veg*ns in WNY (original) (raw)

The Energy Shortage

* 1/3 of the all raw materials consumed in this country goes toward meat, egg, and dairy production.
* The animal-based American diet is so inefficient, that it turns out that it is actually more energy-efficient to drive than walk. So much fossil fuel goes into producing the meat we eat, and so few calories result from it, that putting the gas directly into your car, assuming it gets 24 or more miles to the gallon, is more efficient than eating animal products and walking
* Grain, vegetable, and fruit production requires less than 5% of the raw materials that animal products require.

Pollution

* America's livestock population produces twenty times as much excrement as its human one. Animals produce 250,000 pounds of excrement per second, half of which can in no way be recycled.
* Cattle ranchers destroy tropical rainforests to provide grazing land for cattle, to in turn provide beef for Americans to eat. At the current rate of destruction, all of Central America's tropical rainforests will be gone in less than 40 years. Since 1 967, we have cannibalized one acre of forest every second. At that rate of destruction, America will have no forests in 40 years.

Health

* According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of heart attacks.
* Studies have shown a direct correlation between meat consumption and colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer and lung cancer. Every 55 seconds another American succumbs to cancer.
* Colon cancer: meat and animal products rotting in the intestine release carcinogenic toxins, which cause the cancer.
* Breast cancer: high levels of estrogen and dioxin (a pesticide which acts like estrogen in the body) in animal products, overstimulates breast cells and eventually sets off the uncontrolled growth that is cancer.

All data taken from Diet for a New America by John Robbins.

YAY!!!