those who need them, the ecosystem cannot sustain the sheer volume of production. Many governments — including those of China, the European Community, and the United States — subsidize ecologically harmful methods of growing feed crops and raising animals.’
• ‘The United States, one of the more efficient livestock producers, uses 6.9 kilograms of corn and soy to put one kilogram of pork on the table.’
• ‘Cornell University’s David Pimentel, a specialist in agricultural energy, estimates that 30,000 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy are used to produce a kilogram of pork in the United States–equivalent to the energy in almost 4 liters of gasoline. Energy use, like grain consumption, declines from pork to eggs. All told, almost half of the energy used in American agriculture goes into the livestock sector, and producing the red meat and poultry eaten each year by a typical American uses the equivalent of 190 liters of gasoline.’

Of course, as with any issue, there are some downsides to a strictly vegetarian or vegan diet. One article I read raises discussion about efficiency of land use; although vegetarian diets require less than half an acre of land per year versus the 2.11 acres required of a diet high in meat, the land used for the latter doesn’t have to be as high-quality. At least in the example this article uses, though I’d expect similar statistics across the US, there is simply a much larger quantity of that ‘lower-quality’ farmland available. The state of New York can directly support (meaning no outside food sources) more diets that include meat than it can support diets completely free of meat. To that end, there is something to be said for the benefits of at least reducing the amount of meat in one’s diet.

I’ve had a handful of people tell me my vegetarian reasoning is B.S. But facts are facts: meat production requires a lot more energy, water and land than merely producing the crops, dairy and eggs required for vegetarian diets. Thus the typical meat-based American diet is harmful for both our earth and world population, particularly from the standpoints of energy efficiency and long-term sustainability.

I hope that anyone who takes the time to chew on and digest this information might be willing to cut back his or her meat consumption just a little bit. It doesn’t take much of a change, as some of these sites will point out, to really cut into the energy and land crises created by our meat consumption.

*I don’t know as much about the production/farming of fish as I should, but I’ve no doubt (especially living in the Midwest) that my consumption of fish undoes quite a bit of the energy I save by not eating other meat. However, I continue eating fish for Omega 3 benefits, among others. I hope to one day cut fish out of my diet entirely, but I just haven’t balanced my diet well enough yet to do so safely. To that end, if you decide to give the veggie route a go, make sure you are aware of what that means for your health. You have to be ready to deal with paying a lot more attention to what you eat and listening to your body to notice when you’re low on certain vitamins or nutrients.