Collegiate Times

Great piece, especially in the recommendation to cut back on meat consumption. Mark Bitten who writes the Minimalist column in the NY Times wrote a great piece called "Putting Meat in its Place," on using meat but at smaller quantities and not as the centerpiece of every meal. There are a lot of ways to eat a more plant-based diet and still enjoy eating. Bernard Brown Director, PB&J Campaign http://www.pbjcampaign.org

The green/environmentalist movement is just an attack on our civil liberties and freedoms.

GO VEGAN... YES YOU GET ALL THE NUTRIENTS YOU NEED FROM A PLANT BASED DIET INCLUDING PROTEIN. YEAH IT IS A LIFE CHANGE BUT IT MAKES SENSE. DON'T BE SELFISH AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THIS WORLD AND FOR OUR FUTURE KIDS. THE WORLD IS NOT YOURS IT IS EVERYONES. SO YOUR MEAT EATING AFFECTS ALL OF US. THAT IS A FACT. WATCH "EARLTHINGS." GOOGLE VIDEO AND READ "THE CHINA STUDY" (THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK YOU WILL EVER READ)

Or perhaps we can eat meat the way we should be eating it anyway - locally raised, eating local plants/grasses. You knock out most of the greenhouse gas consumption by feeding your livestock what they'd be eating naturally in the area, and it also gets to my table fresher and tastes better without all the cross-country shipping going on anyway. The green/environmentalist movement is well-intentioned and necessary (unlike what the last poster claims), and eating meat the way we should be eating meat would be a great start towards being more environmentally friendly and healthier.

FU HIPPIES

Where did you get the info that meat production causes more greenhouse gas than transportation, my father is an owner of one of the largest meat producing companies in the US and i can assure you thats not true, i know for a fact

I agree, this is a great and very informative article. The facts about meat consumption are shocking but true - I only came to learn about them recently when I started working for Meatless Monday, a non-profit public health campaign. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, going meatless one day a week will be a tremendous help, as this article states. You’ll be lowering your risk of heart disease as well. If you go to www.meatlessmonday.com/recipearchive you can find a ton of great meatless recipe ideas. Also – for the person who commented on sources – check out the U.N. FAO report published in 2006 called Livestocks Long Shadow. You can download the report there and see the facts firsthand. (http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm)

Save a Plant! Eat a Vegan!

Seeing as how there was a recent article stating that scientific studies in Britain showed that vegetarians and vegans had large amounts of brain loss akin to drinking or drug use, while meat-eaters did not show such declines in brain mass, do we really think that's a good way to go? I sure don't. But I do think the best alternative is to eat locally raised produce and livestock to cut down on total impacts as much as possible and to do everything in moderation. Too much or too little of anything can be harmful...we need balance.

My family own one of hte largest cow-calf operations in the US, but I can assure you the facts are correct. The irony of this is that the main report Ms. Pinkston cites, Livestock's Long Shadow which found the livestock industry creates more emissions than transportation, was financed by the meat industry as a means for the meat industry to understand it's carbon footprint and improve it. Dr. Henning Steinfeld, who is in the Livestock group at the UN's Food and Agriculture organization (and the lead author of the report) explained this at a panel discussion put on by Compassion in World Farming in the UK last week, along with Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the UN IPCC. The event was filmed by Supreme Master Television. A friend of mine who conducted the interview spoke with Dr. Pachauri afterwards who said that many scientists had contacted him to tell him the figure is actually much higher than this.

Eating vegan is also 7 times more efficient than eating locally grown food. A report by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University found that in the US diet meat (chicken, red meat, fish), eggs and dairy are responsible for 68 percent of the emissions put out by the US diet. They also found that eating a vegan diet ONE DAY per week was more efficient than eating a locally grown diet all year. The name of the report is "Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States."

Vegan diets are also more healthy than meat diets. Regarding the study in the UK finding brains were smaller, this has to do with people who have not had enough B12. It is simple to supplement. The American Dietetics Association and the Dietitians of Canada have put out several position papers on Vegetarian diets concluding they meet all nutritional needs through out all stages of the human lifecycle (pregnancy, baby, toddler, adult, etc). They also found that vegetarians and vegans live longer than meat eaters and are healthier -- based upon an analysis of over 250 studies. The lastest positon paper is from 2003, there are also several earlier ones. Finally a UK study reported last year found that children with higher IQ's were much more likely to be vegetarian later in life, and there is a higher than average population of vegetarians belonging to Mensa.

What you left out is the fact that most vegans are obnoxious, self-righteous people who treat people who believe differently than they do as evil people whose behavior must be changed. Hey - if you wanna eat dandelions and egg plant knock yourself out but leave me alone as I cut into my beautiful rare steak.

To Anonymous: How do you know this? Do you poll everyone that doesn't look like walking death to find out if they eat meat? I know several healthy vegans and several malnourished vegans. The same can be said for omnivores.

Yes Jason, I do.

or, go vegetarian. Or better yet, vegan. (finish your thought)

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