5 Reasons to Eat Less Meat

People are eating more meat than ever, but how does meat production impact the environment?

Even as we struggle with a shaky economy, were seeing more meat consumption worldwide. This is partly because more people in developing countries are eating meat. As food prices rise, another worrisome trend in meat consumption is that people are consuming cheaper cuts of meat. That tends to mean meat from factory farms and low-quality meats that are more unhealthy than their leaner counterparts.

We know that too much meat is unhealthy for your body, but it turns out that producing the meat you eat isnt so hot for the planet, either. Here are just a few of the environmental impacts of eating meat:

  • Efficiency. Rather than directly eating beans and grains, we have to grow these plants to feed to livestock, which uses more land, more water, and more fossil fuels.
  • Deforestation. All of those animals have to live somewhere, and when farmers need more land to raise livestock they sometimes do so at the detriment of forests. In fact, a 2009 study found that 80 percent of Amazon deforestation was linked to raising cows.
  • Antibiotic resistance. Factory farming operations rely heavily on antibiotics to keep their animals healthy and help them produce more meat per animal. This antibiotic abuse is already breeding antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.
  • Water pollution. Factory farming methods are notorious for water poll! ution. A ccording to the NRDC, these concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can produce as much sewage waste as a small city!
  • Fossil fuels. Conventional agriculture in general is very fossil-fuel intensive, and meat production is incredibly wasteful. It takes eight times the fossil fuels to produce meat than to produce plant-based proteins, like beans and corn.

    • Opting for meat from smaller-scale, non-industrial farms can help mitigate some of the problems above. Ditching the CAFO meat means paying more, and a good way to mitigate the increased cost is to eat less meat or even cut it out of your diet all together. I know that giving meat up completely isnt for everyone, but even replacing a few meals a week with meatless ones can make a difference! If you are looking to cut back or cut out the meat, check out some of these vegan cooking tips for beginners to help get you started. A couple of good vegan or vegetarian cookbooks can be a big help in transitioning to a less meat-intensive diet, too!

    Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Ian Mynard

    Related:
    The Staggering Impact of Meat Production
    Factory Farming 101
    10 Delicious Vegetarian Recipes

    Becky Str! iepe is a green blogger and independent crafter with a passion for vintage fabrics.She runs a crafty business, Glue and Glitter, where her mission is to use existing materials in products that help folks reduce their impact without sacrificing style!She specializes in aprons and custom lunch bags. Like this article?You can follow Becky on Twitter or find her on Facebook!

    Popular posts from this blog

    15 New Uses for Your Hair Dryer

    Image
    Hand held hair dryers were introduced for the domestic market in 1920, and since then countless hairdos have relied on that combination of heat and air to achieve their coiffed perfection. But the humble blow dryer has plenty of other services to offer around the househere are a handful of them:1. If you need to quickly set the icing on a cake, the air and heat of a hair dryer can quicken up the process.2. If your cake wont unstick from the cake pan, use your hair dryer on the bottom of the pan then invert it, it should drop right out.3. Running an ice cream scoop under hot water helps, but you can also try using a hair dryer on the carton to soften ice cream for easy scooping.4. Some people use pots of boiling water to quicken freezer defrosting, a hot hair dryer works even more quickly. (Be careful of puddles of water and the dryer, though.)5. Automatic ice-makers can get jammed with frozen ice, relieve that with a long blast of hot air to melt unwanted icebergs. <...
    Keep reading

    4 Things You Should Know About Yoga

    Image
    Whether you read about Jennifer Aniston crediting yoga for her hotness (yes, that really happened) or you heard about all the fun yoga and musical festivals that are sprouting up this summer, theres no denying that yoga is becoming more and popular across America. So if youre thinking about walking into your first yoga class, here are a few tips. 1. Get familiar with the poses . Before you walk into your class, Id definitely recommend getting familiar with the different poses so you wont be constantly looking at the person in front of you or next to you as you move through class (which you might be doing anyway). Check out our yoga poses for beginners library so you become somewhat familiar with the different poses before you walk into class. Itll definitely make you feel a bit more comfortable. 2. Shop around. There are many different styles of yoga in some styles youll move more and in other styles youll hold poses for a longer period of time. But its pretty safe to say, that theres...
    Keep reading

    10 Things Your Skin Says About Your Health

    Image
    By Paula Spencer, Caring.com senior editorIf skin were merely a sausage casing for the rest of you, it wouldnt be nearly so useful. An organ itself (your bodys largest in terms of both weight and surface area), skin protects against invasive bacteria, regulates body temperature, and picks up information from the stimulation of touch, pressure, pain, heat, and cold. Little wonder, then, that when theres something wrong with you on the inside, your skin sometimes sends up the first warning flare.Diabetes, for example, is generally a silent disease, but it can lead to distinct changes to the skin. So the skin may in fact be the first indicator of whats happening, notes dermatologist Amy Newburger, MD, of Scarsdale, New York, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Dermatology.Heres the skinny on ten dermatologic oddities worth watching for in yourself or someone you love. 1. Red flag: Yellowish skin, orange palms and soles What it means: The cartoonish skin hues of carotenemia can be t...
    Keep reading