Paris Hilton is a renowned name in the fashion industry but she is also famous for one more thing and that is appealing for quitting non-vegetarian diet. Today more than 70% of the world’s population is non-vegetarian. Also we have a bad habit of pronouncing a thing right if most of the people are for it. But just because the majority is performing a task doesn’t make the task right! Non-vegetarian diet is becoming a part of our daily food. Non-vegetarian diet tingle our taste buds but one never tries to think ahead of that. Today meat is changing our world by affecting our nature and surroundings. Everything in the nature strikes a balance for the very existence. For instance the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere, if the amount would have been a little less then it would have been difficult for us to breathe. On the other hand if it would have been more then it would have been acidic for us and animals to survive. Yet we keep on disturbing the balance because we are not aware or we keep on ignoring the negatives. And eating meat is one such habit. Even if one is aware of the negatives of eating meat they make excuses like how will my one time diet harm the environment. But you know as they say it may be drop in the ocean but every drop creates a ripple and every ripple a wave! Below mentioned are some points which show how we are creating those waves:
Environmental Reasons:
»» 70% of grain production in the U.S. is used to feed farm animals and it is not just the U.S. but many other countries are following this pattern. The amount of grains fed to the animals to produce the meat one time in the U.S. is sufficient to feed 7 times the population.
»» It takes 22,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of meat as compared to 200 litres of water needed to produce 1 kg of wheat. The water used to raise animals for meat is more than half the water used in the U.S.
»» 1 calorie of soyabeans is produced by using 3 calories of fossil fuel whereas 1 calorie of beef is produced using 35 calories of fossil fuel.
»» The number of farm animals is increasing at a fast rate as the demand of meat is increasing worldwide.
»» 86 Mega tonnes of carbon dioxide is produced due to meat production as compared to 48 Mega tonnes of carbon dioxide produced due to cars in Australia.
»»The fuel used for refrigeration and transportation of one day non-vegetarian diet per person is about 60 litres.
»» For each hamburger that is originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forests have been destroyed.
A photograph from HOME (documentary) by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
»» The area used to feed these farm animals is much more that the area used to produce grains of equivalent nutritional values.
»» The biggest polluter of water and top soil is raising animals for food.
Other than these environmental facts there are many health related facts which one should take into account. Today the health problems like heart diseases and cancer etc. are on increase and one major reason for that is increase in non-vegetarian diet in our food. If I was not able to convince someone to quit meat then here I provide you with information about the health problems related to non-vegetarian diet:
Health Related Reasons:
»» It has been reported by The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that vegetarians are less likely to get cancer by 25%-50%.
»» The calcium leached from the bones by the body in effort to neutralize the acids produce by too much protein intake can end up forming kidney stones and gall stones.
»» Studies have shown that too much protein in our diet causes loss of bone calcium and meat eaters generally get more protein than their bodies can process.
»» Researchers like Dr. Dean Ornish have a vegetarian diet which is currently one of the few programs proven to reverse heart diseases as vegetarian diet reduces cholesterol.
»» According to a research, poultry is the number one source of food borne illness. About 60% of the chickens sold in the market are infected with live salmonella bacteria. And 30% of all pork products are contaminated with toxoplasmosis. This increases the risk of diseases like Mad Cow Disease and Foot and Mouth disease from sheep or cow.
»» Pesticides and other chemicals are accumulated in meat products up to 14 times more than those in vegetarian products. 50% of antibiotics used in the U.S. are used in farm animals and more than 90% of those are not used to treat infections but are instead used as growth promoters.
The use of information I provided you with will help the Earth and you to live a healthy life a little longer. I have still not taken into account the animal rights that should also be given importance as they live their short span of life in crowded conditions. Many chickens have their beaks seared off with hot blade. Animals are hung upside down before being killed and there are many other problems like that. The information I provided you with must be sufficient for you to at least think about our Earth. Even if a person leaves the non-vegetarian diet for 1 day, it helps in saving 55 square feet of rain forest, 11000 litres of water and 35 calories of fossil fuel or 60 litres of fuel. So please do your bit by quitting at least one non-vegetarian meal in a day. Now the decision is yours.
Useful Resources:
02.24.10
i like all that u write
good work !
02.25.10
I have already left it. I did not know I am doing good to society.
Thanks for making me proud!
02.25.10
Will the writer please stand up ? !
Also see, http://maximusrakontur.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/vegie-pradesh/ for more insights on why you shud be a vegetarian.
02.25.10
Thank you @ parul
I am delighted to know about making you proud @ FretnKeys
I am already standing
. Thanks for letting me know that others too think this way @ Nakul Asija
03.10.10
Very different and unique post. Enjoyed reading.. good that you pushed this matter !
03.14.10
Hopefully you will come across much more interesting articles in future.
04.03.10
I dont think you’ve got a very smart example there mate…
Paris Hilton ?
of all Vegans in the world you thought about her ?
Last time I checked….she was anorexic and dumb as a rock. I seriously would never wanna follow her.
And there are a lot of other things shez renowned for
I still remember her sex tapes “quite vividly”…..does that sound just as appealing as giving up meat to you ?
04.03.10
1.6 million people are following Paris Hilton just on twitter. Even if 10% turn vegan i think the purpose of mentioning Paris’s name will get solved. And you are right there could be better examples. Together let’s try to quote some here.
04.04.10
Interesting read but don’t you think the main focus should be on the harmful and brutal ways animals are processed instead? A lot of vegetarians eat eggs and drink milk and the same cows and chickens are forced to live and breed in inhumane conditions and that should be the primary focus here.
A recent BBC article reports that eating meat actually caused our ancestors’ brains to grow and intelligence to develop. The predecessor to the homo-erectus was a being with a tremendous gut used to process vegetables (think cows and farm animals) and all its energy went towards that process. It wasn’t until we started to eat and cook meat that we truly experienced evolution. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8543906.stm )
There are many, many dietary benefits to eating well cooked meat in proper proportions. This is unrefuted science, and no matter what vegans say it does not diminish this fact at all.
As an amateur bodybuilder and biology student, I believe in a healthy and balanced diet, that does consist of meat as well as fruits and vegetables. The REAL problem today is the industry of meat processing that has gotten way over hand, inhumane and unhealthy. THIS transformation is not unique to meat processing, in fact it is common in any human industry that is large scale.
04.04.10
Johny nailed it! fantastic response!
04.04.10
@Johnny The article i wrote was to save the environment and i think the same way about the ways animals are processed. If people start reducing the amount of meat they eat, the problem will start fading away. I think that killing an animal is much more brutal than just breeding them for milk or eggs. And nowhere in the article i have asked to completely quit meat. I have just asked to reduce the amount or the time people eat meat. I think if we all reduce the amount of eating meat, many animals will be saved and the living conditions will also improve. My friend the article you are talking about is just a theory and it says that the cooking of food and eating of veggies made our teeth smaller in size and thus making more space for our brian without increasing the size of our skull on the outside. And it says nothing about the sharper mind but you can figure it out that we are much more sharper that the early humans. Read it here:( Evolution of human species )
04.05.10
Actually, you did. Your articles title itself very explicitly states “STOP EATING MEAT!”.
My point is incredibly simple, and that is this: The true solution to the problem is not to “stop eating meat”, it is to drastically improve meat regulation, the methods of farming and breeding of animals. The majority of meat-eaters supplement their diets with foods from the other food groups, just because someone eats meat doesn’t necessarily mean they exclusively do, which of course is harmful for your health. Problems such as “excessive” protein intake are very rare, and in fact, most physically fit people don’t consume enough protein!
That is the key right there: being physically fit and eating nutritional food that consists of both veg and non veg food is not at all harmful to ones health, and in fact very beneficial! So if this is a scientific fact, then why urge people to “stop eating meat!”? That is ridiculous!
If you have religious reasons for eating a certain way, that is an entirely different issue, and perhaps your article should base itself on moral beliefs. But biologically speaking, there is nothing harmful in consuming meat, we have been doing it since the Neanderthal days. The problems arise when diet becomes unbalanced, and the demand and profit for a certain substance rises to the point that people give up their values and ethical policies in the production of such a substance. This my friend, is a problem that exists in all areas of society, and must be exposed and tackled fiercely. “Stop eating MEAT!” is not a solution.
04.05.10
@Johnny – The article’s heading just gives the catchy information and what matters the most is the content of the article. And in my opinionpeople are consuming way too much of meat and you can figure it out from the increase in obesity. In Neanderthal days they used to eat meat but also used to work equally. In todays world we just sit in our cubicals in front of our computers. The physical work done by the homo sapiens is nothing compared to Homo erectus or their ancestors. Other than all this my main aim is to tell people to save environment by reducing meat consumption. You can judge that by the order of my article.
04.06.10
@Rohan Madaan – Well if the title of your article and the webpages you use for citations contradict the content of your essay than that is a problem by itself.
Regardless, the things you point out are again, are issues that have more to do with lifestyle and economics than with eating meat. I understand the points you are trying to make but your proposed solutions do not expose the root of any of those problems (unhealthy lifestyles, enviromental degregation etc). Also, we both know there are fat vegetarians, so saying meat = obesity is also ridiculous. Judging from your self-bio, it sounds like you sit and watch TV all day, so I agree that with such a life style you don’t need too much protein because of virtually no muscle activity, and very few calories for the same reason.
Besides, cows/livestock are a major contributor to greenhouse gases..cows for instance exhale methane with each breath (and excrement), methane being must worse than c02 and the second most significant cause of greenhouse warming. Does this mean we should control/kill the cows that wander so freely in India? Of course not, because correlation isn’t necessarily = causation. Not eating the delicious grilled chicken breast I had yesterday isn’t going to save the world.
Telling people to save the environment by not eating meat is just silly. There is worse damage done to the environment by people, in much more direct ways. It’s not like processing vegetables isn’t detrimental to the environment, in fact agriculture is one of the most leading reasons for environmental degradation. It results in degraded soils, polluted waters, pesticides that not only seep into the vegetables but upset the eco balance, parched aquifers, deforestation to make farms, draining of freshwaters and swamps for the crops, etc. The list is endless, and guess what, all that is so you can eat a few veges you buy from the market.
To reiterate, any powerhouse human industry (like food) will inevitably lead to environmental degradation, whether its meat or crops. I don’t condone this, like I said the root causes of this problem need to be addressed, but telling your readers meat is bad and they are being good citizens by not eating a burger is ridiculous and untrue.
04.07.10
@johnny – My friend i am not forcing anyone to stop eating meat. If one likes it and don’t think that it is harming the nature then one can continue to do so. I was just giving you an information, the reader need to decide whether he wants to follow it or just pass the thought away. It all depends on what one thinks.
Almost everyone knows that livestock is the major source of carbon emissions but one should always count in the facts for such a statement. The no. of livestock has increased almost 80 % in the past 30 years and the total population of livestock is 3 times the human population. And all this is because we ‘love meat’.
05.23.10
Check this out!
http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html
Sounds like a pretty reasonable solution to all of this!
07.18.10
@johnny the real evolution in human nature was achieved when humans developed the ability of making tools and communicate… that is the moment when they abandoned their primal state to focus on technical and social thinking…
even if meat had helped through all that process, people nowadays is not struggling for survival as they used to, right now we don’t eat meat as an “instictive” relationship with the environment; we don’t even kill the animals we eat, we delegate our “instinct” on the person who does the slaughter… we can see predators who kill for survival, in most cases they just need to kill one single animal to feed their family for a month… while we humans have a “balanced” diet of ham in the mourning, chicken at lunch and fish for dinner… it makes no sense, it’s excessive and there’s no more evident proof than the rate of cardiovascular diseases on developed countries, it increases everyday…
i’m not here to convince you to become a vegetarian, not even to invite you to reduce your meat consumption… i just ask you to please respect other people’s opinions.
08.02.10
@iamnotval For some reason people are having a hard time understanding my points. I am critiquing this article for its terrible presentation, bad arguments and misleading title. I personally only eat meat once or twice a week and I have nothing but respect for vegetarians, but also for us regular omnivores. For me, life is about balance, and while you can live on an all veg diet just fine, you can also live an extremely healthy life mixing and matching.
I also never said eating meat was a primary reason for human evolution. There are an extreme number of factors, our diet was just one of them that people don’t understand. Did you know the homo-erectus made the same tools for virtually 30,000 generations? How exactly did we abandon our “primal state” by making a screw driver anyway? Just look around you.
But I digress. I do agree that we as a species tend to give up our “responsibility” of an act if someone else is permitted to do it behind closed doors. But this is a tendency in ALL of us, regarding of what context. Killing animals is one thing, but look at the news. What did you do for Rwanda? The hurricanes? What are you doing about the harmful pesticides that are destroying the soil – the same you probably get your vegetables from? BTW, do you know the working conditions of the people who made your sneakers? There are a ridiculous amount of things in this capitalistic, industrial society that we distance ourselves from, JUST to enjoy the luxury of life, and limiting it to people who eat a chicken every now and then is just absurd. YOU are the ones that are generalizing, not me. Talking about how “We humans” have a diet of ham, chicken and fish in a day (uhm who does?), how we should all “STOP EATING MEAT” to curb c02 emissions. These are all disrespectful statements, not what I’m saying.
I’m just chilling out talking about how having some meat, as well as vegetables and fruits is not such a bad thing.
08.28.10
@ johnny “” What did you do for Rwanda? The hurricanes? What are you doing about the harmful pesticides that are destroying the soil – the same you probably get your vegetables from? BTW, do you know the working conditions of the people who made your sneakers? “”
This is what i quoted from ur above said text….
worthy johnny what r u doing for it except criticising the positive opinions of someone….u know negative critics are energy suckers in the society who ll not let society to witness a positive change ..
09.16.10
@tamanna please don’t criticize my positive opinions
09.26.10
u r right……………………..
11.21.10
@rohan.. Impressive content..:) m sure people would love to follow writers like you rather then paris hilton!!
I am indeed an almost vegetarian..!!
11.22.10
@Bhavishka… thank you… hope to impress readers like you in future too
Its nice to know that you are helping our nature. And following is completely up to you.
11.28.10
i enjoyed reading that….reasonable facts explained! glad ,it somehow supports the reason that i would love to fight for but i would certainly love to read something against cruelty towards animals!!!! recently i saw this video …where a couple of young chinese girls…slaughtered a ‘bunny’ in the most unreasonably torturous way! it was heart breaking to see them have fun do that! is that what mankind preaches….?!and the saddest part was that …they were paid to do so!
i hope that get to read something related to that …next time…:) wishes!
and i thoroughly enjoy reading what you write! good luck