You say "moo" I say "booo!"

Thus far on our still-fledgling blog, the question of “why eat vegetarian?” hasn’t been explicitly addressed. Let me remedy that. Of the myriad reasons to eat a plant-based diet, “animal rights,” thanks to groups like PETA, has been the most highly publicized. Touching though the argument may be, the environmental and nutritional reasons to abstain from meat are far more relevant to a much larger demographic (basically everyone except PETA head-honchos and slaughterhouse workers).

A vegetarian diet low in processed foods uses much less land and many fewer resources than a diet that includes meat. Consider first the undeniably large amount of land, water, and labor that goes into producing a crop of any plant. Then imagine feeding all of that crop to cattle which need their own land, water, and care, in addition to the crop we just fed them. By now, the cattle have become an expensive investment; in essence, we’ve grown food to feed to more food. Cattle (or any livestock) aren’t only an expensive investment;they are an investment that returns only 10% of the input. Get it now? We’ve grown all this food, only to ultimately consume 10% of its original yield.

In the simplest economic terms, this is a nonsensical practice. Some will argue that meat is worth more than plant-food; I argue that worth is a relative term. A pound of corn no doubt brings the farmer less money than a pound of beef, but we forget to include all of the externalities associated with beef or any other meat. A short comparison of the negative environmental side effects of growing a plant crop versus livestock: plant crops use copious amounts of water and industrial fertilizers, which cause runoff that pollutes rivers and lakes. Raising livestock in crowded feedlots—themselves breeding grounds for disease—magnifies all these effects, and then goes on to additionally create massive amounts of excrement that pollute waterways.

Obviously any diet one chooses to follow has its costs, but we have to eat, right?! Many of the negative aspects of vegetarian and omnivorous diets can be minimized by eating organic and local produce or (if you must eat meat) grass-fed animal products. If I haven’t just guilted you into becoming a vegetarian for the environmental reasons, check back for the (scarily) compelling nutritional reasons to make the switch.

~Grace