Eco Tuesday: Vegetarian & Vegan

Besides the health factor, vegetarians and vegans play a part in the environment. Many people live a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle for the health benefits, to lose weight but there are ecological reasons as well.

As per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism

According to a 2006 United Nations initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for food contributes on a “massive scale” to deforestation[2], air and water pollution, land degradation, loss of topsoil, climate change[3], the overuse of resources including oil and water, and loss of biodiversity. The initiative concluded that “the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”[4]

Animals fed on grain need more water than grain crops.[5] In tracking food animal production from the feed through to the dinner table, the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from a 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1.[6] The result is that producing animal-based food is typically much less efficient than the harvesting of grains, vegetables, legumes, seeds and fruits.

The environmental impacts of animal production vary with the method of production. A Grazing-based production can limit soil erosion and also allow farmers to control pest problems with less pesticides through rotating crops with grass. In arid areas, however, it may as well catalyze a desertification process.

According to VegSoc.org:
Farmed animals produce more greenhouse gas emissions (18%) than the world’s entire transport system (13.5%).
Nitrous oxide is almost 300 times as damaging to the climate as carbon dioxide (CO2) and 65% of the quantity generated by human activity comes from livestock (mostly their manure). The digestive systems of farmed cows and sheep are also responsible for 37% of the total methane generated by human activity; this gas has 23 times the global warming impact of CO2. The animals we rear for meat also account for 64% of all the ammonia that humans impose on our precious atmosphere, contributing significantly to acid rain.

vegetarian ~
diet would typically not include meat, fish, fowl, eggs, diary.
However; there are various levels of vegetarianism.

vegan ~
By definition, a vegan (most commonly pronounced VEE-gun) is a person who does not eat animal products, including meat, fish, seafood, eggs, and dairy. But veganism is more about what people choose than about what they avoid. For example, vegans demonstrate respect for all life — their own, the planet’s, and the animals’ — not only by eating plant-based foods, but also by choosing nonfood items (such as non leather shoes, wool, silk, honey, beeswax) that are produced without animal byproducts. Many vegans also go out of their way to choose cosmetics and personal care items that do not contain animal byproducts and are not tested on animals.

If you’re interested in raw lifestyle, there’s an event called “The Rawkathon.” which is a collection of candid, one-on-one interviews with 15 of the top raw and living food experts on the planet and it will be broadcast for you to watch or listen to in a few short weeks.

If you’re already living a raw lifestyle and want to have some fun, click on the banner below to take part in the raw games!