 
Eating the Earth

The Truth About What We Eat

Dan Brook, PhD

Copyright © 2020 by Dan Brook at Smashwords

Cover Design by Andrea Schmidt

### Cover Photo of Swiss Chard by Heather Barnes

### Internal images are from the public domain.

Versions of this book are in English,

Spanish/Español, Italian/Italiano, Chinese/中文, Korean/한국어, Thai/ไทย, Burmese/ဗမာဘာသာစကား, and Hebrew/עִברִית

### More languages may be forthcoming when we get translators

(if you would like to translate or sponsor a translation into any language,

please  contact me).

### Dedicated to all those who care

### and, as always, to my son.

Praise for Eating the Earth

"Eating the Earth is an eye-opening, thoroughly-researched book that delves into the multitude of environmental impacts of animal agriculture. There is a significant disconnect between what we choose to eat and the impact those choices have on our planet. Eating the Earth presents the revealing science in an easy-to-understand format that brings critical research to real-world consumers. This book uncovers the truth and is essential for anyone who wants to know about the ecological and other impacts of their diet. And with that truth, we can all make better choices."

Hope Bohanec, animal activist and author of The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat?

"Professor Brook's book is both timely and necessary, as animal agriculture is destroying ecosystems across the globe and contributing heavily to climate change, and the consumption of meat is leading to pandemics. For people who need well-reasoned arguments and irrefutable facts, this book will provide readers with the impetus to reduce and ultimately eliminate animal products from their diets. And for the vegan who would like to marshal the facts and arguments to become a better advocate, this book will be a valuable resource."

Jeffrey Spitz Cohan, Executive Director of Jewish Veg

"Dan makes a strong case for moving to a plant-based diet. He elucidates the many urgent reasons for change, from caring for our fellow sentient beings to reducing global warming and helping to save our forests. Well researched and written in an engaging style, this is well worth a read."

Joyce D'Silva, Former Chief Executive and Ambassador Emeritus, Compassion in World Farming

"Eating the Earth is a great resource for people who are interested in protecting the planet, healthy living, social justice issues, and animal protection. Dan Brook deftly depicts the environmental devastation and the myriad of health problems caused by animal agriculture. He also reveals the great harm this industry inflicts on human and non-human animals. He then gives us the tools we need to live sustainability and take personal responsibility for our health as we improve the quality of life for all Earthlings."

Christy Griffin, President, San Francisco Veg Society

"Dan Brook — author, educator, and longtime pillar of the community for animal justice — has done something remarkable in Eating the Earth. Packed with the vital information you'd find if you hit the field's major North American festivals and conferences, yet produced in an era of social distancing, Dr. Brook offers an accessible research guide for anyone committed to preserving all that supports life as we know it on Earth."

Lee Hall, J.D., LL.M., author of _On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21_ _st_ _Century_ and speaker for the North American Vegetarian Society and the American Vegan Society

"Dan Brook's new Eating the Earth joins Nil Zacharias' Eat for the Planet as essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the devastating impacts of industrial animal agriculture. Brook provides a comprehensive overview and quotes thought leaders in virtually every tradition. An important book that I hope many people will read."

Amy Halpern-Laff, Factory Farming Awareness Coalition

"Eating the Earth: A very good book about veganism, and how veganism can protect humanity and the Earth. It covers important aspects such as health, environmentalism, and animal rights."

Heng Guan Hou, VP of Centre for a Responsible Future (Singapore)

"Just as a well-balanced diet contains a wide range of nutrients, Eating the Earth covers a wide range of reasons for going plant-based, including the reason on everyone's mind nowadays: preventing pandemics. After digesting the book's substantial knowledge diet, we are ready for action, and Dan Brook exhorts us: 'Get off your good intentions and put your beliefs into action!'"

George Jacobs, Immediate Past President, Centre for a Responsible Future (Singapore)

"The rationales favoring humans evolving our daily diets towards plant-based ones are powerful, and now, increasingly mandatory. In Eating the Earth's concise, compelling passages, Professor Brook lays out the arguments against animal agriculture and flesh-based foods while positively presenting the nutritional, ecological, and ethical imperatives of plant-based diets. He presents these crucial, life-affirming realities in bite-sized morsels that make these truths easy to digest. I highly recommend Professor Brook's fact-feast, Eating the Earth, for all who want to know what to eat in the 21st century — and why."

Michael Klaper, M.D.

"Such a wonderful book by Professor Brook is giving us a full picture of what is happening on Earth. It's time for us to think about what we should do with our diet. There are people switching to plant-based diets and we have seen the global vegan food market growing. Going vegan is not a fashion trend. It is awareness and it is a must for people to stop eco-disaster due to human's meat-eating habit. Eating the Earth must be shared to all people we love."

Shara Ng, Founder of GOVEG Asia magazine, Representative of International Vegetarian Union (IVU) Asia Pacific Region, Vice President of Asia Pacific Vegan Union (APVU)

"Prof. Dan Brook has compiled 30 chapters in Eating the Earth. Every chapter in this book provides sufficient reason for humanity to eliminate the animal agriculture industry by itself. But taken together, these 30 chapters make the closure of this industry that much more imperative. I fervently wish that this book becomes widely known for finally ending the vile practice of artificially birthing or harvesting innocent sentient beings in order to exploit them and/or kill them."

Dr. Sailesh Rao, Executive Director of Climate Healers, author of  Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies and  Carbon Yoga: The Vegan Metamorphosis and Executive Producer of Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, What the Health, and A Prayer for Compassion.

"This book brings the world the message we all need to learn and hear if we want to save our only home and leave behind us a prospering planet for our children and their descendants. While our world is collapsing in front of our eyes, as a result of our eating habits that bring on pandemics and so much damage, we have this easy and clear way to learn about these effects and how we can change them for the best with our own forks and knives."

Ori Shavit, TEDx speaker and author of Vegans on Top and  My Vegan Kitchen

"Professor Dan Brook's excellent book has the potential to shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path. Comprehensive, thoroughly researched, passionately argued, divided into 30 very readable sections, with many valuable supporting quotations, Eating the Earth not only documents the many ways that animal-based diets are threatening the world, but eloquently explains how shifts to plant-based diets can produce a more humane, healthy, just, environmentally-sustainable world. It is essential that this book be widely read and heeded so that we have a chance to leave a habitable world for future generations."

Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D., President Emeritus of Jewish Veg and author of Vegan Revolution

"Eating the Earth provides a comprehensive overview of the devastating consequences of our current food system's over-emphasis on animal-sourced products. Dan Brook cogently and systematically exposes the many facets of cost externalization by the animal-foods industry, and makes a compelling case for the practical solutions to which we can all contribute. Read it and share with a friend!"

Dr. Will Tuttle, Ph.D., author of the #1 Amazon bestseller, The World Peace Diet

"Dan Brook's Eating the Earth - The Truth About What We Eat comes at a good time, when more than ever before, our planet suffers from the aggressions caused by our lifestyle. Understand the links between what we eat and what happens, for example, with the burning of tropical forests - and others - the destruction of entire biomes, to make room for livestock, as well as water scarcity and contamination, desertification, loss of biodiversity, and several other problems intrinsically linked to our production and consumption patterns are of fundamental importance. In this book, Dan deals in-depth with these issues, providing research-based data on the impacts of animal agriculture and giving us a very accurate sense of the ramifications of these pressing topics. May the reading of this book help to make us aware of the importance of changing our diet and promoting a healthier environment and sustainable diet that can be enough to everyone."

Marly Winckler, Chair, International Vegetarian Union (IVU)
A Brief Note About This Brief Book

Although I have done extensive research for this book, I have decided to omit most references, links, etc. and there are no footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography of sources, for better or worse, despite my love of these types of things. I wanted this particular book to be tasty, tempting, and easy to digest, instead of bogged down and heavy. If you desire more information, evidence, data, quotes, or examples, please do your own foraging and research. This is as true of this book as it should be about the rest of life. Consider this book an appetizer plate to be sampled, enjoyed, and to whet your appetite for those parts that most appeal to you. And like all good meals, it is meant to be savored and shared. Bon appétit!

Introduction

How are we eating the Earth?

Eating meat and other animal products threatens animal welfare, personal health, societal safety, worker protections, food security, biodiversity, and environmental sustainability. We can do better. Much better.

Eating the Earth does not have to mean destroying it, animals, and ourselves, as we are currently doing. Eating the Earth can mean eating what grows from our beautiful planet, so we can all thrive.

The way for us to protect the animals, our world, and our health every day is to go veg! The best personal thing we can do for the worst global problems is to avoid animal products and embrace a plant-based lifestyle. As Greenpeace International wrote, "Together, we must become more meat aware and adjust our diets. When we add more plants and alternative proteins to our diets, we begin healing the planet."

"If one cares about the Earth — if one respects nature — it is better to consume vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains", Lisa Kemmerer writes in Animals and World Religions. "If you care about the planet and wish to adopt an Earth-friendly lifestyle, it is advisable to focus only secondarily on the car that you drive, or recycling, or turning off lights and turning down heat, and primarily on what you buy at the grocery store. What we eat has a much greater impact on the environment."

Like most of you, I did not grow up in a vegetarian or vegan family, let alone a vegetarian or vegan culture. Our societies, governments, corporations, culture, religion, family, friends, neighbors, media, schools, holidays, etc. taught us to eat meat and other animal products. That's not our fault and we didn't know any better. But we can change. Black feminist theorist Audre Lorde once said "we are not responsible for our oppression, but we must be responsible for our own liberation".

As for me, becoming vegetarian in 1983 is among the few best decisions I have made in my life. Since then, I have learned more and more. Let's learn, heal, sustain, and thrive together, both Earth and Earthlings. Please join me in this amazing adventure!

"The most political act we do on a daily basis is to eat."

Jules Pretty

"Food is not just calories, it is information. It talks to your DNA and tells it what to do. The most powerful tool to change your health, environment, and entire world is your fork."

Mark Hyman, M.D.

"Meat production causes more environmental harm than other food production."

Michael Brower, Ph.D. and Warren Leon, Ph.D.

"The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future — deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease."

Editors, World Watch

"Behind virtually every great environmental complaint there's milk and meat."

Lee Hall, J.D., LL.M.

The decision to eat veg (vegetarian or vegan) is one of the most vital ways

we can help save our health, the animals, and our environment every day. Indeed a major study from the University of Oxford concluded that a "vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth".

"What's for dinner? Few questions are as environmentally fraught.

Bad choices can lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease for us, and pollution, loss of biodiversity, and climate change for our favorite planet."

Paul Rauber, Editor, Sierra, November/December 2006

Give people a salad, they eat for a meal; teach people about plant-based diets and they eat for a healthy, compassionate, and sustainable lifetime.

Get off your good intentions and put your beliefs into action!

Consider the facts:

Table of Contents

1. Rainforests

2. Climate Change

3. Fossil Fuels

4. Land

5. Water

6. Waste

7. Factory Farming & Slaughterhouses

8. Fish & Other Sea Animals

9. Health & Disease

10. Economics, Efficiency, & Externalities

11. Hunger

12. Protein

13. Calcium

14. Fat, Cholesterol, & Fiber

15. Carbohydrates

16. Enzymes

17. Soy

18. Antioxidants and Probiotics

19. Iron

20. Vitamin B12

21. Weight & Obesity

22. Strength

23. Physiology

24. Allergies

25. Organic Agriculture

26. Violence, Compassion, & Ethics

27. Animals, Intelligence, Emotions, & Rights

28. Vegetarians, Vegans, Flexitarians, & Others

29. Arguments Against Vegetarianism and Veganism?

30. Making the Switch!

• 1. Rainforests:

Eating meat contributes to the destruction of rainforests, which are often called the "lungs of our planet" for the way they absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. What we breathe out (carbon dioxide), trees breathe in; what trees breathe out (oxygen), we breathe in. We reciprocally breathe each other into life and continued existence, yet we are actively destroying that life support. Rainforests are a major source of oxygen and fresh water for the planet; their survival and our survival are closely linked. Rainforests also provide food, medicine, habitats, beauty, and natural treasures yet to be discovered.

Rainforests are home to about 90% of all plant and animal species on the planet, even though they only cover about 2% of the Earth's surface. The Amazon Rainforest alone holds about 20% of the world's fresh water and emits about 20% of the world's oxygen, possessing beauty and sequestering carbon. Every year, gigantic amounts of rainforest, including nearly 20,000 square miles [about 52,000 sq. km.] in the Amazon Rainforest, are lost to deforestation. Within the last 40 years alone, at least 20% of the Amazon Rainforest has been cleared, an area the size of California, and over 80% of that cleared Amazon land is currently used for grazing over 200 million cattle.

"It's not OK to transform a forest into agriculture without understanding the impact that has on disease emergence", explains Prof. Kate Jones, chair of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College London. "You can't do those things in isolation without thinking about what that does to humans."

"It's like if you demolish an old barn then dust flies. When you demolish a tropical forest, viruses fly", writes David Quammen, author of Spillover. "Those moments of destruction represent opportunity for unfamiliar viruses to get into humans and take hold."

The deforestation of the Amazon has immediate and severe consequences for the life within it. In Brazil alone, there are approximately 460,000 indigenous people living in the Amazon, and 200,000 of these people's lives are directly threatened by the deforestation of the Amazon — the Brazilian government's failure to protect their rights has left these peoples extremely vulnerable to the effects of deforestation.

Beyond Brazil's indigenous tribes, as many as 30 million people and 350 unique groups live within the Amazon and rely on its resources — residents of the rainforest's larger cities are not exempt from being dependent on its natural riches as well. These people's lives are being jeopardized and their cultures threatened as a result of our "need" to destroy their home. The native Akuntsu tribe, which had inhabited the rainforests of Rondônia, have had their ancestral homes in the rainforest destroyed by deforestation, specifically to make room for cattle ranches. Since 2016, the Akuntsu population has dwindled to a total of only 4 people. Within years, the genocide of this tribe, as well as many others such as the Awá, will be tragically complete. The largest of native Amazonian tribes, the Guarani people, has been significantly diminished. Over the past 100 years, much of their land has been replaced with cattle ranches — like the Akuntsu people, the deforestation of their land has severely threatened their future.

In addition to the threat towards the Amazon's people, the plant and wildlife species of the Amazon have been drastically endangered. Of the thousands of wildlife native to the Amazon, as many as 500 species are severely endangered, and from 36% to as much as 57% of Amazonian trees have been found to likely be qualified as globally endangered. Extinction due to habitat loss, namely deforestation, has been increasing rapidly, and it is projected that as much as 50% of all species may be headed toward extinction by the middle of the century.

Further, underwater "forests" of coral reefs and mangroves are being decimated by "rape-and-run" shrimp farming (exploiting and polluting coastal communities for 2 to 5 years before abandoning them, particularly in Asia and Latin America), commercial fishing, industrial shipping, and other meat and fish-related mega-activities. "About 70 percent of the world's mangrove forests have disappeared in the last 40 years, due in part to the rise of shrimp aquaculture", according to an article entitled "Cheap Shrimp, Funded by Human Trafficking and Environmental Destruction".

Shrimp actually has 4-10 times more climate change impact than beef, which is itself highly impactful. Consuming lobster and crab is also quite destructive. "Eating a surf-and-turf dinner of prawn cocktail and steak, [one] study warned, can be more polluting than driving across America in a petrol-fueled car."

Although "shrimp trawl fisheries only represent 2 percent of the global fish catch, they are responsible for over one-third of the world's bycatch" and this bycatch "includes sharks, rays, starfish, juvenile red snapper, sea turtles and more", according to Jill Richardson in "Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood is a Health and Ecological Nightmare".

"Shrimp is either farmed or wild, but neither option is good for the environment", writes Katherine Martinko in "Why It's a Good Idea to Stop Eating Shrimp" in Treehugger. "Shrimp farmers have destroyed an estimated 38 percent of the world's mangroves to create shrimp ponds, and the damage is permanent."

Thailand alone has lost a whopping 84% of its mangroves, and several other countries, such as Panama and Mexico, have lost similar percentages. Mangrove forests are "the rainforests of the sea" and their destruction has terrible eco-consequences — mangroves house and produce food for thousands of unique species; filter both fresh and saltwater; stabilize shorelines against erosion; and protect against storm surges and tsunamis. Several animals are being greatly threatened by the destruction of mangroves, including the Pygmy Three-Toed Sloth, Bengal Tiger, and the Sambar Deer. Without the protection of mangroves, the benefits they provide will be lost and our environment, as well as the precious life that relies on their qualities, will suffer.

An estimated 80% of annual world deforestation is related to animal agriculture. While some of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil is also being cut down for soy fields, much of this genetically-modified soy is being fed to animals being raised for meat — as much as 85% of the world's production of soy is used for animal feed and "over 96% of soy from the Amazon region is fed to cows, pigs and chickens eaten around the world" (UN FAO). As a result of the needs of the beef industry, Brazil, home to a major portion of the Amazon, has risen to the challenge of becoming the largest beef producer in the world, yielding approximately 7 million metric tons of beef each year with devastating consequences.

The meat production-and-consumption deathcycle is essentially transforming the world's precious and mega-biodiverse tropical rainforests into carbon dioxide and cholesterol, thereby increasing disasters on both the personal and planetary levels. "The world is consuming more animal protein than it needs and this is having a devastating effect on wildlife", said Duncan Williamson, WWF food policy manager. "A staggering 60% of global biodiversity loss is down to the food we eat."

Some extremely deadly viral diseases — including Ebola, Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, and HIV/AIDS — have been called the "revenge of the rainforest", as they have erupted and spread via the building of roads into forests, paving the way for deforestation and the hunt for bushmeat, especially primates (e.g., chimps), and other amazing animals as well, increasingly threatening many of these animals with extinction. In stark contrast, about 90% of human diseases can be treated using medicines derived from nature — many of these treatments, including those for leukemia, are derived from the rainforests, yet only about 1% of rainforest plant species have been tested for medicinal purposes. We are uprooting our potential miracle cures through the hamburgerization of our precious forests.

Each vegetarian and vegan saves more than an acre (0.4 hectares) of trees every year by abstaining from the average 280 lbs (127 kg) of meat consumption per year in the U.S., which helps to protect valuable ecosystems, save vanishing species, and maintain precious biodiversity. "If you are worried about the Amazon", Damian Carrington, Environment Editor of The Guardian, concludes, "not eating meat remains your best bet." Your dietary choices make a world of difference!

"In Central America, 40% of all the rainforests have been cleared or burned down in the last 40 years, mostly for cattle pasture to feed the export market — often for U.S. beef burgers".

World Rainforest Report

"In a nutshell, cattle ranchers are making mincemeat out of Brazil's Amazon rainforests."

Center for International Forestry Research

"Raising cattle for beef not only damages the rainforests in Central and South America, it also impacts the environment closer to home."

Rainforest Action Network

• 2. Climate Change:

Global warming is a mega-disaster. Climate change is overheating our planet to alarming levels with potentially catastrophic consequences. Evidence suggests that livestock raised for meat is responsible for 51% — a majority! — of greenhouse gases that lead to global warming, according to "Livestock and Global Warming" (World Watch, Nov/Dec 2009). If we take a longer view (8,000 years!), animal agriculture is responsible for at least 87% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Climate Healers position paper entitled "Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change".

Eating meat increases global warming, the most dangerous threat to our planet, at least according to reports by and for Greenpeace, Oxfam, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Pentagon, the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and a vast number of other scientific, academic, and environmental organizations around the world, political economic analysts, colleges and universities, and major corporations — and there are zero reputable scientific, educational, or environmental organizations and very few peer-reviewed scientific papers that dispute climate change and that humans are causing and contributing to it.

The Pentagon report, for example, states that climate change in the form of global warming "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", higher even than terrorism, warning of riots and declaring that "future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor".

The UK's chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, agrees. "Extreme weather conditions in many parts of the world, including a record 10 typhoons in Japan and the first-ever hurricane in South America [in 2004], are being blamed on global warming", states the BBC News, as is record hurricane levels, record temperatures, and melting polar ice caps and glaciers. All but one of the hottest years on record have been in the 21st century.

Further, the world has seen a melting of the polar ice caps, glaciers, and permafrost with potentially disastrous consequences for people, animals, cities, islands, and other coastal communities, as well as Arctic areas, which will lead to rising seas, destruction of habitats, suffering, spread of disease, hunger, death, species extinction, and the forced dislocation and migration of people and animals who are able to survive.

Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere continue to rise and there are fears of "tipping points" from which we could not come back. Climatologists have asserted that concentrations of 350 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric CO2 is a threshold level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which had hovered below 285 ppm for thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, yet surpassed 418 ppm on June 1, 2020, the highest value in human history, indeed the highest level in about 3 million years.

On June 20, 2020, the temperature in the Arctic Circle soared to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 C) for the first time in recorded history, hotter than any June day ever recorded in Miami, Florida, while it was snowing in other parts of Siberia. Houston, Texas has been ravaged by five "500-year storms" in the last five years. Something projected to happen only once in half a millennium happened five times in a row. None of this is normal.

These and various other extreme weather events and other eco-spasms have become more frequent, more intense, and are projected to multiply with dire consequences for the world. Tragically, new records are being set each year.

"Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale", says Sir David Attenborough. "Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change. If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

Charlotte Pointing indicates that "More than 21,000 scientists from around the world [in their "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice"] believe that humans need to seriously change their behavior — including reducing the amount of meat they eat and consuming more plant-based foods — in order to prevent dangerous levels of climate change." It is increasingly being recognized that, as UN Environment states, "Our use of animals as a food production technology has brought us to the verge of catastrophe."

Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases which together account for over 90% of U.S. greenhouse emissions, significantly contributing to global scorching (what is euphemistically called global warming). Methane is less abundant that carbon dioxide, and degrades much quicker in the atmosphere, indeed half of it in nine years, but is many times more potent. Nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas that accounts for about 6% of global warming, is about 300 times more potent that carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide is emitted from manure and fertilizer.

The effects of the livestock industry on our overheating planet are strong, undeniable, and disastrous, and yet the place where we can have a major and relatively quick impact and do so is on the individual level, especially by avoiding beef and dairy. In the words of Damian Carrington, Environment Editor of The Guardian, "if tackling the climate crisis is your thing, then beef is not".

"Our use of animals as a food-production technology has brought us to the verge of catastrophe", the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) wrote in September 2019. UNEP called meat "the world's most urgent problem", especially regarding its impact on climate change.

According to Joe Loria, "A groundbreaking study by Tulane University and the University of Michigan published in Environmental Research Letters found that meat, dairy, and egg consumption is responsible for nearly 84 percent of food-related greenhouse gas emissions in the United States."

You can easily reduce your carbon hoofprint and methane mouthprint by eschewing, not chewing, animals. As Damian Carrington, Environment Editor for the The Guardian, says, "if you want to have the maximum impact on fighting the climate and wildlife crisis, then it is going to be all plants" in terms of diet. "Anyone who cares about global warming can start making a difference at every meal, simply by leaving meat off their plates", explains Noam Mohr in "A New Global Warming Strategy". "Going vegetarian is by far the best thing a person can do today to stop rising sea levels, spreading disease, and extreme weather that threaten tomorrow." And the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook states that "Refusing meat [is] the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint."

Power production, passenger and other vehicles, international shipping, militarism (the U.S. military, for example, is the world's biggest consumer of oil and the world's largest polluter), and other major users of fossil fuels are also among the biggest contributors to climate change. Deforestation, as discussed above, is a major contributor.  Smoking is also a factor and is intimately related to deforestation. The climate crisis is already having grave effects on our planet and we need to take action as soon as possible. No violence, no war, no warming — we need to increase the peace! "The burning of gasoline and the raising of cattle", Rabbi Arthur Waskow warns, "are two of the most planet-scorching actions that we take."

Meat eaters are substantially contributing to global warming, which is "Another Inconvenient Truth". It is apparently another inconvenient truth for some that switching to a vegan diet can reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more than switching to a hybrid car. Scientific studies (including major ones by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) and the Worldwatch Institute) are piling up showing that what one drives, while quite important, is less significant than what one eats.

The more narrowly-tailored 2006 UN FAO report concluded that the meat industry accounts for nearly one-fifth (18%) of global warming and is "one of the... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global". That was an underestimate as it purposefully neglected various factors that go into production and emissions, such as livestock feed and refrigeration, for example.

The livestock industry is the leading cause of anthropogenic global warming and accounts for a majority (51%) of greenhouse gases, according to a Worldwatch Institute report, when full-cost accounting is done (i.e., accounting for all aspects of the livestock industry, including deforestation, feed crops, water, pharmaceuticals, respiration, burps, farts, manure, refrigeration, transportation, deadstock, waste, etc.). "The environmental impact of the lifecycle and supply chain of animals raised for food", the report concludes, "accounts for at least half of all human-caused greenhouse gases."

Let's fight global climate change with our forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks!

meat —> heat

We need to eat lower on the food chain, which many people are doing, because it will safeguard our personal health as well as help protect life on Earth. Vegetarianism/veganism is a "global cooling cuisine" and is the ultimate "low carb(on) diet". Vegetarians and vegans help keep the planet cool in more ways than one! Be cool.

"There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock."

United Nations Environment Programme, Unit on Climate Change

"Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16% of the world's annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas."

State of the World

"The animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity."

Alan Calverd, Physics World

"The single action that a person can take, an individual can take, to reduce carbon emissions is vegetarianism...

There are many things that people can do to reduce their carbon emissions, but changing your light bulb and many of the things are much less effective than changing your diet, because if you eat further down on the food chain rather than animals, which have produced many greenhouse gases, and used much energy in the process of growing that meat, you can actually make a bigger contribution in that way than just about anything. So, that, in terms of individual action, is perhaps the best thing you can do."

Dr. James Hansen, former NASA Climatologist

"The entire meat cycle is very, very intensive, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

I would say go veg, be green and save our planet! ...

The single [biggest] action that a person can take to reduce carbon emissions is vegetarianism."

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, former Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner along with Al Gore

"We can cut our consumption of everything else almost to zero and still we will drive living systems to collapse, unless we change our diets.

All the evidence now points in one direction: the crucial shift is from an animal- to a plant-based diet."

George Monbiot

"We simply need less meat and dairy and more plant-based options in our food system if we're to reach our climate goals."

James Cameron and Suzy Amis Cameron

• 3. Fossil Fuels:

Eating meat is largely intertwined with our dependence on non-renewable, heavily-polluting fossil fuels, including oil. Oil is an extremely dirty and environmentally-destructive endeavor at every stage, from drilling to shipping to refining to consuming; likewise with coal and gas.

Producing a single pound (0.45 kg) of beef requires burning up to 40 times more fossil fuels than to produce one pound (0.45 kg) of soybeans. It requires approximately 78 calories of non-renewable fossil fuel for each calorie of protein obtained from factory-farmed beef, but only 2 calories of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of protein from soybeans and similarly for lentils and other legumes. In addition to the gap between beans and meat, the gap between the energy input in agriculture and the resulting yield is concerning. Though the amount of fossil fuels poured into the agricultural industry has grown substantially since 1945, the consequent crops have grown 25% less than their fuel input, which is inefficient, wasteful, and dirty.

In the United States, about 17% of all energy is used for food production. With such a high portion of our energy usage devoted to this industry, the sheer inefficiency of agriculture in its production-to-yield ratio is startling, and reflects the growing issue of our enormous fossil fuel use and contribution to "peak oil".

Peak oil refers to the peak in global oil production relative to oil demand and the resulting market, monetary, and other associated issues. Because oil is a finite resource, the price of oil will rise as we gradually run out. International economic issues are a byproduct of our reliance on oil, as countless markets and industries will have to adjust to the relative scarcity of oil and sharp rise in oil prices. By consuming more fuel-efficient foods such as vegetables and decreasing our consumption of meat and dairy, we can effectively slow the rate at which this energy consumption grows and encourage the social, cultural, and political changes we need to reduce our reliance on these non-renewable fossil fuels.

Vegetarianism/veganism is important because it helps reduce our dependence on oil, coal, and gas, and therefore also our dependence on oily authoritarian governments and imperialist oil wars, while keeping our environment cleaner and greener.

"Making a hamburger in the global economy consumes a huge amount of fossil fuels."

"The Humble Hamburger", World Watch
• 4. Land:

Eating meat perpetuates the demand of an industry which takes land away from more productive purposes. Almost 1/2 of U.S. land is used to raise animals for food or for crops to feed these animals — about 30% of land in the entire world, and as much as 87% of agricultural land, is used solely for the livestock industry. As much as half of the world's grain and about three-quarters of major crops in the U.S. (e.g., corn, wheat, soybeans, potatoes, oats, alfalfa) is fed to animals destined for unnecessary slaughter.

"In switching to a plant-based diet, we could make use of a neat synergy", claims George Monbiot. "Most protein crops — peas and beans — capture nitrogen from the air, fertilizing themselves and raising nitrate levels in the soil that subsequent crops, such as cereals and oilseeds, can use."

Meanwhile, about one billion people chronically suffer from hunger and malnutrition and its debilitating effects — tens of thousands of hungry people consequently die each day, one every few seconds, while millions of affluent people suffer from the ill effects of overeating and over-consumption, primarily of animal products.

Further, the leading cause of species endangerment and extinction in the U.S. and world, according to the GAO, is livestock grazing. We are prioritizing the raising and grazing of animals for the production of meat at the expense of nearly everything else.

Vegetarians and especially vegans tread lightly, requiring only 1/6 acre (0.067 hectares) of land to feed themselves each year on average; omnivores, on the other hand, use 3 1/4 acres (1.315 hectares). Over the past 150 years, over half of the Earth's topsoil — the necessary top layer of biologically-rich, fertile soil that makes most plant life possible — has been lost through erosion; 85% of this soil loss was directly caused by the raising of animals for food.

The production of every pound (.45 kg) of hamburger also produces the loss of 5 pounds (2 kg) of topsoil. This epidemic of soil erosion is linked to increased pollution, flooding risks, and declines in fish populations. Topsoil is effectively a non-renewable resource — it takes up to 500 years to produce a single inch of topsoil! With the rates at which we are currently losing this precious soil, the UN projects there will be critically low and insufficient amounts of topsoil by the year 2050.

George Monbiot details the impact of free-range meat on our land: "More damaging still is free-range meat: the environmental impacts of converting grass into flesh, the paper remarks, "are immense under any production method practiced today". This is because so much land is required to produce every grass-fed steak or chop. Though roughly twice as much land is used for grazing worldwide as for crop production, it provides just 1.2% of the protein we eat. While much of this pastureland cannot be used to grow crops, it can be used for rewilding: allowing the many rich ecosystems destroyed by livestock farming to recover, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, protecting watersheds and halting the sixth great extinction in its tracks. The land that should be devoted to the preservation of human life and the rest of the living world is at the moment used to produce a tiny amount of meat."

Whether it is the enclosure and privatization of common land or the destruction of forests, land has historically and presently been stolen away from the poor to support the bloody diets of the elite. Because raising animals is so land-intensive, especially due to the crops needed for livestock feed, switching to plant-based diets would free up land for other purposes, including reforestation and rewilding.

"Shifting away from meat and dairy is the single most effective way to regenerate our ecosystem and prevent its destruction", Michael Pellman Rowland explains. "Without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75 percent — an area equivalent to the U.S., China, the European Union, and Australia combined — and still feed the world."

With the lack of widespread organic farming — a method recommended by the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization — our current livestock and agriculture industry will destroy itself and the precious life that relies on this soil, including ourselves. By reducing our consumption of meat, the rates of our destruction will be slowed dramatically, even more so with organic agriculture, permaculture, and veganic farming, and then the damage done by soil degradation may eventually become reversible.

George Monbiot continues: "In switching to a plant-based diet, we could make use of a neat synergy. Most protein crops – peas and beans – capture nitrogen from the air, fertilizing themselves and raising nitrate levels in the soil that subsequent crops, such as cereals and oilseeds, can use. While the transition to plant protein is unlikely to eliminate the global system's need for artificial fertilizer, the pioneering work of vegan organic growers, using only plant-based composts and importing as little fertility as possible from elsewhere, should be supported by research that governments have so far failed to fund."

Vegetarianism and veganism show greater respect for our land by protecting and preserving its richness for this and future generations.

"We could support more people on Earth for a given area of land farmed if we ate lower on the food chain."

Patricia Muir, Ph.D., Oregon State University

"The United States is losing approximately 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of cropland each year due to soil erosion.

It is estimated that 85% of this topsoil loss is directly related to raising livestock."

Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook

"At the cost of one acre of land, we get a yield of 250 pounds [113 kg] of beef.... However, the same amount of land can produce 50,000 pounds [22,680 kg] of tomatoes; up to 40,000 pounds [18,144 kg] of potatoes; 30,000 pounds [13,608 kg] of carrots; or 20,000 pounds [9072 kg] of apples."

Nil Zacharias and Gene Stone, Eat for the Planet

"There's no question that a vegetarian diet is much more sustainable for the land,

is much more sustainable for many of the people eating that way....

If you eat, you're connected to this, and you've got to think about it and do something about it."

Eric Schlosser

"Arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals

or it continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both."

George Monbiot, The Guardian

• 5. Water:

Water is an absolutely essential resource. Eating meat wastes huge amounts of water, often referred to as "blue gold". In an effort to conserve increasingly scarce yet completely necessary water, you could install a water saver on your kitchen faucet, saving up to 6,000 gallons (23,000 liters) of water per year. Your savings will be lost, however, if you consume just one pound (0.45 kg) of California beef (which requires about 5,000 gallons (19,000 l) — and as much as 12,000 gallons (45,000 l) — of water per pound to produce).

A typical meat-based diet wastes a tremendous amount of water per person every day, hastening "peak water", while vegetarian and especially vegan diets use only a moderate amount. The amount of water used to produce the meat from a single cow is enough to float a large ship.

More than half of the water consumed in the U.S. irrigates land to grow feed for livestock. The Ogallala Aquifer — beneath the Great Plains of the U.S. and one of the world's largest stores of fresh groundwater — took tens of millions of years to create and is being depleted (and polluted) in decades due to the livestock industry and the crops needed to feed it. It takes about 100 times the amount of water to produce beef as it does to produce wheat.

The U.S. EPA estimates that about half of America's surface streams and wells are contaminated by "agricultural pollutants", including chemicals and feces. Due to the nitrates in manure, nitrates are too often found in drinking water. Oceans are also being heavily polluted, while coral reefs and other marine habitats are being destroyed.

In America, agricultural runoff flows down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico, which has led to one of the biggest dead zones in the world. The agro-industrial pollution causes oxygen depletion (a hypoxic environment) in a process called eutrophication, where oxygen levels in the water decrease as levels of nitrogen and phosphorus increase. An untold number of sea animals are killed in this process, essentially suffocated to death.

Vegetarians and vegans help protect and conserve this most precious resource and those precious lives.

"More than 4,000 gallons (15,000 liters) of water are needed to produce a single day's worth of food for the typical meat eater.

In comparison, an ovo-lacto vegetarian requires only 1,200 gallons (4,500 l) of water, and a vegan needs a mere 300 gallons (1,135 l)."

Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook

"There is no other single action that is as effective at saving water as eating a plant-based diet."

John Robbins, The Food Revolution
• 6. Waste:

Eating meat is extremely wasteful, generating dangerous by-products. Each cow produces about 120 pounds (55 kg) of wet manure every day. Every second, about 125 tons (127,000 kg) of waste are excreted by animals confined in the U.S. meat-industrial complex, creating "mountains of manure" and "open lagoons of liquefied manure", toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, and other forms of hazardous waste, in addition to the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.

Livestock account for 2/3 of ammonia release in the U.S., contributing to acid rain and other eco-disasters. "In a single year in [the U.S.]", says Michael Greger, M.D., "our industrialized animal agriculture's intensive confinement system produces more than a billion tons of manure — as heavy as 10,000 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers". This does not include other waste, including bedding, machinery, food waste, medical waste, chemical waste, etc. It is horrific.

The production of meat is extraordinarily wasteful and disgusting. We are fouling our own nest. Vegetarians and vegans create less waste because the less meat you eat, the less mess you make.

"Can you imagine ever, even once, taking [many] plates of spaghetti or [many] bowls of rice and tossing them in the trash?

That's what eating meat represents—it's like throwing away [many portions] of food for every [portion] you consume.

By definition, someone who does this is not an environmentalist."

Bruce Friedrich, "Vegetarianism: The Only Diet for Human Rights & the Environment"

"Giant livestock farms, which can house hundreds of thousands of pigs, chickens, or cows, produce vast amounts of waste.

In fact, in the U.S., these 'factory farms' generate more than 130 times the amount of waste that people do... [and have] polluted more than 27,000 miles (44,000 km) of rivers and contaminated groundwater in dozens of states."

Natural Resources Defense Council

"[Factory farms] produce large amounts of waste in small areas.

For example, a single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds (54.4 kg) of wet manure per day.

The waste produced per day by one dairy cow is equal to that of 20-40 people."

Environmental Protection Agency

"At U.S. feedlots and factory farms, more than a trillion pounds [454 billion kg] of manure are deposited every year.

On that scale and at such concentrations, a perfectly natural substance can become a toxic one."

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

• 7. Factory Farming & Slaughterhouses:

Factory farming, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), is the industrialization, concentration, and mass production of animals for food. Even though as much as 99% of meat, dairy, and eggs in America comes from factory farms, 100% of these animal products come from animal agriculture and all animal agribusiness is cruel, even when they are organic, so-called free range, kosher, halal, or otherwise. There is no such thing as "humane" meat — at least not in the flattering way we use the word humane. "Recognize meat for what it really is", Ingrid Newkirk cautions, "the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal."

By treating animals as raw material, as commodified "things", as objects merely for the sake of profit, without regard to the rights or welfare of the animals, workers, consumers, communities, or the environment, cruelty is inherent, disease is widespread, resources are depleted and wasted, workers are demoralized and injured, neighbors are sickened, greenhouse gases are produced, and various aspects of the environment are seriously degraded. This meat industry is also notorious for racism, sexism, sexual harassment, and other serious civil rights, human rights, and workplace violations.

Not only are slaughterhouses killing billions of non-human animals, but a slaughterhouse is one of the most dangerous places for human workers, too, with very high rates of occupational injuries, including repetitive stress injuries, PTSD, amputations, and deaths; indeed, the highest of all factory jobs in the U.S., with about three times the rate of injuries in other occupations.

"When it comes to both workers' rights and the future and climate change, everything about the systems that we have in our foodways is terrifying. Everything about factory farming is terrifying", relates Daniel Lavery. "Anybody who tries to think about it for over a minute, I think, often runs into just this absolute sense of terror, like, 'Oh my God we've create hell on Earth.'"

Only four giant monopolistic corporations control about 80% of the beef market, slaughtering 35 million cows and bulls in the U.S. each year, killing about 250 cattle per hour on bloody dis-assembly lines. Cows are branded, injected with hormones, transported long distances, crowded together, fed unnatural diets, stunned, hung upside down, bled out, and eviscerated, not always in that order. Given the very weak state of U.S. law for farm animals, these animals do not even have to be dead before being skinned or cut into pieces on the "kill floor".

Dairy cows are forced to calve every year, being artificially inseminated and re-inseminated, putting enormous stress on the cows. Babies are immediately forcefully separated from their mothers: female calves are channeled into the dairy industry to replace their mothers; male calves are pushed into the meat industry, mostly for beef, though about a million male calves are quickly turned into veal, each a gruesome fate in its own way.

Dairy cows are fed unnaturally rich diets, are pumped with antibiotics (in some cases, everyday) and hormones (e.g., BGH), and are treated to other cruelties to further increase milk production to about a 1000% of what they would normally produce. About half the dairy cows in the U.S. suffer from painful mastitis and many more from other illnesses and diseases, besides exhaustion, abuse, and cruelty.

Instead of living to about 25 years, dairy cows are worn out after about 3 or 4 years, at which point they're moved from milk production to meat production. The NOTmilk webpage has a wealth of information regarding the various problems with milk. "And with the cows — at least in these numbers — come a laundry-list of potential environmental hazards and nuisances", according to John Gibler in terrain. "Nitrates and salts leach from cow manure to degrade the land and contaminate the groundwater."

"Cows belch smog-forming [and greenhouse] gases during the rumination process and toxic ammonia rises into the air from manure lagoons. Millions of pounds (kilograms) of manure also attract flies and mosquitoes, escalating the danger of West Nile virus [and other communicable diseases]. And, to state the obvious, thousands of cows producing millions of pounds (kilograms) of poop tend to smell really bad."

If there were no cow industry, there would be no E. coli outbreaks; if there were no cow industry, there would be much less climate change. Further, writes Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals and We Are the Weather, "if cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world."

Jeremy Rifkin, in Beyond Beef, details that "The ever-increasing cattle population is wreaking havoc on the Earth's ecosystems, destroying habitats on six continents. Cattle-raising is a primary factor in the destruction of the world's remaining tropical rain forests. Millions of acres of ancient forests in Central and South America are being felled and cleared to make room for pastureland to graze cattle. Cattle herding is responsible for much of the spreading desertification in the sub-Sahara of Africa and the western range land of the United States and Australia. The overgrazing of semiarid and arid lands has left parched and barren deserts on four continents. Organic runoff from feedlots is now a major source of organic pollution in our nation's ground water. Cattle are also a major cause of global warming... cattle production and beef consumption now rank among the gravest threats to the future wellbeing of the Earth and its human population." Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, bluntly concludes: "The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of [the 20th] century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

Approximately 100 million pigs — crowded, crated, mutilated — are raised for slaughter in the U.S. every year for the production of hot dogs, pork, ham, bacon, salami, sausage, pepperoni, etc. A typical hog factory farm generates raw waste equivalent to a city of 12,000 people. According to Hog Farm Management, "What we are really trying to do is to modify the animal's environment for maximum profit... Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory." Pigs, who are cute, social, and can be quite smart, are usually slaughtered at around six months young. And we should not forget that the swine flu pandemic originated on a hog farm in North Carolina.

Over 9 billion chickens, in addition to turkeys, ducks, geese, and other birds, are hatched in the U.S. each year for their meat. Held in typically very crowded, cramped, hot, smelly, and unsanitary warehouses, the birds are de-beaked and otherwise mutilated without anesthesia or concern for the birds. Chickens that produce eggs are treated similarly horrible.

So-called "broiler" chickens are genetically engineered to swell to unnatural sizes in their mere 6 weeks of life. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, says that "a typical chicken weighs five-and-a-half pounds [2.5 kg] after only six weeks. Their growth rate is phenomenal and totally unnatural. It's the equivalent of breeding a child who'd weigh 286 pounds [130 kg] by the age of six years". Many of the chickens die of heart attacks even before they reach their typical slaughter age of six weeks. The accumulating litter and feces produced by so many chickens and other captive birds creates serious health and environmental problems.

"Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy", writes Jonathan Safran Foer in Eating Animals. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms."

Mass-produced chicken is also a substantial public health threat: "If there were no poultry industry", concludes Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, "there would be no epidemics of bird flu". It is worth noting that the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 that killed tens of millions of people worldwide was a type of bird flu that originated on a chicken farm in Kansas.

Turkeys are genetically manipulated to grow oversized breasts, as well as to develop white meat, making them unable to stand, walk, or mate properly, if at all. About 99% of the approximately 300 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving and other meals in the U.S. are the result of rape.

To mass produce veal in the U.S., about a million calves (baby cows) are confined in very small compartments and are chained around the neck to prevent movement for their mere 18-20 weeks of life, designed to inhibit muscle growth for "tender" meat. To ensure the production of "white" meat, they are fed an all-liquid diet, deficient in iron and fiber, purposely inducing borderline anemia. These very young, innocent, scared, stressed, and tortured baby animals are also pumped with drugs prior to being killed for meat.

"In the United States", Martin Thompson says, "99 percent of farm animals are reared on factory farms. Factory farms are where many of the pandemics that occurred in recent decades got started. By buying meat, dairy products, and eggs, individuals are supporting factory farming and thereby increasing the risk of pandemics occurring in the future."

In an impressive and ominous 2020 report entitled Pandemics: Global Health and Consumer Choices, Cynthia Schuck Paim and Wladamir J. Alonso clearly explain the gravity of our unwholesome and unstable situation: "The high densities and sheer number of animals kept in intensive animal farming systems, where most of the pig and chicken meat sold to the population is produced, has enabled different strains of avian influenza to mix up in the same cells and combine their genetic material (a process called antigenic shift), which time and again has led to the emergence of viruses that can also infect humans. Pigs are particularly fit for this purpose... Intensive animal farming systems, also known as factory farms, have indeed created the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of highly pathogenic viral strains, along with the ideal conduit for the infection of human beings."

This is not nearly all the cruelties and tragedies that transpire and we have not even spoken about geese, ducks, sheep, goats, fish, shrimp, lobsters, octopuses, and other living beings that are forced to suffer and die for people's selfish appetites. Also, Erik Molver reports, "The most fundamental, inescapable, and damning reality is that the livestock industry has an extinction agenda when it comes to native fish and wildlife. Trap the wolves. Shoot the grizzly bears. Poison the prairie dogs. Siphon away the trout streams into irrigation ditches. Burn off the sagebrush. Poison inedible native wildflowers. Replace the native grasses with forage species for cows but which wildlife avoid. Put private profits above the public trust, even on public lands."

"Every day there is a new confirmation of how destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel and unhealthy the industrial agriculture machine is", says Philip Lymbery, CEO of Compassion in World Farming and author of Farmageddon and Deadzone. "We need a total rethink of our food and farming systems before it's too late."

At the 2012 Empowering Women of Color Conference, Angela Davis stated that we all must challenge "the whole capitalist industrial form of food production." Davis mentioned that "Most people don't think about the horrendous suffering that those animals must endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings." Yet we must.

Elsewhere, Dr. Davis muses that "The food we eat masks so much cruelty. The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds. The fact that we look no further than the commodity itself, the fact that we refuse to understand the relationships that underlie the commodities that we use on a daily basis. And so food is like that."

"Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand", Jonathan Safran Foer writes in Eating Animals, "that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory, disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own."

Farmed animals are unwilling captives, who have no choice, no voice, no defense, and no alternative options against their cruel and unusual punishment for which they committed no crime. And where there is livestock, there is always deadstock.

Ultimately, it is not factory farming that is the problem; the problem is "animal farming". Although organic and free-range meat and eggs, as well as kosher and halal, for example, might be better in some ways, and might not in other ways, they are certainly not better in the most important ways.

Free range is uncertified and voluntary, meaning in practice that many animals are deemed free range if they theoretically only have access to some outside area, even if it is impractical, unnatural, and unused. When free range is practiced in actuality, it might be better for the animal for the short time while it is living, but it might be worse for the environment as free ranging necessitates a lot more land, and already so much land is dedicated to the meat industry.

Further, even "organically", "compassionately", and "humanely" raised animals are brutally and unnecessarily killed while they are young, simply to serve someone else's blood lust. Animal rights activist Hope Bohanec calls this the ultimate betrayal. Lawyer and author Lee Hall, in On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21st Century, urges us to "redefine our role within Earth's great biological community" and explores "the human potential to fit our own habitat, while allowing nonhuman communities to thrive in theirs".

For these reasons and more, the powerful documentary Cowspiracy shows that "Animal agriculture is the most destructive industry facing the planet."

If factory farms are the meat-production assembly lines, slaughterhouses are the animal dis-assembly lines with their "kill floors". Ignorance is not bliss, but sometimes the truth hurts. Vegetarians and vegans oppose cruelty with every meal and keep things more natural, more fair, more compassionate, and more sustainable.

"While inefficiently producing unhealthy food, contributing to heart disease and cancer, factory farms leave a wake of toxic waste, disease, declining aquifers, global warming, obesity for the affluent and malnutrition for the excluded."

Christopher Cook, Diet for a Dead Planet

"Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics."

Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and The Way We Eat

"Agribusiness factory farms subvert democracy and are some of the nation's worst polluters... they also treat animals with unspeakable cruelty."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

"The domestication/enslavement of animals was the model and inspiration for human slavery...

the breeding of domesticated animals led to eugenic measures as compulsory sterilization, euthanasia killings, and genocide, and...

the industrialized slaughter of cattle, pigs, sheep, and other animals paved the way, at least indirectly, for the Final Solution."

Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

"The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet...

The results are disastrous."

David Brubaker, Ph.D., Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

"If you caught your kid raising cats in tiny boxes, forcing them to live in their own feces without clean air or sunlight, pulling their teeth and claws out with pliers to keep them from hurting each other, then skinning them alive to make collars to sell to their friends, you'd rush him to a psychiatrist. But you support that very behavior every time you buy meat, eggs, dairy, or fur."

Dan Piraro

"Merely by ceasing to eat meat. Merely by practicing restraint. We have the power to end a painful industry.

We do not have to bear arms to end this evil. We do not have to contribute money. We do not have to sit in jail or go to meetings or demonstrations or engage in acts of civil disobedience... here is an action every mortal can perform — surely it is not too difficult!"

Roberta Kalechofsky

• 8. Fish & Other Sea Animals:

"Seafood is simply a socially acceptable form of bush meat", according to Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. "We condemn Africans for hunting monkeys and mammalian and bird species from the jungle, yet the developed world thinks nothing of hauling in magnificent wild creatures like swordfish, tuna, halibut, shark, and salmon for our meals. The fact is that the global slaughter of marine wildlife is simply the largest massacre of wildlife on the planet."

Commercial fishing is causing the collapse of the world's fisheries, having likely passed "peak fish", destroying marine ecosystems, heavily polluting our oceans, and, along with climate change, contributing to aquatic "dead zones".

In effect, we are clear cutting our underwater rainforests, including the coral reefs and mangroves that support a rich array of biodiversity, as well as providing coastal protection, leading to the endangerment and extinction of many species employing "the factory trawler's wet version of a scorched-earth policy" (Curtis White).

To catch wild fish, entire schools of fish are netted along with turtles, dolphins, whales, sharks, seals, sea lions, rays, birds, and other animals as "by-catch", "by-kill", or "collateral damage", leaving a destructive and deadly wake. In fact, over 1/5 (about 22%) of fish caught by U.S. commercial operations is "by-catch" (fish that is caught, but discarded), topping more than a million tons per year. Overfishing is happening worldwide.

About half of all the plastic pollution in the oceans is not straws, as many of us have been led to believe, but rather is lost and discarded material from the fishing industry. These abandoned fishing nets and ropes are referred to ghost gear and also make up most of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a polluted area of our biggest ocean about the size of Texas and France combined. The simplest, most direct, and best way to protect the ocean and its inhabitants is to not eat fish.

"Ghost nets, or discarded fishing nets, make up almost half the 80,000 metric tons of garbage floating at sea", according to Marian Liu, while "discarded fishing gear make up a significant amount of global marine plastic pollution. It's estimated 640,000 tons of fishing gear is lost to the marine environment each year."

Aquaculture, or the factory farming of fish, is also massively eco-destructive, often leading to overfishing of wild fish for feed, de-oxygenation of the water, disease amongst fish and other marine animals, and the overuse of antibiotics, hormones, chemicals, and genetically-engineered additives. Additionally, farmed fish are often fed wild-caught fish.

Further, underwater "forests" of coral reefs and mangroves are being decimated by "rape-and-run" shrimp farming (exploiting and polluting coastal communities for 2 to 5 years before abandoning them), commercial overfishing and trawling, inefficient industrial shipping, and other fish-related mega-activities with no regard for the natural world, whether underwater or above.

Fish often contain mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium as well as toxic POPs including PCBs, DDT, and dioxin, which cannot be removed from the fish and which bio-accumulate in consumers. "A major health hazard from eating fish flesh comes from humans causing polluted aquatic environments. Fish are repositories for the industrial and municipal wastes and the agricultural chemicals flushed into the world's waters", says Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. "Mercury, especially high in tuna and swordfish, can cause brain damage, especially in growing children. PCBs, dioxin, and pesticides (such as DDT) have been linked to cancers, nervous system disorders, fetal damage, and many other health problems.

Removing fish from your meals eliminates half of all mercury exposure and reduces one's intake of other toxins. According to Dr. Steve Patch, co-director of the Environmental Quality Institute, University of North Carolina-Asheville, "We saw a direct relationship between people's mercury levels and the amount of... fish people consumed". Dioxin is one of the world's most toxic chemicals and the EPA reports that about 95% of dioxin in humans comes from ingesting meat, dairy, and fish.

Although fish often are said to contain high levels of protein and healthy fats and fatty acids like omega-3 (especially for the fish!), this may not be the case for humans and, in any event, there are easy alternatives for these nutrients, including: algae, olives, walnuts, flax, hemp and chia seeds, Brussels sprouts, and certain other plant foods. Additionally, fish, as with other animals, contain saturated fat and cholesterol, which are unhealthy for human consumption.

Further, fish do not contain any fiber or phytonutrients, all of which are exclusive to plant foods. A scientific review of studies about fish has shown that it is not necessarily a healthy food for humans. William Harris, M.D. determined that fish have seven times the protein that humans should intake and that fish protein contains high amounts of the amino acids methionine and cystine, which can lead to calcium depletion and can cause or exacerbate osteoporosis.

It is understandable why some people go into denial, but it should be clear that fish — as with all other animals — have intelligence and feel pain, a phenomenon in animals needed for survival and success. Being caught on a hook is "like dentistry without novocaine, drilling into exposed nerves", says Dr. Tom Hopkins. Being pulled out of the water is like a person being held under water. The only real seafood for humans is seaweed.

Vegetarians and vegans protect fish, other marine animals, coral reefs, and the incredible oceans they live in.

"The fishing industry is following directly in the footsteps of the livestock industries, feeding primarily the rich at the expense of the planet, the animals, and the poor."

John Robbins, The Food Revolution

"Now that the shallow fisheries are in serious decline, trawl nets fitted with wheels and rollers are dragging across the bottom of the deep oceans, removing everything of any size."

Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly

"Commercial fishing, aquaculture, and angling are environmentally catastrophic....

If you eat fish, you are supporting an industry that plunders our oceans with no regard for the horrible pain and suffering that fish and other marine animals endure

or for the diverse ocean ecosystem that is imperative to the survival of all underwater life."

FishingHurts.com

• 9. Health & Disease:

Eating meat is dangerous for human health, our inner environments or "invironment". Eating meat is associated with and may lead to heart disease and heart attacks (the #1 cause of death in the world), stroke, cancer (e.g., colorectal, breast, prostate, lung, skin, stomach, and pancreas), pulmonary diseases, diabetes (type 2), Alzheimer's, certain kidney diseases, high blood pressure (hypertension), obesity, asthma, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, aneurysms, rheumatoid arthritis endometriosis, impotence, gallstones, gout, certain mental illnesses, and other very serious ailments.

Animal products are a systemic cause (though not always an individual one) of these health tragedies. This means that, as with smoking and lung cancer, any given person who eats meat may not get these diseases, but in a population of meat eaters, we can expect certain levels of these diseases and the levels will be higher than in an equivalent population of vegetarian and vegans.

In a White Paper by the prestigious American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it details the cascading effects of diet: "Poor diets lead to a harsh cycle of lower academic achievement in school, lost productivity at work, increased chronic disease risk, increased out-of-pocket health costs, and poverty."

About 2/3 of diseases in the U.S. are diet-related — according to the U.S. Surgeon General — and vegetarians and vegans are much less afflicted. Plant-based nutrition has proven to be safe and even superior, not deficient, compared to animal-based diets. Surgeries, devices, pharmaceutical drugs, and exercise have sometimes been able to treat and control heart disease, but only a plant-based diet has been able to reverse the leading cause of death.

On average, vegetarians, and vegans even more so, live healthier and longer lives compared to those who eat meat, living 6–10 years longer, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "In America today", Dr. Joel Fuhrman advises, "about half of all Americans die of heart attacks and strokes. And about 30% of adults die of cancer as well. So these are diseases predominantly of nutritional extravagance and nutritional stupidity.... The diet to be healthy has to be mostly... fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds."

"Studies have shown vegan and vegetarian diets can increase focus, aptitude and health", Naressa Khan writes, and could potentially lead to "wealth gain". She cites billionaire entrepreneurs, such as Mukesh Ambani, John Mackey, Gunhild Stordalen, and Biz Stone.

The American Institute for Cancer Research declares that a plant-based diet can lower risk for many cancers. Maria Petzel, the senior clinical dietitian for the Pancreas Surgery Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center and an emeritus member of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's Scientific & Medical Advisory Board, emphasizes "There's an overwhelming body of evidence that following a plant-based diet reduces cancer risk" and that "There is strong evidence that a diet high in red meat (beef, pork, lamb), processed meats, and charred or smoked meats (including poultry) increases cancer risk".

According to Jeremy Appleton, ND, CNS, "Fresh fruits and vegetables are loaded with cancer-fighting ingredients: flavonoids, fiber, and phytochemicals, special substances unique to plants." He continues: "Eating meat... increases the risk of a variety of cancers....Women who eat red meat may have a higher risk of breast cancer... Worldwide, breast cancer risk in women seems to occur in direct proportion to the amount of total fat consumed in the diet. Similarly, the risk of prostate cancer appears to correlate with fat intake.... Ovarian cancer, lung cancer, and possibly uterine cancer are all more common when diets are high in saturated fats."

"Consumption of high amounts of saturated fat from meat and dairy products increases the risk of lung cancer, even among nonsmokers. Other preliminary research has found that ovarian cancer risk increases as dietary cholesterol increases." In contrast, the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research unequivocally wrote in Food, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Cancer that "Vegetarian diets decrease the risk of cancer." As Michael Pollan says, "The healthy food is in the produce section."

Further, since over 70% (nearly ¾) of all antibiotics in the U.S. are given to livestock (plus immense amounts of chemicals, steroids, hormones, and other drugs), resistant bacteria are increasing at an alarming rate, creating untreatable superbugs, like MRSA, that kill tens of thousands of people per year, even more than AIDS. In the journal of the American Society of Microbiology, one study cautioned that "Each animal feeding on an antibiotic becomes a factory for the production and subsequent dispersion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria." The evidence keeps piling up that we are playing with fire — and we keep getting burned. "There's really a lot of good evidence", according to Dr. Lee Riley, Professor of Epidemiology and Infectious Disease at U.C. Berkeley, "that a lot of the antibiotic resistance in humans is traceable to animal feed". A potential future of a post-antibiotic era does not bode well for modern medicine or human health on our planet.

And don't forget mad cow disease (also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, and in its human form as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or vCJD), bird flu / avian influenza (H5N1), swine flu, SARS, MERS, chronic wasting disease, foot and mouth, E. coli 0157:H7, as well as salmonella, campylobacter, listeria, staphylococcus, clostridium, and other causes of food poisoning.

Chickens are fed arsenic and fish often contain mercury or other heavy metals or toxic chemicals, making these especially dangerous to consume with grave long-term effects. Dead pigs, horses, and poultry are often "rendered" for cattle and poultry feed, along with sawdust and old newspaper, in addition to grains, recalling the meatpacking abuses in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Additionally, more and more meat is being treated with poisonous carbon monoxide (CO), in an effort to keep old meat that is not fresh looking red instead of turning brown, thereby masking deterioration and possible spoilage. The meat industry's response is that this poisonous gas is "safe" in small amounts and that "everyone knows not to eat stinky meat".

The major pandemics of the last 100 years — notably the global flu outbreaks of 1918-19, 1957, and 1968, each of which killed millions of people, as well as other non-flu diseases — have had their origins in the raising of animals for the meat industry. The very real fear of a bird flu (especially H5N1) global pandemic may be a form of blowback, boomerang effect, or karma, as this very deadly disease is rooted in the livestock (especially poultry, but also pig) industry. The disease affects all sorts of birds, especially chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, as well as various wild migratory birds, but also other animals, including pigs, tigers, and humans. The novel coronavirus COVID-19, like SARS, also originated in animals and the human appetite for them.

In each of the three major 20th century pandemics, a bird flu virus swapped genes with a human flu virus, likely doing so in a pig, creating a strain that humans had never encountered, therefore spreading much more easily and with much less resistance. "If there were no poultry industry", concludes Neal D. Barnard, M.D., "there would be no epidemics of bird flu". And if there were no cattle industry, there would be no E. coli outbreaks or mad cow disease. And if there were no hog industry, there would be no swine flu. Additionally, the CDC reports that in the U.S., each year, 76 million people are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 die simply due to something they ate and the food poisoning they got from it.

Other very deadly viral diseases — including Ebola, Marburg, and HIV/AIDS — have been called the "revenge of the rainforest", as they have erupted and spread via the building of roads into forests, paving the way for deforestation and the easier hunt for bushmeat.

"At the individual level", Roni Neff, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, implores, "it seems pretty clear that the No. 1 thing that can be done is to eat less meat and dairy."

Many reputable and mainstream health organizations — including the American Cancer Society, American Dietetic Association, American Heart Association, American Institute for Cancer Research, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, National Heart Foundations (of various countries), Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Prevention, Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, World Health Organization, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and many others — all agree that a diet centered around fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains can significantly reduce the incidence of the leading causes of disease and death. It is not a mystery.

Likewise, many reputable and mainstream environmental organizations — Greenpeace, National Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, and many others — all agree that a plant-based diet can significantly reduce various major forms of environmental destruction. This, too, is no longer mysterious.

There are, of course, also many health and environmental organizations outside the mainstream that also support these positions. Note that health professionals and health organizations rarely advise eating more meat, rather they typically suggest eating less or none at all. Meat makes us sick. We kills animals and, in doing so, the animals wind up killing us. In so many ways, the prey bites the predator back.

"Blue zones" are places with a large number of centenarians — including Loma Linda, California; Ogliastra Region, Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Hunza Valley, Pakistan — where people disproportionately live long and healthy lives. In a study of these fascinating communities, a major commonality is plant-based eating habits with little and often no meat and a diet that includes beans and greens. (Other commonalities that correlate with health and longevity include drinking lots of fluids, keeping physically and mentally active, maintaining close social relationships, caloric restriction, avoiding processed foods, and avoiding  smoke and other toxins.)

Michael Greger, M.D. states that "Billions of farm animals are overcrowded in stressful, unsanitary sheds, pens, cages and stalls; no wonder we are increasingly plagued with infectious food-borne diseases. Animal factories are a public health threat."

The American Dietetic Association (ADA), the largest association of nutrition professions in the world, states that "well planned vegan and other types of vegetarian meals are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals. Vegetarians and vegans have been reported to have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer."

Additionally, "It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."

Dr. Benjamin Spock, in the final edition of his bestselling Baby and Child Care, writes that "Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms of cancer."

Vegetarianism and veganism is a form of preventive medicine and care, substantially reducing the incidence of acute and intensive care, medical errors (which kill 100,000 U.S. hospital patients per year, according to a study), excessive medical and social costs, the need for as many doctor visits and pharmaceutical drugs, and other problems associated with the medical delivery system and how it treats health and disease. Plant-based eating is not only better for your personal health, but it is also better for public health, animal health, worker health, and environmental health. What is best for your health is best for the world and what is best for the world is best for your health.

"What you eat influences every area of your body, including your brain, according to Cait Corcoran. "It is important to consider what you put into your body, because that food will become the fuel for your mind. When you feed yourself nutritious, plant-based foods filled with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, you are protecting your brain from oxidative stress and free radicals. If you deny your body and mind healthy foods, free radicals could wreak havoc and negatively impair cognition and mentality." Corcoran says "Adapting your life to a vegan lifestyle is sure to improve your mentality because you're standing up for those who cannot speak. As wonderful as that may be, adhering to a vegan diet can do even more for your mind and mental health. This is due to certain nutrients found in plant-based foods that work to elevate your mood, reduce stress, and promote a sense of well-being."

Corcoran continues: "Another link to nutrition and mental well-being begins within the gastrointestinal tract. Because 95% of serotonin is produced in the gastrointestinal tract, it seems that the digestive system not only breaks down food but also may trigger your emotions. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays many different roles, including stabilizing your mood, aiding with sleep, helping your body digest food, and impacting your motor skills. If you have low levels of serotonin in the body, you are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, or have trouble sleeping."

The meat, dairy, and egg industries are unhealthy, unhappy, and unsafe. In general, vegetarians and vegans live longer and healthier lives. Further, vegetarianism/veganism is the "more intelligent" choice. Many people who stop eating meat and other animal products also report feeling physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually better.

"People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest."

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II, M.D., The China Study

"Nearly 1.4 million Americans are disabled, then killed prematurely each year by heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with consumption of animal products."

National Center for Health Statistics

"Not only is mortality from coronary heart disease lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians, but vegetarian diets have also been successful in arresting coronary heart disease.

Scientific data suggest positive relationships between a vegetarian diet and reduced risk for...obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and some types of cancer."

American Dietetic Association

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

Dr. Dean Ornish, Reversing Heart Disease

"Since I've stopped eating animal products, my energy level has increased, my cholesterol level has decreased, and, most important, I have not had a breast cancer relapse in the 12 years since my mastectomy! I'm also proud to say that my food choices do not cause animal suffering or widespread environmental degradation."

Elaine Slone, National Geographic, March 2006

"One thing is clear:... all new infectious diseases of human beings to emerge in the past 20 years have had an animal source."

Lancet, 24 January 2004, 363(9405):257

"Anyone who brings raw ground beef into his or her kitchen today must regard it as a potential biohazard, one that may carry an extremely dangerous microbe, infectious at an extremely low dose."

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

"The cost of a 99-cent hamburger doesn't include the dialysis you may need years later."

Eric Schlosser, "Cheap Food Nation"

"Research has shown that the three leading causes of death in the United States —heart disease, cancer and stroke — are related to diet.

Current recommendations are to reduce the consumption of animal protein and saturated fat (which is abundant in meat) and cholesterol (found only in meat and other animal products).

A plant-based or vegetarian diet is one good way to reduce the risk of disease and promote health.

A well-balanced vegetarian diet tends to be low in fat, especially saturated fat, and cholesterol.

It is also rich in health-protecting nutrients, antioxidants and fiber."

Jamie Adams, "Meatless Diet"  
Nutrition Care Division, Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii

"I feel better, I have more energy on and off the set, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm doing something to help stop animal suffering."

Maggie Q

• 10. Economics, Efficiency, & Externalities:

Our capitalist economic system does not value animals or the environment — unless they are consumed and money is exchanged. Wild animals living their lives in freedom, the majesty of a forest, a fresh breeze, and the sparkle of a clean river all have no economic value. If a mother breastfeeds a baby, there is no money exchanged, yet if she buys less healthy infant formula, it contributes to economic growth; if one opens a window to cool down on a hot day, it has no consequence to our capitalist economy, yet using an air conditioner increases the gross domestic product [GDP].

Likewise, if people grow their own food in their gardens, no economic activity is registered, though factory farms contribute to economic growth and raise the GDP. The former activities are more sensible, more fulfilling, and more healthy; the latter are less healthy, more costly, more alienating, more wasteful, and damage the environment. Even creating and disposing of toxic waste increases the GDP.

Further, meat-based illnesses cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars in additional health care costs, and even more in lost productivity and the depletion of the Earth's natural capital.

Unfortunately, and wastefully, total (public) government subsidies to the (private) livestock industry are $38 billion annually, according to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. Indirectly, much more is given. The hidden costs of feeding grain to livestock is staggering. Imagine if this money were instead invested in organic agriculture, nutritional education, cooking classes, health, and renewable energies.

"Livestock farming is massively subsidized with taxpayer money around the world — unlike vegetables and fruit", Damian Carrington exposes. "That money could be used to support more sustainable foods such as beans and nuts instead, and to pay for other valuable services." Carrington continues: "the evidence is crystal clear that consuming less meat and more plants is very good for both our health and the planet."

"Part of the reason is the extreme inefficiency of feeding livestock on grain: most of its nutritional value is lost in conversion from plant protein to animal protein. This reinforces my contention", George Monbiot declares, "that if you want to eat less soya, then you should eat soya: 93% of the soya we consume, which drives the destruction of forest, savannah and marshland, is embedded in meat, dairy, eggs, and fish, and most of it is lost in conversion. When we eat it directly, much less of the crop is required to deliver the same amount of protein."

The basic principle that animal agriculture is vastly less efficient than plant agriculture was realized by vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike centuries ago. People such as William Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Erasmus Darwin, and Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, realized that the meat and dairy monopolized and consumed by the relatively rich were the protein crops — grains, vegetables, legumes — stolen from the mouths of the poor, according to Tristram Stuart in The Bloodless Revolution.

Summarizing a World Wildlife Fund report entitled Appetite for Destruction, Rebecca Smithers comments that "The vast scale of growing crops such as soy to rear chickens, pigs, and other animals puts an enormous strain on natural resources leading to the wide-scale loss of land and species."

Eating meat is highly inefficient. The price of meat would multiply if the ecological costs — including the use of non-renewable fossil fuels; emission of greenhouse gases and the increase of global warming; depletion of ancient groundwater and aquifers, rich topsoil, and the protective ozone layer; agro-chemical pollution of land and water; acid rain; deforestation; desertification; and species extinction; in addition to government subsidies — were included in the price tag. The price of meat would increase even further if we factored in health care costs, lost productivity, and corporate welfare, not to mention the suffering and death of thousands of workers and billions of animals. Meat is deceit and we pay the price.

Using the present standard measures for economic or social health, as David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, says, "makes no more sense than taking the rapid expansion of one's personal girth as an indicator of improved personal health. Applying such a standard to society's economic priorities has led to a gross distortion of economic priorities and resource allocation that is helping to lead the world toward social and economic collapse."

Further, according to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, "Both the meatpacking industry and the fast food industry [both of which are highly "centralized", where "the top four meatpacking companies...control nearly 85%" of the beef market] have been major financial supporters of the Republican Party's right wing", where anti-science and anti-environmental ideology is rampant. Meat is extremely regressive.

The meat industry is exceptionally costly, wasteful, inefficient, unfair, destructive, and regressive, while vegetarianism and veganism are environmentally and economically sustainable and socially progressive. The world — and all its inhabitants — cannot afford meat and the bloated livestock-industry complex.

Partially because meat tends to be more expensive than grains and vegetables, many poor people around the world eat plant-based meals as a means of survival. One way to stand in solidarity with the world's poor, while not contributing to their hunger and misery, is to voluntarily eat plant-based.

There are so many inexpensive plant-based foods that can save your money, your health, innocent animals, and our environment. Although plant-based foods can be expensive — like any foods — they do not have to be. It is an unfortunate myth that eating a healthy, plant-based diet is expensive. Beans, lentils, rice, tofu, pasta, onions, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, corn, oats, and other plant foods are some of the least expensive foods, while being some of the healthiest and most ecologically sustainable.

Chef Darshana Thacker successfully fed herself in America a plant-based diet for only $1.50 per day for a 5-day experiment. Sarah Von Alt easily spent only $20 for a week for vegan food at Trader Joe's. Some people eat vegan comfortably on $4 a day in the U.S.

Those who switch from meat-based to plant-based eating save about $750 per year, according to the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition, so plant-based eating is not only better for your health, better for animals, better for your spirit, and better for our environment, it is also better for your finances. Indeed, the British saved £6.7 billion ($8.75 billion) in 2019 by eating plant-based meals instead of meat-based ones.

On a structural level, Greg Beach reports that "Research demonstrated that a 10 percent price alteration to the highlighted foods, which include fruits, vegetables, nuts, red meat, sugary drinks, seeds, and whole grains, would result in 23,000 fewer deaths per year in the United States; a 30 percent alteration would result in 63,000 fewer deaths." As we fight for better public policy to improve public health, we can save money and improve our personal and family health on the individual level.

Researchers at the University of Oxford conclude that if all Americans switched to vegetarianism, it would reduce health care costs by US$223.6 billion each year. Worldwide, Lauren Cassani Davis writes that current meat consumption costs "the global economy up to $1.6 trillion" annually and a switch to plant-based diets is estimated that it would save over 8 million lives each year. The Oxford experts detailed that widespread vegetarianism/veganism would also cut environmental costs by over half a trillion dollars annually, due to meat and dairy's role in exacerbating climate change, air and water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, and species extinction.

"Dietary shifts could produce savings of $700 billion to $1,000 billion [US$1 trillion!] per year on healthcare, unpaid care, and lost working days, while the economic benefit of reduced greenhouse gas emissions could be as much as $570 billion", according to the article, and possibly more if we factor in other benefits. "A vegetarian world would be healthier, cooler, and richer".

A veg world would also free up a lot of land and food to potentially feed many more people around the world, while allowing for reforestation and rewilding of the land. In 2018, the British saved more than £2.8 billion (US$3.6 billion) in personal expenses simply by eating less meat. Savings would be even greater if the U.S., the EU, and other governments stopped subsidizing the meat, dairy, and egg industries.

"[Feeding grain to animals and then eating them is] highly inefficient, and an absurd use of resources."

Vaclav Smil, Ph.D., University of Manitoba

"It's not efficient to feed grains to animals and then to consume the livestock products."

Dr. M.E. Ensminger

"The planet simply cannot sustain a population that increasingly feeds on animal protein."

U.K. Sustainable Development Commission

"Beef has become a symbol of the extravagant, resource-consuming American who is destroying the global environment to live a life of luxury, while most of the rest of the world suffer...

strictly on a scientific basis, there can be no dispute that [grains] are used with more efficiency, and can provide for more people, when they are eaten directly by people rather than being fed to swine or poultry to be converted to pork, chicken meat, or eggs for human consumption."

Prof. Peter R. Cheeke

"Despite a fondness for free-market rhetoric, the country's large food companies — ConAgra, Archer Daniels Midland, McDonald's, Kraft — have benefited enormously from the absence of real competition. They receive, directly and indirectly, huge subsidies from the federal government. About half of the annual income earned by U.S. corn farmers now comes from government crop-support programs. Cheap corn is turned into cheap fats, oils, sweeteners, and animal feed. Nearly three-quarters of the corn grown in the United States is fed to livestock, providing taxpayer support for inexpensive hamburgers and chicken nuggets."

Eric Schlosser, "Cheap Food Nation", author of Fast Food Nation

• 11. Hunger:

Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes food as a human right. While millions of people annually die from over-consumption, particularly consumption of sugar, salt, fat, and cholesterol, as well as calories more generally, millions of excluded people annually die from under-consumption of food, from starvation and hunger-related diseases. Although the world produces more than enough food to feed all its people, and then some, the inequality of wealth and power, along with the inefficiency of land use and food production and distribution, creates conditions that lead to scarcity, chronic hunger, malnutrition (and also misnutrition and micro-malnutrition), starvation, environmental degradation, ethnic violence, and dislocation.

World hunger is neither necessary, automatic, nor inevitable. Vegetarianism and veganism create conditions that are more fair and just, more efficient and sustainable, and healthier, thereby potentially allowing more people to be fed, rather than using land, grain, water, labor, energy, and other resources to produce food to be fed to animals that are later killed and fed to those people who can afford it. In the words of Chrissie Hynde, "Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating."

"Feeding a world population of 10 billion is possible, but only if we change the way we eat and the way we produce food", explained Professor Johan Rockström from Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Greening the food sector or eating up our planet: this is what is on the menu today."

In addition to being better for personal and public health as well as for the environment, plant-based diets are better for food security and the alleviation of world hunger. Food security, in turn, may help prevent the all-too-common instances of crime, violence, war, refugee crises, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

"When those who have the money to enjoy meat-rich diets cause the market to redirect available supplies of grain away from the tables of people who cannot pay in order to feed livestock to provide meat to those who can, they contribute to the dynamics of hunger."

John Cavanagh & Jerry Mander, eds., Alternatives to Economic Globalization

"Continual growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grains to animals,

creating competition for grain between affluent meat eaters and the world's poor."

Worldwatch Institute

"The fact is that there is enough food in the world for everyone.

But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock — for the well-off — while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation....

The American fast-food diet and the meat-eating habits of the wealthy around the world support a world food system that diverts food resources from the hungry."

Walden Bello, Ph.D., Focus on the Global South

"Most hunger deaths are due to chronic malnutrition caused by inequitable distribution and inefficient use of existing food resources.

At the same time, wasteful agricultural practices, such as the intensive livestock operations known as factory farming, are rapidly polluting and depleting the natural resources upon which all life depends. Trying to produce more food by these methods would lead only to more water pollution, more soil degradation, and, ultimately, more hunger....

We can feed the world while preserving the planet."

Global Hunger Alliance

"Environmentally sustainable solutions to world hunger can only emerge as people eat more plant foods and fewer animal products."

John Robbins, The Food Revolution

• 12. Protein:

Protein is necessary for the body, but many studies convincingly show that it is easy to get enough. It is not necessary to combine certain foods to obtain protein, as was once erroneously thought and people need to consume a lot less than is usually imagined. The protein myth is just that: a myth. "Protein is in every plant food: beans, peanuts, whole grains, leafy greens", Victoria Moran proclaims, as well as all other vegetables, including "even the humble spud" and even more so in nuts and seeds. Although hemp and pumpkin seeds, for example, are very high in protein, most people do not consume large amounts of these foods.

Average Americans eat at least twice the protein recommended by the FDA, while vegetarians and vegans typically consume more reasonable and healthy amounts. Some people mistakenly worry about the almost non-existent problem of protein deficiency in rich countries Do you know anyone diagnosed with kwashiorkor, the disease associated with protein deficiency?

Yet consuming too much protein — excess — is common, dangerous, and is associated with cancer, kidney disease, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and infertility. According to the ADA, "Plant sources of protein alone can provide adequate amounts of the essential and nonessential amino acids. Conscious combining of these foods within a given meal...is unnecessary."

High protein diets — especially ones derived from animals, even certified organic, kosher, halal, local, or so-called "sustainable", "humane", organic, grass-fed, or "free range" ones, including the ones pushed by the Atkins Empire, The Zone, South Beach, Lean Cuisine, Blood Types, Keto, and other diet industries — are excessive, unhealthy, unscientific, and unwise.

"If you wanted to find one diet to ruin your health, you couldn't find one worse than Atkins."

James Anderson, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Clinical Nutrition

"It is very easy for a vegan diet to meet the recommendations for protein, as long as calorie intake is adequate. Strict protein combining is not necessary; it is more important to eat a varied diet throughout the day."

Reed Mangels, Ph.D., R.D., "Protein in the Vegan Diet"

"Vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores."

Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

• 13. Calcium:

Calcium is the most common mineral in the body, found primarily in the bones and teeth. It is not as important how much calcium a person ingests, but rather how much calcium a person retains. Animal protein (e.g., meat, dairy, eggs) leaches calcium from the bones (as does excessive salt) — contributing to osteoporosis — by acidifying the blood (metabolic acidosis) and causing the calcium to leach out and neutralize it, whereas less-concentrated plant-based proteins (e.g., tofu, soymilk, dark green vegetables, beans, nuts) do not have this negative effect. Like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and some cancers, osteoporosis can be prevented or reversed.

People who eat little or no meat and dairy and instead eat calcium-packed vegetables, fruits, and grains — as in much of Asia and Africa — have very low rates of osteoporosis, while populations that consume large quantities of calcium-rich dairy, as well as meat, have much higher rates of this bone-weakening disease. Countries where people consume the most dairy on average have the highest rates of osteoporosis and hip fractures.

Getting plenty of weight-bearing exercise, enough vitamins C and D and magnesium, and avoiding smoke also helps to maintain strong bones. Additionally, it should be noted that horses, cows,  elephants, gorillas, and the other herbivorous animals easily get and retain enough calcium to maintain their strong bones.

"Because of heavy promotion by the American dairy industry, the public often believes that cow's milk is the sole source of calcium.

However, other excellent sources of calcium exist so that vegans eating varied diets need not be concerned about getting adequate calcium."

Reed Mangels, Ph.D., R.D., "Calcium in the Vegan Diet"

"Osteoporotic bone fracture rates are highest in countries that consume the most dairy, calcium, and animal protein. Most studies of fracture risk provide little or no evidence that milk or other dairy products benefit bone."

Amy Lanou

"The more plant foods people eat (particularly fruits and vegetables), the stronger their bones and the fewer fractures they experience.

The more animal foods people eat, on the other hand, the weaker their bones and the more fractures they experience."

John Robbins, The Food Revolution

• 14. Fat, Cholesterol, & Fiber:

Eating fat — especially saturated fat and cholesterol (found only in animal products) — has been linked to higher rates of heart disease, cancer, and other grave diseases, possibly including Alzheimer's. In sharp contrast, fiber is an important weapon in the body's continuous fight to excrete fats and toxins, and fiber reduces the risk of cancer. Meat — and all other animal products, including fish — contains absolutely no fiber, but animal products do contain unhealthy saturated fats and cholesterol.

As Dr. John McDougall concludes, after reviewing 50 years of research, "the lower the fat intake, the less the cancer and heart disease". Cholesterol is found exclusively in meat and other animal products, never in plants; fiber is found exclusively in plant-based foods, never in meat, eggs, or dairy. The human body does not need any extra cholesterol because it produces its own.

In stark contrast, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds — a whole foods plant-based diet — contain healthy and necessary fiber, along with important antioxidants, phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals, while plants never have any unhealthy and unnecessary cholesterol. Further, increased fiber can help reduce dangerous cholesterol levels, as well as providing other benefits against heart disease, cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, constipation, hemorrhoids, colitis, and diverticular disease.

"Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings."

Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

"Heart healthy diets are low in saturated fat, low in cholesterol, low to moderate in fat, and high in fiber. A vegetarian diet can easily meet these guidelines."

Vegetarian Resource Group, "Heart Healthy Diets: The Vegetarian Way"

• 15. Carbohydrates:

Most of our carbohydrates (sugars, starches, and fiber) come from plant foods and are converted to fuel for the body. The World Health Organization recommends that 55%-60% of calories should be derived from complex carbohydrates (typically from whole grains and some root vegetables, especially yams and sweet potatoes). Consuming complex carbohydrates also ensures the consumption of fiber as well as important vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Meat and other animal products contain absolutely no fiber, no complex carbohydrates, and no phytonutrients.

In addition to being dangerous for the environment, low-carb fad diets like Atkins, which avoid carbohydrates, are considered dangerous for people's well-being by health organizations and responsible doctors and dieticians, regardless of their supposed weight-loss potential.

"The main stuff in high-fiber, complex carbs, which is indigestible by humans, is called cellulose.

High-fiber (high-cellulose) vegetable foods are the healthiest choices for human nutrition, and intake of these foods is associated with lowered incidences of hypertension, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, etc."

Ron Kennedy, M.D.

• 16. Enzymes:

"Catalysts for chemical reactions in the body, enzymes are protein-based substances that bind with chemicals in the body, promoting and speeding the rate of biological reactions", writes Elisabeth Hsu-LeBlanc. There are three major categories of digestive enzymes, each of which aid in the proper digestion of food. Enzymes also stimulate the brain, provide energy for our cells, and repair tissue and organ damage. The three major enzyme categories are amylases (for carbohydrates), proteases (for proteins), and lipases (for fats). Eating meat, as well as overcooking and doing certain other things to foods (especially processing foods), can create enzyme imbalances in the body. Eating more lightly cooked or raw plant-based foods maximizes enzyme power in your body.

"Processing foods — whether at home or at a plant — can damage certain beneficial substances in foods."

Roon Frost, editor of taste for life

• 17. Soy:

Soy is a great substitution for meat and other animal products. Consuming soy — e.g., miso, soy beans (edamame), soy flour, soy "meat substitutes", soymilk, soy nuts, soy yogurt, tempeh, tofu, TVP, natto, etc. — provides all 9 essential amino acids — a complete protein — as well as ample isoflavones, which have special protective properties against various forms of cancer, high cholesterol, and heart disease, and can help with kidney and bone health, the symptoms of menopause, and cognitive ability. Soy is an exceptionally healthy food. If one is allergic to soy, however, there are certainly various other plant-based alternatives.

Harvard's School of Public Health concludes that "Soy is a unique food that is widely studied for its estrogenic and anti-estrogenic effects on the body. Studies may seem to present conflicting conclusions about soy, but this is largely due to the wide variation in how soy is studied. Results of recent population studies suggest that soy has either a beneficial or neutral effect on various health conditions. Soy is a nutrient-dense source of protein that can safely be consumed several times a week, and is likely to provide health benefits — especially when eaten as an alternative to red and processed meat."

Soy has been consumed in Asia, originally in China, for thousands of years. Japan, with the highest life expectancy in the world, has the highest soy consumption per capita.

Unfortunately, many meat industry myths abound. "Because soy contains phytoestrogens, men may worry about including it in their diet", write Melissa Groves and Rachael Link. "In a review of 15 studies in men, intake of soy foods, protein powders or isoflavone supplements up to 70 grams of soy protein and 240 mg of soy isoflavones per day did not affect free testosterone or total testosterone levels."

Soy also takes a lot less land (6-17 times), water (4.4-26 times), oil and other fossil fuels (6-20 times), biocides (6 times), and other resources to produce nutritious soy than it does to produce an equivalent amount of unhealthy and eco-destructive meat. Unfortunately, much of the soy crop is genetically modified and currently fed to animals raised for meat. Meat loses to soy in every category.

"Many soy products should be beneficial to cardiovascular and overall health because of their high content of polyunsaturated fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals — and low content of saturated fat."

F.M. Sacks et al., "Soy Protein, Isoflavones, and Cardiovascular Health", Circulation

"This reinforces my contention that if you want to eat less soya, then you should eat soya: 93% of the soya we consume, which drives the destruction of forest, savannah and marshland, is embedded in meat, dairy, eggs and fish, and most of it is lost in conversion. When we eat it directly, much less of the crop is required to deliver the same amount of protein."

George Monbiot

• 18. Antioxidants and Probiotics:

Antioxidants and other beneficial nutrients — including isoflavones, flavonoids, phytonutrients, polyphenols, carotenoids, anthocyanidins, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, quercetin, resveratrol, beta-carotene, and vitamins C & E — protect against and may reverse the ill effects of oxidation and cell deterioration, which may cause age-related problems and diseases. All of these nutrients are found in various plant foods and rarely if ever in animal products.

For your best health, and to get the most antioxidants, skip the meat and eat the rainbow of colors found in fruits and vegetables. "There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants", conclude T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II, M.D. in The China Study, what the New York Times hailed as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology".

Probiotics are foods that have beneficial bacteria and yeast. These live foods are good for our gut (microbiome) and are thought to have many benefits for our physical and mental health.

Not all fermented foods are probiotic, but most probiotic foods are fermented. Probiotic foods, which are always vegetarian, include: green olives, kefir, kombucha, kimchi, miso, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, natto, teff, tempeh, some pickles, some cheeses, and yogurt.

To get the most benefit from probiotic foods, it is important to eat prebiotic foods, all of which are high-fiber and are therefore plant-based. "Prebiotics are types of dietary fiber that feed the friendly bacteria in your gut. This helps the gut bacteria produce nutrients for your colon cells and leads to a healthier digestive system", Arlene Cemeco explains. "Prebiotic foods are high in special types of fiber that support digestive health. They promote the increase of friendly bacteria in the gut, help with various digestive problems and even boost your immune system."

Some top prebiotic foods, which are always vegan, include: apples, asparagus, bananas, barley, burdock root, chicory root, cocoa, dandelion greens, flax seeds, garlic, grapefruit, Jerusalem artichoke, jicama, konjac, leek, legumes, oats, onion, seaweed, watermelon, and wheat bran.

"The most practical step we can take to defend ourselves against the ravages of oxidative stress is to eat more plants."

Dr. Andrew Weil, Healthy Aging

"The amount of antioxidants that you maintain in your body is directly proportional to how long you will live."

Richard Cutler, M.D., National Institutes of Health

"Prebiotics help beneficial bacteria grow in the gut. They work with probiotics, which are healthful bacteria or yeasts, to improve health."

Bethan Cadman

• 19. Iron:

According to Vegetarians in Paradise, "The U.S. RDA is 7-18 mg for most adults. An important mineral, iron supplies oxygen to the cells throughout the body and carries away carbon dioxide as waste. It also helps immune system function and assists our mental processing."

"Good sources of iron are found in all types of legumes [including lentils and] are especially high in soybeans, and products made of soybeans, such as firm tofu. Grains are high in iron with quinoa ranking highest. Raw kale, raw spinach, mushrooms, and baked potatoes are also healthy sources. Nuts and seeds are excellent sources of iron with pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, sesame seeds, and pistachios leading in quantities. Meat substitutes made from soy are outstanding sources for iron. The iron content of blackstrap molasses is exceptionally high, making it an important source for this mineral. Iron is best absorbed when eaten along with foods containing Vitamin C. Most vegetables qualify, as do citrus fruits. A little squeeze of lemon juice will easily enhance iron absorption."

"If you eat a varied, healthy plant-based diet that includes a balance of grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, and fruits and vegetables... I don't believe it is necessary to keep close track of iron intake.... Cooking with an old school cast-iron skillet increases the iron in your meal — especially when you cook a vitamin-C containing food in it."

Matt Ruscigno

• 20. Vitamin B12:

Vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin, is made by bacteria in soil and stored in the tissue of animals. "The requirement for vitamin B12 is very low [the US RDA is 2.4 mcg for most adults]. Non-animal sources include Red Star nutritional yeast T6635 [also Bob's Red Mill nutritional yeast] also known as Vegetarian Support Formula (around 2 teaspoons supplies the adult RDA).... Tempeh [and] miso are often labeled as having large amounts of vitamin B12. ... Other sources of vitamin B12 are fortified soymilk [and other plant milks], vitamin B12-fortified meat analogues/substitutes, and vitamin B12 supplements [as well as some breakfast cereals, fortified juices, and multivitamin tablets]. .... Vegetarians who are not vegan can also obtain vitamin B12 from dairy products and eggs", or bee pollen, according to the Vegetarian Resource Group. Interesting, as much as 90% of B12 supplements are fed to livestock.

Instead of eating animals that are supplemented with B12, people can supplement themselves and cut out the middle animal. In any event, B12 is important, but easy to get. According to John McDougall, M.D., "Almost all cases of vitamin B12 deficiency seen in patients today and in the past are due to diseases of the intestine, and are not due to a lack of B12 in their diet." And healthy intestines begin and end with a healthy diet.

"An otherwise healthy strict vegetarian's risk of developing a disease from B12 deficiency by following a sensible diet is extremely rare—less than one chance in a million.... To minimize your risk of any health problems, I recommend you and your family follow a diet based on starches, vegetables, and fruits. To avoid the extremely rare chance of becoming a national headline, add a reliable B12 supplement."

John McDougall, M.D.

• 21. Weight & Obesity:

The FDA has recognized an "epidemic of obesity", which has resulted in significant problems for individual health, economic productivity, societal health care costs, energy efficiency, and environmental resources.

According to the World Health Organization, about 2 billion adults are overweight with about 650 million of them being obese. The WHO states "Most of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight." The term "nutrition transition" has been applied to the widespread shift "from traditional diets high in cereal and fiber to more Western pattern diets high in sugars, fat, and animal-source food". The global consequences have been dramatic and deadly.

Studies have shown that, over the long run, the thinnest people on Earth tend to eat the most complex carbohydrates (whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and beans), while the people who eat the most animal protein (and processed food) tend to be the heaviest. Additionally, food products containing high levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, additives, chemicals, and calories contribute to weight gain and the likelihood of obesity, major factors related to people's physical and emotional health.

We don't need the latest fad diets and yo-yo dieting, because they are ineffective at best and sometimes dangerous; rather, the ancient and proven plant-based way of life is always readily available. With a whole foods vegetarian or vegan diet, you can "eat as much as you want and still lose weight". Vegetarianism/veganism is the most effective diet and lifestyle for both health and weight loss, in addition to many other benefits for oneself and others.

"Being overweight or obese raises the risk of breast cancer in women after menopause, and it increases the risk of colon and rectal cancers in men and women. Prostate cancer risk also increases as body weight increases."

Dr. Jeremy Appleton, ND, CNS

"Without exception, a high-complex-carbohydrate, high-vegetable-protein diet is associated with low body mass. High-protein diets were associated with higher body weight."

Prof. Linda Van Horn, Ph.D., MPH, RD, former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association

• 22. Strength:

Some of the best athletes, as well as triathletes, including Olympic Gold Medal winner Carl Lewis, have been vegetarians or vegans. Many other successful athletes are also plant-based and plant-strong. Interestingly, all infants start out with veg meals and thrive.

There are many powerful and amazing animals — of past and present — that eat or have eaten veg diets, including the antelope, apatosaurus, bison, buffalo, bull, caribou, camel, cow, deer, donkey, elephant, elk, gazelle, giraffe, gnu, goat, hippo, horse, kangaroo, koala, kudu, llama, manatee, marine iguana, moose, okapi, orangutan, ox, panda, reindeer, rhino, sheep, stegosaurus, swan, tapir, triceratops, warthog, water buffalo, wild boar, zebra, zebu, and various others. Indeed, Milton Mills, M.D. reminds us that "the biggest, strongest land animals are all vegan".

"If eating muscle turned into body muscle", according to John McDougall, M.D., "most men living in affluent societies would resemble bodybuilders without a noticeable potbelly — no point in arguing the obvious.... If the truth were known, real men would switch to real plant foods overnight. During a man's reproductive years meat eating decreases ejaculate volume, lowers sperm count, shortens sperm life, and causes poor sperm motility, genetic damage, and infertility. Meat eaters are likely to become impotent because of damage caused to the artery system that supplies the penis with the blood that causes an erection. Erectile dysfunction is more often seen in men with elevated cholesterol levels and high levels of LDL 'bad' cholesterol — both of which are related to habitual meat eating. Later in life, men who follow a meat-centered diet face prostate enlargement (benign prostatic hypertrophy) and prostate cancer."

Additionally, many famous people are or have been vegetarian/vegan, along with millions of other people in the U.S. and around the world, with thousands more everyday. Our strength is growing!

"A lacto-ovo vegetarian diet can provide all the nutrients required for optimal health...

Many successful endurance athletes are vegetarians... Strength and power athletes almost invariably include meat in their diets, although it is unclear whether the benefits of meat consumption for strength and power are real or imagined."

Chris Forbes-Ewan, Defence Nutrition Research Centre, "Effects of Vegetarian Diets on Performance in Strength Sports"

"Seeing how much the vegetarian diet has done for my performance, I feel like I struck gold."

Lisa Dorfman, MS, RD, LMHC, author of The Vegetarian Sports Nutrition Guide

• 23. Physiology:

Milton Mills, M.D. and other doctors, scientists, anthropologists, and historians have asserted that the original and early diet of human beings, our ancestors, was veg. Examining our teeth and colons, our claws and perspiration, as well as our saliva, jaws, and intestines, for example, they have discerned that although we are capable of being omnivorous, we are built to be herbivores. This fact has been studied and known for centuries. Charles Darwin — as well as many other physicians and scientists both before and after him — were well aware of this: "We now know that man inhabited warm areas, allowing the favorable conditions for a fruit regimen, which according to the Anatomic laws, is his natural diet." Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that humans have "neither the fangs of a lion nor the claws of a tiger" over two hundred years ago.

Plutarch knew it nearly 2,000 years ago: "A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare."

Comparative anatomy strongly shows that human beings are much more similar to herbivorous animals — most notably our very closely-related monkeys, apes, gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, et al. — than we are to carnivorous, or even omnivorous, ones. "A fair look at the evidence shows that humans are optimized for eating mostly or exclusively plant foods, according to the best evidence: our bodies", Michael Bluejay explains. "We're most similar to other plant-eaters, and drastically different from carnivores and true omnivores."

Although it is clear that we are capable of being omnivorous, and can choose, humans have bodies that are primarily suited to eating plants, just as early humans did, due to our: fascial muscles, jaw motion, oral cavity, teeth, chewing, saliva, stomach, small intestine, colon, liver, kidneys, claws, perspiration, etc., all of which are similar to plant-eating herbivorous animals and differ dramatically from meat-eating carnivorous animals.

Our place in the evolutionary tree of life might be a reason why fruit growing on a tree looks appealing to us, while roadkill does not.

"Early humans simply couldn't eat meat."

Donna Hart, Ph.D. & Robert Sussman, Ph.D., Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution

"Either nature failed us in the engineering of our anatomy,

or we failed when we selected animals as a food source."

Rex Bowlby, Plant Roots: 101 Reasons the Human Diet is Rooted Exclusively in Plants

• 24. Allergies:

"The eight major food allergens [dairy, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans] account for 90 percent of all documented food allergic reactions", according to Robert E. Bracket, Ph.D., Director of the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "Allergies, like obesity, are essentially an epidemic of modernity", according to Judith Newman in National Geographic.

"As countries become more industrialized, the percentage of population afflicted [with allergies] tends to grow higher." Some people have suggested a "hygiene hypothesis". Although synthetics and chemicals, genetic engineering, urban landscaping and pollen, and diminished breastfeeding of babies may be factors leading to allergies, diet is also a factor. Perhaps less serious than an allergy, many people experience "food intolerance", or "food sensitivities", e.g., discomfort from milk due to lactose intolerance, stomach upset, dizziness, ear infections, skins problems, redness, etc.

"Reduced fresh fruit and vegetable intake, more processed food, fewer antioxidants, and low intake of some minerals — these are all shown to be a risk."

Harold Nelson, M.D., Professor of Medicine (allergy and immunology), National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Denver

• 25. Organic Agriculture:

Organic farming and agriculture, and the demand for organic food and other organic products (e.g., cotton), is growing rapidly. Organic products are grown without the use of synthetic chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, genetic engineering (GE) or genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), toxic sludge, irradiation, etc.

Up to 90% of genetically-engineered products are made by Monsanto and about half are grown in the U.S., so GMOs are an American corporate aberration designed for profits, not health, humanity, or sustainability. "There's increasing evidence that organic foods are beneficial not only for what they don't have [toxic chemicals], but also for what they do [higher levels of healthy antioxidants]", Claudia Hirsch informs us. Unsurprisingly, the more organic food you eat, studies show, generally the less chemical pesticides are in your body.

The Environmental Working Group reports that "Whether organic or conventionally grown, fruits and vegetables are critical components of a healthy diet. However, many crops contain potentially harmful pesticides, even after washing, peeling or scrubbing".

George Monbiot reports that organic agriculture is more productive and can feed the world. Alan Greene, M.D., affirms that "Every little move towards organics is worthwhile." The most effective ways to become more organic is to (1) "switch out foods you eat most often", (2) "replace the worst offenders", and (3) "shop locally, eat seasonally". Also, encourage the stores, markets, and restaurants you shop at, and the organizations you belong to, to carry more organic products.

Further, organic agriculture is not only healthier for the soil generally, but organic methods also sequester more carbon dioxide in the soil, thereby being another way to help fight climate change. Organic products are healthier for you, for farmers, for farms, for animals, for bees, and for our environment.

"Fruits and vegetables produced organically require one-third the petroleum expended for conventional produce. Besides avoiding synthetic pesticides and fertilizers that use fossil fuels and pollute our environment, organic farming tends to create less greenhouse gas than conventional agriculture. Organic methods also help protect soil, water, and biodiversity."

Carol Ferguson, "Make Every Day Earth Day"

"Chemical agriculture pollutes our water, air, and earth, impairs the web of life in the soil, erodes biodiversity, and requires high levels of 'inputs' such as irrigation, the chemicals themselves, and fuel, and its products contain toxic residues.... Agricultural chemicals kill — and not only plants and insects and worms and birds and fungi and the vast universe of soil organisms; they kill people as well."

Sandor Katz, author of The Revolution Won't Be Microwaved

"When you buy organic, you help to promote biodiversity and cut down on the pesticides that pollute our soil, air, and water. You also support natural systems that will ensure the integrity of our farmlands for future generations... Organically grown foods simply taste better, and they are often higher in nutrients that their conventionally grown counterparts....

The best advice is to eat a variety of produce, wash it well, and buy organic whenever possible."

Chef Claire Criscuolo, RN, "Why I Choose Organic"

"Many pesticides used on conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are known to cause cancer.

Because these substances are poorly regulated, persistent, and poisonous, choose certified organic foods whenever possible."

Dr. Jeremy Appleton, ND, CNS

"Because the toxic effects of pesticides are worrisome, not well understood, or in some cases completely unstudied, shoppers would be wise to minimize exposure to pesticides whenever possible."

Environmental Working Group, FoodNews

"Bottom line, organic is better for all people and our planet."

Anthony Zolezzi, author of Chemical-Free Kids

• 26. Violence, Compassion, & Ethics:

Do we know where and how our food is produced? Food is a matter of social justice. Mahatma Gandhi once said "The most violent weapon on Earth is the table fork."

Eating meat contributes to cruelty, torture, rape, terror, violence, and murder — a clear violation of our personal and societal ethics. In contrast, declares Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, "the non-flesh diet introduces many virtues and excludes none".

Every year, billions of individual animals (millions per day!) — over 9 billion land animals annually in the U.S. and at least 70 billion worldwide, in addition to an untold number of sea animals — are tortured and killed in a variety of horrible ways.

Lambs are shackled and boxed to keep them "tender", cows and pigs are crammed for "efficiency", chickens are de-beaked to "protect" them, piglets have their teeth clipped for "safety", animals are branded, castrated, beaten, and hung upside-down by their limbs, entire schools of fish are netted along with turtles, dolphins, whales, sharks, seals, sea lions, birds, and others (killing these creatures mercilessly and indiscriminately), animals are terrorized and slaughtered with their blood, guts, pus, saliva, sweat, vomit, tears, hair, mucus, bile, semen, urine, and feces being splattered everywhere, some left to suffer and die in piles of other dead and dying animals.

Female animals are often impregnated by artificial insemination on "rape racks", repeatedly forced to endure pain and then pregnancy, with their newborns separated from them shortly after birth, thereby multiplying the trauma. You are (as green or brown as) what you eat.

With farm animals objectified as "it", often misgendered as "he", and with the abhorrent treatment of female cows, female pigs, and female chickens, including sexual violence and separation from their offspring, the phenomenon of livestock is a feminist issue, as Carol Adams in The Sexual Politics of Meat and others have documented. "For some feminists, especially those who might identify as ecofeminists, veganism is inextricably linked to feminism", sociology professor Deborah Cohan explicates. "From this perspective, the oppression of women is tied to other forms of oppression, particularly the abuse of the environment and non-human animals." "In the book, Adams makes the case that eating an animal for food involves first seeing the animal as an object, as something that is inferior and of little value and that this is a violent form of objectification, akin to how women are also objectified, sexualized, animalized, degraded, hurt, and sometimes killed", Professor Cohan continues. "Feminists who are vegan generally regard their decisions around food to be a certain kind of protest and resistance to all forms of violence and cruelty."

In Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices, Lisa Kemmerer explains that "For most women (as for most men) links between sexism and speciesism are not readily apparent. We have been conditioned not to see exploitation. For example, men generally have no idea how patriarchy affects women — unless they go out of their way to learn. The same is true for women with regard to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys. Both women and nonhuman animals have traditionally been viewed as property — 'things' to be owned and controlled by those in power. While the plight of women is linked with that of nonhuman animals through a single system of oppression, through their comparative powerlessness and invisibility, and through sexual exploitation, it is important to elucidate these similarities through concrete examples. Links between women and nonhuman animals are nowhere more apparent than through the vulnerabilities of mothers and their young, and the control of pregnancies and offspring; this particular form of oppression is nowhere more blatant than on factory farms."

The effects on the workers who torture and kill these innocent animals, as with soldiers and executioners, cannot be underestimated. Sociologists have studied the "brutalization effect", whereby some people increasingly feel free to commit violence when it is legitimated.

Further, slaughterhouses are also one of the most dangerous workplaces for humans: according to Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, "at least 1/3 of meat packing workers are injured every year". Human Rights Watch calls meatpacking "the most dangerous factory job in America".

"We treat animals how we used to treat human slaves. What possible justification could there be for that?", writes Prof. Gary Francione in "One Right For All". Like racism, sexism, and homophobia, we engage in unfair and unjust speciesism when we treat (and eat) animals as means to our selfish ends, simply because we have the physical force and power to do so.

The cruelty is an endless abomination. Yet, like Rai Aren, we "know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us." Indeed, Tristram Stuart writes in his comprehensive The Bloodless Revolution that "Whatever rights humans [have] to life, animals [have] them too, and eating them [is] as good as cannibalism."

"Yet while we adore our pets and coddle them — a dog in a wealthy family may get better medical and dental care than a child in a poor family — we as a society often do not extend this empathy to unseen farm animals", writes Nicholas Kristof in his column for the New York Times.

"Animal agriculture not only exploits animals, it exploits us", Dr. Will Tuttle laments. "As we exploit and abuse, we will be exploited and abused. Each one of us, as we purchase meat, dairy, or egg products, becomes an invisible killer to the cows, pigs, hens, and fishes we are exploiting. We directly but invisibly cause terror, pain, and death, and we compound it further by eating it and feeding it to our vulnerable and innocent children, ritually indoctrinating them as we were."

If you eat meat, more animals are terrorized, tortured, killed, and dis-assembled to support your bloody habit. Meat begins with violence; meals do not have to! What we eat affects our brains, bodies, consciousness, spirits, and emotions, as well as other animals and our Earth. The Standard American Diet is SAD and this SADness is unfortunately being globalized with tragic consequences. Be glad that you can choose plant-based meals!

Norm Phelps, the founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians, pleads: "Look into the heart of your religion's teachings on compassion, and look into your own heart, put aside your old habits and selfish appetites, and be honest with yourself. Animals are beings like us, sentient, conscious, and fully able to experience suffering and joy. They love life and fear death. And yet every year we murder them by the billions for food that we do not need to live long, healthy lives. Can we honestly call this holocaust anything but evil? There is no way that people of faith can be true to the deepest values of their religion and still eat animal products."

If we are rightly outraged at the abuse of cats and dogs, or horses and  elephants, we should be likewise outraged at the daily abuse, suffering, and murder of farm animals for food. Would you want someone to eat your beloved pet?

Teenager Isabella Hood tells us that "The main reason I became vegan was because I see all animals as my friends and I would not want to eat a pig, just as I would not want to eat a dog. Every animal is a living, breathing and feeling creature who doesn't want to die. I don't want to contribute to their deaths."

If we could feel their pain, empathize with their suffering, or share their joy, we would lose our appetites — and perhaps more.

Further, it has been shown that people who abuse animals often do not end their cruelty there. People who stop eating (and otherwise abusing) animals release themselves from tremendous psychic, karmic, spiritual, cognitive, and physical burdens, while releasing animals from cruel horrors and the Earth from further ecocide.

Even if some people try to create better lives for animals while they are alive, pray for them in life and death, kill them in a ritualistic way, say grace, make blessings over their meals, give gratitude for the animals they consume, etc., that does not save the life of the animals. As a human animal, I would not care for, and indeed would reject, any of these behaviors if a person killed me for their selfish desires. The moral test of whether you consider something humane is whether you would want it done to you.

Every action we take is a vote — an economic vote, a social vote, and a moral vote. Every time meat, poultry, or fish — and any other animal product — is purchased or consumed, it is a vote for that to continue, a vote for more innocent and defenseless animals to be commodified and killed, a vote for more trees to be cut down and more soil to erode, a vote for more wilderness to be encroached upon, a vote for the overuse of chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and fossil fuels, a vote for the poisoning of our air, land, and water, a vote for monocropping and monoculturalism, a vote for the overconsumption of a few and the exclusion of the many, a vote for force and violence.

"The old mantra 'You are what you eat' has taken a new turn: Today we know that what we eat also shapes our landscape, more so than any other human activity in history. A diet of corn-fed beef is a vote for a world dominated by genetically-engineered grain, factory feedlots, and toxic, nitrate-laden streams," writes Gary Paul Nabhan.

We are responsible for the logical consequences of the actions we take. Any willing participation in the meat production-and-consumption deathcycle also implies responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of that process.

Meat-eaters, regardless of their beliefs and intentions, effectively vote for continuing death and environmental destruction; plant-eaters vote for life, for sustainability, for justice, and for the Earth. Every action inspires others to act. When we engage in a destructive act, we encourage more destruction; when we act positively, we encourage and increase positivity in ourselves and in the world. One inspires another inspires another. How are we eating the Earth?

Human beings have for way too long acted with arrogance against other species and, in doing so, have abused our power, acting recklessly, selfishly, unfairly, and unjustly. The industrial production of meat is akin to bullying, physical and sexual assault, systematic torture, colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and genocide. Which side are you on?

"We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery", proclaims Gary Francione. "Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans; it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans — however 'humanely' we treat them."

Could eating animals also be considered a form of cannibalism? It is true that they are a different species, but cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and other mammals belong to the same class (mammalia) as humans and, further up the tree of life, chickens, turkeys, and fish belong to the same phylum (chordata) as humans. Depending on our level of analysis and our definition of the word, eating animals is a form of cannibalism.

"We should always be clear that animal exploitation is wrong because it involves speciesism", Gary Francione declares. "And speciesism is wrong because, like racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, classism, and all other forms of human discrimination, speciesism involves violence inflicted on members of the moral community where that infliction of violence cannot be morally justified. But that means that those of us who oppose speciesism necessarily oppose discrimination against humans. It makes no sense to say that speciesism is wrong because it is like racism (or any other form of discrimination) but that we do not have a position about racism. We do. We should be opposed to it and we should always be clear about that."

Meat has been described as a crime on our plate, a sin against nature, and a theft from the future. We know that killing living beings and destroying our environment is morally wrong, indeed dead wrong. We need to take the die out of our diets. The best way to protect all animals — whether livestock or wild — is to eat no animals.

Vegetarianism and veganism are excellent ways of putting moral, ethical, philosophical, ideological, and religious values into daily personal practice. Vegetarians and vegans save lives every day!

"The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400 animals

during [their] lifetime.

Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter."

Jim Motavalli, "So You're an Environmentalist; Why Are You Still Eating Meat?", E Magazine

"I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do....

I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom.

It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings."

Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers

[Cesar Chavez was vegetarian for many years and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta, who is vegetarian, told me he became vegan in his last year of life.]

"There is still slavery in the world. There is still a valuing of human beings according to their race or gender or culture or sexuality. Part of the reason for this cutting off of empathy is the anesthetizing of our senses to the suffering of animals. Once we grow callous, we cannot feel fully for anyone — not even for ourselves."

Gloria Steinem

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."

Alice Walker

"Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals —

have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.

A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret."

Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

"For as long as people massacre animals, they will kill each other."

Pythagoras

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different."

Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine"

"The time will come when people such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of people."

Leonardo da Vinci

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore."  
Franz Kafka, speaking to fish in an aquarium

"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute."

Charles Darwin, Descent of Man

"If a [person] aspires toward a righteous life, [their] first act of abstinence is from injury to animals."

Leo Tolstoy

"[People] can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if [they] eat meat, [they] participate in taking animal life merely for the sake of [their] appetite. And to act so is immoral."

Leo Tolstoy, On Civil Disobedience

"[They] will be regarded as a benefactor of [their] race who shall teach [humanity] to confine [itself] to a more innocent and wholesome diet.

Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals..."

Henry David Thoreau, "Higher Laws", Walden

"Kill the animals yourself — I mean with your own hands, without iron tools, without knives. Tear them apart with your nails, as do lions and bears. Bite this cow and rip him to pieces; plunge your claws into its skin. Eat this lamb alive; devour its still warm flesh; drink its soul with its blood. You shudder? You do not dare to feel living flesh palpitating in your teeth?"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau paraphrasing Plutarch

"People think of animals as if they were vegetables, and that is not right. I encourage the Tibetan people and all people to move toward a vegetarian diet that doesn't cause suffering.... We must absolutely promote vegetarianism."

14th Dalai Lama

"There is simply no spiritual defense in either the Western or Eastern religious traditions for eating meat."

Rabbi Marc Gellman, "The First Hamburger"

"Historically, man [sic] has expanded the reach of his ethical calculations, as ignorance and want have receded, first beyond family and tribe, later beyond religion, race, and nation. To bring other species more fully into the range of these decisions may seem unthinkable to moderate opinion now. One day... it may seem no more than what 'civilized' behavior requires."

"What Humans Owe to Animals", The Economist

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Mohandas Gandhi

"I wouldn't be in the least surprised if [society] moves toward vegetarianism and protection of animal rights. In fact, what we've seen over the years... is a widening of the moral realm, bringing in broader and broader domains of individuals who are regarded as moral agents."

Noam Chomsky

• 27. Animals, Intelligence, Emotions, & Rights:

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness — signed by cognitive scientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists, in the presence of Stephen Hawking — proclaims "support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are". The Declaration states: "The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors."

Animals have faces, families, fear, and other feelings, and are made of flesh and blood. Animals are important entities in their own right, individual living beings with moral and legal rights as well as physical and emotional feelings of pain and pleasure, intelligence and cognition, fear and excitement, stress and joy, altruism and love, and so on.

Just as with pet cats and dogs, rats and birds, hamsters and horses, and other companion animals, farm animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, sheep, goats, ducks, geese, rabbits, and others, as well as wild animals, have real and complex emotional lives — including feelings of pleasure, joy, love, fear, grief, altruism, and a range of others.

We also know that humans and other animals can develop strong emotional bonds with animals and strong emotions in reaction to them — and vice versa. In the words of Demara Jeanty, "Animals have feelings too. Animals feel pain just like people do. Animal suffering is no different than human suffering." Even the Animal Industry Foundation admits that "Animal behavior is as varied as human behavior."

Scientists, doctors, and psychologists such as Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Jeffrey Masson, Donald Griffin, Penny Patterson, Irene Pepperberg, as well as veterinarians, environmentalists, and others, have amply documented the intelligence and emotions of animals — as could millions of ordinary people with personal experience with animals. Peter Singer, Steven Wise, Catharine MacKinnon, Lee Hall, John Webster, and other lawyers, professors, philosophers, clergy, and ethicists have similarly argued and documented the rights of animals, in addition to their intelligence and emotions.

"Once you are prepared to admit that we humans are not the only beings on the planet with personalities, minds and, above all, emotions, and once you are prepared to admit that animals are sentient and can not only know emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, but especially they can feel pain", primatologist Jane Goodall pleads, "then, as humans with advanced reasoning powers, we have a responsibility to treat them in more humane ways than we so often do."

According to John J. Pippin, M.D., "92 percent of drugs that test successfully for animals fail in humans". Of the remaining 8%, according to the FDA, over half are later withdrawn or relabeled due to severe side effects. In a different but related sign of progress, all accredited medical schools in the U.S. and Canada no longer use any live animals for training. Animal testing is cruel, unnecessary, and often counterproductive.

Let's end the oppression, exploitation, and the suffering. Instead, let's start living together in peace.

"The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves — the animals."

John Stuart Mill, philosopher

"Many times I've looked into a pig's eye and convinced myself that inside that brain is a sentient being, who is looking back at me observing him wondering what he's thinking about."

Dick King-Smith, author

"Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain.

It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from."

Moby, musician

"When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins.

Perhaps then the ancient hope for a deeper emotional connection across the species barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized."

Jeffrey Masson, psychologist

• 28. Vegetarians, Vegans, Flexitarians, & Others:

Vegetarians can eat fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and may or may not eat (non-meat) animal products, such as eggs, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and honey; vegetarians do not eat any meat, poultry, fish, or other animals. This type of vegetarian is technically a lacto-ovo vegetarian, implying the inclusion of dairy and eggs (lacto-vegetarians will eat dairy, but not eggs; ovo-vegetarians will eat eggs, but not dairy).

The term vegetarian was coined at the first meeting of the Vegetarian Society in England in 1847. Contrary to a popular misconception, the word vegetarian was not chosen because a vegetarian diet includes vegetables as a major component, though it typically does; the term vegetarian is derived from the Latin word 'vegetus', which means lively or full of life.

Vegans — pronounced VEE-gun, with an emphasis on the first syllable of the long "e", or ē, followed by a hard "g", the word was coined by Donald Watson in 1944, when he formed the Vegan Society in England — go further by only eating plant-derived foods, thereby avoiding all food (and usually other products, such as leather, fur, feathers, silk, and wool) that are derived from animals. The aim for vegans is to avoid all forms of exploitation of animals, whether for food or otherwise, to reduce their suffering as much as possible.

The word vegan was derived from the word vegetarian by taking the first three letters (veg-) and the last two letters (-an) to show, as Donald Watson explained, that "veganism starts with vegetarianism and carries it through to its logical conclusion".

Accidental vegetarians or involuntary vegetarians are those who do not eat animals because it is too expensive, not available, inappropriate for some other reason, untraditional for that particular food, or for some other external, unintentional reason that prevents them from doing so.

A macrobiotic diet consists mostly of whole grains, beans, sea and other vegetables, and certain other plant foods in balance; fruitarians (or fructarians) only eat the fruit of plants; raw foodists only eat raw food (or food typically not heated above 116 F / 46.7 C) and are often, but not always, vegan (anopsology takes raw even further); freegans only eat discarded, found, or otherwise free food (freeganism is a combination of the words free and veganism); carnivores eat meat; and omnivores theoretically eat everything.

"Flexitarians" are mostly vegetarian, but occasionally eat animals, especially fish though also other animals. Pescetarians are otherwise vegans or vegetarians who also eat fish; ostrovegans, or bivalvegans, are vegans who eat oysters, clams, scallops, and/or other bivalves because these animals do not have central nervous systems; similarly, pollotarians are otherwise vegetarians who eat chicken and, in Australia, kangatarians are otherwise vegetarians who eat kangaroos. There are insectarians, as well.

Some flexitarians only avoid "red" meat (i.e., meat from mammals, such as beef, pork, lamb, etc.), yet regularly eat poultry and/or fish. Flexitarians and pescatarians are sometimes referred to as semi-vegetarians or demi-vegetarians. Flexitarians (coined in the early 1990s) are generally more concerned with their own health and convenience than with animals or the environment.

Reducetarians, or lessetarians, seek to radically reduce the amount of meat, and sometimes dairy and eggs, that they consume, while keeping them in their diet. Some people are "vegan before 6 PM", there are "weekday vegetarians" and "weekday vegans", some practice "Meatless Mondays", some are vegan for at least one meal a day, "99% vegans" are vegan but ignore trace ingredients, and so forth.

Perhaps a "flexegan" (or "vegetegan") would be one who is vegetarian and mostly vegan, but not exclusively, or one who is vegetarian and also avoids certain (non-meat) animal products (e.g., milk and eggs), but not others (e.g., cheese). Some have called this veganish.

Vegetarianism has a long, rich history. It has been consciously practiced in and around India, based on ahimsa (non-violence), for thousands of years, as well as in and around China and elsewhere. In Europe, vegetarians were often called Pythagoreans, as Pythagoras and his followers abstained from eating meat about 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece, as did Socrates, Plato, and many others. At various times in history, Indian vegetarianism has inspired western vegetarianism.

"Eat lower on the food chain."

50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth

"Modify your diet to include less meat."

Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, p. 317

"Most of [hu]mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near vegetarian diets."

American Dietetic Association

"Vegetarianism is a simple idea — don't eat animals — with an ancient pedigree."

Gregory Dicum

• 29. 23 Arguments Against Vegetarianism and Veganism? Not really. :

1. Humans are more important than animals, therefore human beings should come first.

Reality: Tragically, there is no shortage of suffering and it does not seem to be running out anytime soon. Many of those who say we should tend to people before we take care of animals often use this as an excuse to avoid taking any action in the defense of life and justice. Additionally, trying to protect the lives of animals certainly does not preclude us from trying to protect the lives of human beings. Indeed, vegetarians and vegans often do both.

2. Some animals kill others for food, therefore it's natural.

Reality: Although certain animals kill for food, others do not. In fact, there are more herbivorous (plant-eating) animals than there are carnivorous (meat-eating) ones. One of the important characteristics of humans is our consciousness and ability to make choices, rather than merely responding to instinct. Making positive, life-affirming choices is the essence of maturity, humanity, community, and civilization.

3. It's my tradition, therefore I feel comfortable with it.

Reality: We have many traditions, both old and new, as individuals, families, and cultures. Although traditions may be important, it is also important to recognize that some traditions are destructive, all traditions were new at one point, and that traditions often change over time. Our traditions regarding hygiene, medicine, work, the role of women, and child rearing, to name just a few, have changed dramatically over recent generations. Slavery was a tradition, too.

4. I don't feel well when I don't eat meat, therefore I need to eat meat to be healthy and happy.

Reality: Some people claim not to feel well when they don't eat meat. Sometimes the detoxification process can be the cause of this, sometimes it could be related to physical habit, it could be psychological, or it could simply be an excuse. We know that eating animals is not necessary and, in fact, studies show that vegetarians and vegans tend to be healthier than their meat-eating counterparts. Many vegetarians and vegans also report feeling more energetic, more at peace, and happier overall.

5. I can't get enough protein without meat, therefore I need to eat meat.

Reality: Despite the conventional myths and propaganda regarding protein, it is easy to get enough protein if you can get enough calories. Most people who are not desperately poor, and certainly most people in North America, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, and elsewhere, get more than enough calories and more than enough protein. In the U.S., for example, average Americans have about twice the FDA-recommended protein intake. All vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds, for example, have protein and most have sufficient protein. Even fruit has protein, albeit in small amounts. For most people, therefore, the problem is not too little protein (very few people have protein deficiency), but too much protein (very common), which is linked to a variety of health problems.

6. The food pyramid includes meat, therefore it's a good thing to eat.

Reality: The U.S. government food pyramid contains meat, but even there it suggests a sparing use. The government is influenced by our culture and traditions, as we are, but is also influenced by the powerful meat and dairy industries, which stand to profit by the continuation of the unhealthy status quo. As alternatives, there are vegetarian (no meat, poultry, or fish) and vegan (no animal products) food pyramids that are unbiased and more accurate for your health.

7. I like the taste of meat, therefore I keep eating it.

Reality: Simply trying to satisfy our individual tastes and desires, regardless of the impacts on others, has seemingly become a modern American (and increasingly global) ideal, but it is quite selfish. And tastes are usually just habits and habits can and do change over time. There are many possibilities that are open to us, even if they are legal, but that does not necessarily make them right. Caring for and about others, while caring for and about ourselves, can lead to true and lasting satisfaction.

8. Animals are lower than humans on the food chain, therefore animals are natural food for humans.

Reality: Especially for humans, neither the food chain itself nor the food choices we make are natural and unchangeable. As potential omnivores who were originally vegans, humans have choices in the foods we eat and there are no natural foods.

Indeed, what we eat is largely determined by our culture, government, corporations, and consciousness. Psychologist Melanie Joy refers to the ideology of "carnism", with its various defense mechanisms and unchallenged assumptions, which asserts that meat-eating is "natural", "normal", "necessary", and (sometimes) "nice" for certain classified animals. Once we recognize carnism, and then step out of it, we are more mentally free to think and eat for ourselves.

9. We're stronger than animals, therefore we should use them for our benefit.

Reality: While physical force may prevail, might does not make right. That's a form of fascism. Simply having the power to accomplish a task in no way makes the means or the ends fair, just, or honorable ones.

10. We have dominion over animals, therefore they are here for human pleasure.

Reality: It is not so much that we have dominion over animals, but that we share the Earth with them or, perhaps, have stewardship, guardianship, or trusteeship over them, or companionship with them, implying co-habitation and responsibility. Animals are not here for us to abuse or exploit, but rather to take care of, to commune with, giving each other companionship, friendship, and pleasure in mutually satisfying and non-exploitative relationships.

11. Modern humans evolved to eat meat, therefore we should continue to do so.

Reality: Early humans were the hunted, not the hunters, eating only plant-based foods. Avoiding predators, and also not being one, humans further developed their brains as well as their social and cultural techniques of socialization, cooperation, and innovation.

Whether back then or now, our claws, jaws, teeth, saliva, and intestines, for example, are not designed for meat consumption. Humans are natural herbivores with the capacity to be omnivores; we are certainly not carnivores. Only after the discovery of fire was meat eating even possible. While many people and cultures have incorporated meat into their diets, it is still not part of our physiology, biology, genetics, or origins to eat to meat.

12. It's always been this way, therefore it will always be this way.

Reality: Not only hasn't it always been this way (quite the contrary), but it is not even completely this way now. People and cultures are variable and adaptable. Large numbers of people in India, for example, have been vegetarian for thousands of years. Although it is clearly possible for us to eat meat, it is also clearly not necessary, so it's a choice we make. Additionally, it is unhealthy for people, animals, and the environment.

13. If I don't eat meat, someone else will, therefore I might as well.

Reality: If you eat meat, more animals are confined, terrorized, tortured, and killed to support your habit. If you don't eat meat, you depress demand for that bloody industry. It's as simple as that. Your actions do make a difference.

14. If we don't eat animals, we'll be overrun with them, therefore we need to eat meat to keep their numbers in check.

Reality: This argument reverses the causal connection. There are a lot of certain animals because they are raised for meat and people eat them. If there were less demand for meat, there would be fewer cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, goats, and sheep. People don't typically eat lions, tigers, rhinos, hippos, zebra, giraffe, elephants, gorillas, polar bears, and other large mammals and we are certainly not overrun with them; quite the contrary, many of these animals are severely threatened and endangered.

15. If we didn't eat animals, or if we let them, animals would eat us, so we should eat them first.

Reality: This fear-centered misreading of animals and evolution does not comport with history, biology, zoology, or reality. We will never be the next meal of the herbivorous cows and pigs, for example.

16. Hitler was a vegetarian, so vegetarians have no moral standing.

Reality: Hitler was not a vegetarian. Hitler occasionally refrained from or decreased his consumption of meat when he was ill, but he normally ate various types of meats. Nazi Minister of Propaganda Goebbels spread the lie that Hitler was vegetarian as Nazi propaganda to make Hitler seem more ascetic and selfless. Rynn Berry has written the definitive book on the subject called Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover.

Of course, even if Hitler had been vegetarian or vegan, as some Nazis were, it should not make any difference, just as it does not make any difference whether or not Hitler loved his mother, drank water or wine, listened to and liked music, took good care of his dog, etc. There is no fascist connection to vegetarianism.

If we are looking for famous vegetarians and vegans, though, we could name Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Seneca, Buddha, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, John Milton, Benjamin Franklin, Johnny Appleseed, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, Sylvester Graham, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Schweitzer, Clara Barton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, John Harvey Kellogg, H.G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Upton Sinclair, Thomas Edison, Vincent Van Gogh, Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Coretta Scott King and Dexter Scott King, Rosa Parks, Bob Marley and Ziggy Marley, Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney, Princess Diana, the Dalai Lama, Alice Walker, Gloria Steinem, Benjamin Spock, John Rawls, Angela Davis, Fred Rogers, Carl Sagan, Leonard Nimoy and his character Mr. Spock, Jane Goodall, Thich Nhat Hanh, Martina Navratilova, Carl Lewis, Ani DiFranco, Ellen DeGeneres, Natalie Portman, and many others. Maybe Jesus, too.

17. It's OK if the meat is kosher, halal, organic, free range, grass fed, humane, natural, local, from a small family farm, or certified in some way.

Reality: Who is it OK for? It is still not OK for personal health, still not OK for the slaughtered animals, still not OK for the environment. Kosher and halal standards presently only apply to the killing of the animals, not how those animals are raised and treated. Organic means no chemical inputs, but there is no consideration regarding the animals' lives or slaughter. Free range is often a myth, as it might only mean access to the outdoors; real free range, while giving animals more movement, also means the need for more land and the opportunity for more environmental degradation. Local and small farms, which also slaughter animals when they are young, are in the tiny minority, as 95-99% of meat in the U.S. is produced by factory farms. In any event, if many more people were to choose local or small-farm meat, then those small farms would necessarily have to grow or there would have to be a lot more meat farms. Neither of these possibilities would be desirable. Terms like humane and natural are completely unregulated and typically meaningless.

18. Animals don't feel pain or suffer, therefore it doesn't matter if they're raised for food.

Reality: Many studies show that animals do feel and can suffer; many people's personal experience with pets, such as cats and dogs, and other animals demonstrates this as well. Examinations of animal brains, nervous systems, nerve cells, and everyday behavior all evidence the reality of pain, pleasure, and other sensations. Further, it is increasingly clear that many animals experience various emotions, including emotional pain such as fear, anxiety, sorrow, grief, anguish, and terror, but also emotional pleasure and joy.

19. Agriculture also kills living beings, so it doesn't matter what you eat or do.

Reality: Although it is true that agriculture and other activities also kill living beings, it should be obvious that animal agriculture kills even more and does so purposely. Additionally, animal agriculture heavily relies on plant-based agriculture to feed the animals raised for meat. Clearly, it is a matter of intensity, both qualitative and quantitative, and the goal for vegetarians and vegans should be to do what is most healthy, most compassionate, and least destructive, causing the least possible damage to people, other animals, and our environment.

20. I don't want to eat "rabbit food", I want to eat a lot of different things.

Reality: It is true that vegetarians and vegans do not eat meat, but by not eating meat, they do not eat a smaller variety of food. In fact, most vegetarians and vegans eat a wider variety of foods than most meat eaters, tending to experiment with and enjoy all sorts of different fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds, including heirloom varieties and agricultural products from other countries and cultures.

21. I just like to eat meat, therefore I don't care about the consequences.

Reality: What can one say in the face of such crass selfishness? The great Jewish philosopher Hillel once asked: "If I am only for myself, what am I?" Honestly, not much.

22. People will always eat meat. It will never change, so why bother?

Reality: Here is an analogy by Karl Seff, Ph.D. who asks "Is  smoking like eating meat?": "There was a time when people who opposed smoking were viewed as antisocial and unreasonable. Then there was a time when they were viewed as technically correct but their cause was viewed as hopeless because nothing would ever change because smokers are addicts, young people fall into it, and the tobacco industry has the resources to protect itself fully. As of now lots of things have changed. There was once a time when vegetarians were viewed as odd and sickly. It was something that one would grow out of. Now we are viewed as technically correct, I find, and that we are respected, but our cause is viewed as having no chance of prevailing because people will never give up meat." And even that has been changing, as people become more aware, woke, and wise.

John McDougall, M.D. says that "Making meat eating a social disgrace in this generation, just as we did with cigarette smoking in the last generation, is a fundamental change that must take place in order to advance our society to the next level and ensure our personal survival."

23. Why shouldn't I eat meat and other animal products?

Reality: There are no rational reasons to eat meat, yet there are many rational reasons not to. Although there may be various self-serving rationalizations for eating other animals, there are no biological, genetic, moral, ethical, religious, philosophical, nutritional, or environmental reasons or benefits for humans to eat meat and other animal products. Each and all of the arguments against vegetarianism and veganism are ultimately without merit and fail.

• 30. Making the Switch!:

Going vegetarian or vegan is the best move you can make for your personal health, your spiritual health, public health, animal health, and our collective environmental health. "Diet — a choice we make every day, several times a day — determines the size of our environmental footprint", writes Lisa Kemmerer in Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice.

"There is a direct relationship between eating meat and the environment. Quite simply, you can't be a meat-eating environmentalist. Sorry folks."

Andrea Gordon, "If You Recycle, Why Are You Eating Meat?", American Jurist

Now is the time to make the switch! You will have the great satisfaction of better personal health, reducing your climate change footprint and methane mouthprint, saving rainforest, protecting animals, and having your diet better reflect your moral, philosophical, religious, spiritual, social, political, and environmental values. It feels good on so many levels!

Try eliminating — or at least sharply reducing — your consumption of meat, poultry, and fish, as well as dairy and eggs, replacing them with more fresh vegetables, fruit, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, and grains (preferably whole grains, such as whole wheat, brown rice, corn, oats, barley, and the less common amaranth, buckwheat, bulgur, kamut, millet, quinoa, red rice, rye, sorghum, spelt, sprouts, teff, triticale, wild rice, and others).

Buying organic products is also better for your health, your nutrition, the animals, our environment, and the health and safety of farmers, workers, birds, bees, bugs, and others. Eating locally and seasonally grown food, with lower-energy inputs, tends to be likewise beneficial (though not always).

If you would like to incorporate more of these healthy foods into your meals without biting off more than you can chew, or without going "cold tofurkey", try a more gradual approach by following these 12 tactics:

  1. Educate yourself, your family, and your friends on the many benefits of vegetarianism/veganism (get everyone involved!);

(2) Think of the veg meals you already eat and keep rotating those in. Also, think of the meals you make or eat that could easily be vegetarianized/veganized. Keep expanding your repertoire;

(3) Make an additional vegetarian or vegan meal at least once or twice a week. Be creative. You can find lots of delicious recipes in cookbooks and on vegetarian/vegan websites. As you adjust, gradually add more vegetarian and vegan dishes to your meals. If you are vegetarian but not yet vegan, shift away from dairy and eggs; if you are already vegan, shift more toward organics and locally-grown produce; if you do any of these, switch to more whole grains and less processed or unprocessed foods;

(4) In place of meat products, try plant-based alternatives. For nearly every animal product, there is a vegetarian/vegan version. For some people, finding successful substitutions is the key. Test out some of the varieties and try different brands to suit your tastes. Visit your natural foods store, the health sections of your grocery stores, and farmers markets to see what is available. You will find much more than just veggie burgers and tofu dogs. Soy products, for example, are varied and versatile, including such products as miso, soybeans (edamame), soy flour, soymilk, soy nuts, soy yogurt, tempeh, tofu, TVP, vegetable-based cheese, as well as the many meat substitutes (there are also various non-soy possibilities);

(5) If you continue to eat meat or fish, at least be sure it is certified organic, local, and also served in much smaller portions. One adult serving of meat, if served at all, should be no larger than a deck of cards. De-emphasize the meat you serve by including it in dishes that also contain vegetables and whole grains. As time goes by, decrease the amount of meat you include and increase the use of vegetables, grains, and beans. Michael Pollan's concise advice is appropriate here: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.";

(6) Start your own (organic) garden of fruits, vegetables, and/or herbs. People, including kids, are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables if they participate in growing them, and people are more likely to protect land if they have a stake in it;

(7) Shop at natural foods stores and farmers' markets and/or sign up to receive a weekly CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share;

(8) Subscribe to a vegetarian or vegan magazine, such as VegNews, Vegetarian Times, and Vegetarian Journal, go to or organize a vegetarian or vegan meetup or potluck, join a veg email listserv or social media group, and/or join a local or national vegetarian or vegan organization to keep up and learn more about the many benefits of vegetarianism/veganism, to stay inspired, to get great recipe ideas, to meet like-minded and compassionate people, to give and get support, and to feel more connected to a life-affirming community;

(9) Get a partner or "study buddy", as it is easier to stick with something when you are part of a group or team;

(10) Eat out at veg restaurants;

(11) Keep learning; and

(12) Congratulate yourself for making a healthy, sustainable, compassionate, and life-affirming choice and enjoy the new foods you eat and the new person you are becoming.

There is no need to feel guilty about what you eat or don't eat. Instead, there is a vital need for more self and social responsibility, for all of us to move in a positive direction — for us as well as for the animals and our environment. Remember that switching to vegetarianism/veganism is not about sacrificing anything; it is about joining with others to make positive choices aimed at improving our personal well-being, saving the lives of animals, and protecting our environment that we all share and depend upon.

The Journal of the American Public Health Association editorialized in 2007 what was clear to them: "It is curious that changing the way humans treat animals — most basically ceasing to eat them, or at the very least radically limiting the quantity of them that is eaten — is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or enforced, however, even at this late stage, could still reduce the likelihood of the much-feared influenza pandemic. It would even more likely prevent unknown future diseases that, in the absence of the change, may result from farming animals intensively and killing them for food. Yet humanity does not even seem to consider this option. We don't tend to shore up the levees until after the disaster."

Vegetarianism and veganism are literally about life and death — for each of us individually and for all of us together. Eating animals simultaneously contributes to: the suffering and death of animals; the ill-health, disease, and early death of people; the unsustainable overuse of fossil fuels, water, land, topsoil, grain, labor, and other vital resources; environmental destruction, including deforestation, species extinction, mono-cropping, and climate change; the legitimacy of force and violence; the exploitation of workers; 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 and veganism are antidotes to all of these unnecessary tragedies. It's as simple as this: delete meat!

"Meat-eating is now a looming problem for humankind."

Editors, World Watch, July/August 2004

"If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty."

Paul McCartney

"The best way to save the planet? Drop meat and dairy."

George Monbiot, The Guardian

"By making a simple change in the way you eat, you are taking part in a world changing campaign where what's good for you is also good for the planet."

Paul McCartney

"Give vegetarianism a try... and you'll get a spring in your step,

a glow in your cheeks, and a lighter, brighter you."

Alicia Silverstone

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Mohandas Gandhi

Vegetarians and vegans live more sustainably and are therefore part of the solution, not the problem. Eating plants reconnects people to nature, grounds them in the Earth, roots us to what is meaningful and vital.

As Victoria Moran hopes, "a largely vegan world might not be heaven on Earth, [yet] it's our best shot at life on Earth, and that is really enough."

Your meat eating made sense based on what you were shown and told, based on what your family and friends ate and fed you, based on what the government recommended and the society encouraged, and based on the misinformation we were all given about meat, health, nutrition, compassion, ecology, etc. But now, times are different and we know better, not simply because we have new facts, but also because we have a new understanding and new feelings.

Kicking the meat habit is the most effective way for us to save the Earth, save the animals, and save ourselves and our families. Eating the Earth does not have to mean destroying it, animals, and ourselves. Eating the Earth can mean eating what grows from our beautiful planet.

Let's eat and thrive together!

Dan Brook, PhD teaches sociology at San Jose State University, where he is the Faculty Advisor for the Spartan Veg Club, and is a Board member of San Francisco Veg Society, an Advisory Board member of Jewish Veg, an Administrator of Veg Chiang Mai (on Facebook), editor of the non-profit veg cookbook Justice in the Kitchen, and enjoys healthy eating.

