How Eating Less Beef Helps the Environment

I've been a vegetarian for nearly 7 years. Before 2003, I always thought about going vegetarian, but a conversation with a friend about mad cow disease and all the steroids and other scary chemicals and pollutants that end up in our meat and seafood prompted me to go all the way. In other words, I don't eat beef, poultry or seafood. Basically, I don't eat anything with a face.

Since high school, I had limited the amount of red meat I eat because heart disease and cancer run in my family. When I decided to become a vegetarian, it was easy to eliminate meat from my diet altogether since I hadn't been eating much. Many people ask me if I felt different -- healthier. I have to admit I didn't feel different, but that is probably because I wasn't eating much in the first place. I felt more of a difference when I stopped drinking diet Coke. But that is the topic for another blog...

When I became a vegetarian, I had no idea I was being green. A few years later, I saw the following statistic from World Watch Institute at Great Sage -- one of my favorite vegetarian/vegan/green restaurants which is in Clarksville, Maryland. The statistic was:

It takes 25 gallons of water to make 1 pound of wheat
and 2,500 gallons of water to make 1 pound of meat

Scary stuff. To learn more about how beef impacts the environment, watch this brief (6:47) video which is a trailer to the film "The Secret Life of Beef". I bet it has an impact on you.

If you are a regular meat eater, trying having a Meatless Monday. Or perhaps a Meatless Thursday. The generations who come after us will thank you.