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Connecting our everyday choices to the declining health of our eco-systems is as easy as 1-2-3...
1. Eating Meat is Bad for Human Health
It shouldn't shock anyone to learn that eating meat is bad for us in many ways. Based upon the higher prevalence of hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, gallstones, obesity, and food-borne illness among omnivores compared with vegetarians, the total direct medical costs in the United States attributable to meat consumption were estimated to be $30-60 billion a year. More simply: The risk of death by heart attack for average American male is 50%. For the average vegan: 4%. Moving right along...
2. Eating Meat is Bad for Rainforests
The environmental impact of the meat industry is less obvious but no less destructive. "In the Amazon the cattle sector is the largest driver of rainforest destruction, accounting for 60 to 70 percent of deforestation," writes Nikolas Kozloff, author of the forthcoming No Rain in the Amazon: How South America's Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet. "To put it in concrete terms: every eighteen seconds on average one hectare of Amazon rainforest is being lost to cattle ranchers. As if the carbon emissions resulting from cattle deforestation were not enough, consider bovine methane emissions."
Author and radio talk show host Thom Hartmann adds: "The United States imports two hundred million pounds of beef every year from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama--while the average citizen in those countries eats less meat each year than the average American house cat. This deforestation of Latin America for burgers is particularly distressing when you consider that this very fragile area contains 58% of the entire planet's rainforests. (19% are in Africa and 23% in Oceania and Southeast Asia)."
3. Rainforest Destruction is Bad for Everyone
Why should anyone chowing down on a greasy cheeseburger deluxe in Peoria worry about 200,000 acres of rainforest being destroyed every 24 hours?
- Rainforests are considered the lungs and heart of the planet.
- Rainforest loss may greatly change weather patterns throughout the world.
- Rainforests are essential to recycling water. Almost half of all the world's rain falls on rainforests.
- Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals, and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation.
- There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
Doing Your Part is as Easy as 1-2-3
1. As a first step toward a plant-based diet, why not stop eating meat?
2. Identify and boycott the corporations that profit off of rainforest deforestation.
3. Educate yourself and become a vocal advocate for healthy diets, corporate responsibility, and rainforest awareness.
