Top 10 Reasons to Go Vegan in the New Year

Many people's New Year's resolutions often include losing weight, eating better, getting healthier, and doing more to make the world a better place. You can accomplish all these goals by switching to a vegan diet, and you'll enjoy delicious, satisfying meals as well. Here are our top 10 reasons to go vegan this year:

1. SLIM DOWN AND BECOME ENERGIZED
Is shedding some extra pounds first on your list of goals for the new year? Vegans are, on average, up to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters. And unlike unhealthy fad diets, which leave you feeling tired (and usually result in gaining all the weight back eventually), going vegan is the healthy way to keep the excess fat off for good while feeling full of energy.

2. IT'S THE BEST WAY TO HELP ANIMALS
Every vegan saves more than 100 animals a year from horrible abuse. There is simply no easier way to help so many animals and prevent so much suffering than by choosing vegan foods over meat, eggs, and dairy products.

3. A HEALTHIER, HAPPIER YOU
A vegan diet is great for your health! According to the American Dietetic Association, vegans are less likely to develop heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or high blood pressure than meat-eaters are. Vegans get all the nutrients they need to be healthy (e.g., plant protein, fiber, minerals, etc.) without all the nasty stuff in meat that slows you down and makes you sick, such as cholesterol and saturated animal fat.

4. VEGAN FOOD IS DELICIOUS
So you're worried that if you go vegan, you'll have to give up hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, and ice cream? You won't. As the demand for vegan food skyrockets, companies are coming out with more and more delicious meat and dairy product alternatives that taste like the real thing but are much healthier and don't hurt any animals. Plus, we have a list of some of our favorite products and thousands of tasty kitchen-tested recipes to help you get started!

5. MEAT IS GROSS
It's disgusting but true: Meat is often contaminated with feces, blood, and other bodily fluids—all of which make animal products the top source of food poisoning in the United States. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tested supermarket chicken flesh and found that 96 percent of Tyson chicken was contaminated with campylobacter, a dangerous bacteria that causes 2.4 million cases of food poisoning each year, resulting in diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever.

6. HELP FEED THE WORLD
Eating meat doesn't just hurt animals—it hurts people too. It takes tons of crops and water to raise farmed animals. In fact, it takes up to 13 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh! All that plant food could be used much more efficiently if it were fed directly to people. The more people who go vegan, the more we can feed the hungry.

7. SAVE THE PLANET
Eating meat is one of the worst things that you can do for the Earth. It's wasteful, it causes enormous amounts of pollution, and the meat industry is one of the biggest causes of climate change. Adopting a vegan diet is more important than switching to a "greener" car in the fight against climate change.

8. ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING IT
The list of stars who shun animal flesh is basically a "who's who" of today's hottest celebs. Joaquin Phoenix, Natalie Portman, Tobey McGuire, Shania Twain, Alicia Silverstone, Anthony Kiedis, Casey Affleck, Kristen Bell, INXS lead singer J.D. Fortune, Benji Madden, Alyssa Milano, Common, Joss Stone, Anne Hathaway, and Carrie Underwood are just a handful of famous vegans and vegetarians who regularly appear in People magazine.

9. LOOK SEXY AND BE SEXY
Vegans tend to be thinner than meat-eaters and have more energy, which is perfect for late-night romps with your special someone. (Guys: The cholesterol and saturated animal fat found in meat, eggs, and dairy products don't just clog the arteries to your heart. Over time, they impede blood flow to other vital organs as well.) Plus, what's sexier than someone who is not only mega-hot but also compassionate?

10.  PIGS ARE SMARTER THAN YOUR DOG
While most people are less familiar with pigs, chickens, fish, and cows than they are with dogs and cats, animals used for food are every bit as intelligent and able to suffer as the animals who share our homes are. Pigs can learn to play video games, and chickens are so smart that their intelligence has been compared by scientists to that of monkeys.

Source : PETA.org

UN Urges Global Move to Meat and Dairy-free Diet

Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says

An cattle ranch in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The UN says agriculture is on a par with
fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth.

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said.

Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."

Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found.

Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UNEP, said: "Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation."

The panel, which drew on numerous studies including the Millennium ecosystem assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for governments around the world: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, over-exploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational exposure to particulate matter.

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday.

Last year the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said that food production would have to increase globally by 70% by 2050 to feed the world's surging population. The panel says that efficiency gains in agriculture will be overwhelmed by the expected population growth.

Prof Hertwich, who is also the director of the industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that developing countries – where much of this population growth will take place – must not follow the western world's pattern of increasing consumption: "Developing countries should not follow our model. But it's up to us to develop the technologies in, say, renewable energy or irrigation methods."

Source : The Guardian

Eat Less Meat to Save the Planet - UN

The world needs to change to a more vegetarian diet to stand a chance of tackling climate change, according to a major new United Nations report.

The group of international scientists said the greatest cause of greenhouse gas emissions is food production and the use of fossil fuels.

But while the use of coal and oil could be gradually replaced by renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the world will always need to eat.

As the world population increases it is feared that the production of food will become the main cause of climate change and environmental degradation.

The International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management pointed out that agricultural production accounts for 70 per cent of global freshwater production, 38 per cent of land use and 19 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

The report, that will be presented to world governments, said the only way to feed the world while reducing climate change is to switch to more a more vegetarian diet.

"A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change," it read.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, said ordinary consumers can help fight climate change by eating less meat.

"The Panel have reviewed all the available science and conclude that two broad areas are currently having a disproportionately high impact on people and the planet's life support systems—these are energy in the form of fossil fuels and agriculture, especially the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products," he said.

Mr Steiner said governments could encourage people to eat less meat by reforming the system of taxes and subsidies so vegetarian food is cheaper.

"Smart market mechanisms, more intelligent fiscal policies and creative policy-making are among the options for internalising the costs of unsustainable patterns. Some tough choices are signalled in this report, but it may prove even more challenging for everyone if the current paths continue into the coming decades," he added.

Lord Stern of Brentford, the author of the influential Stern Review that first argued for economic measures to fight climate change, also believes the world needs to eat less meat.

He has already warned that the price of meat and other "carbon intensive" goods will need to go up to fight climate change.

Source : The Telegraph

Vegetarian for Our Earth – Eating Meat Contributes to Air and Water Pollution

Feces runoff from factory farms often pollute local groundwater.

Factory farms produce run-off that pollutes our streams and rivers, endangering not only the water supply for humans but also harming delicate eco-systems.

A U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee report concluded, "The threat of pollution from intensive livestock and poultry farms is a national problem." ^[1]

According to the EPA, over 200 manure discharges and spills from U.S. animal farms between 1990 and 1997 have killed more than a billion fish.^[2] Animal feedlots can contaminate nearby well water with high levels of nitrates, which have been linked to miscarriages in humans as well as "blue baby" syndrome in infants.^[3]

Manure lagoons and spray fields from animal agriculture also pollute the air by emitting ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide.

According to a May 2003 article in the New York Times, "Around industrial hog farms across the country, people say their sickness rolls in with the wind. It brings headaches that do not go away and trips to the emergency room for children whose lungs suddenly close up. People young and old have become familiar with inhalers, nebulizers and oxygen tanks. They complain of diarrhea, nosebleeds, earaches and lung burns."

The article goes on to describe how air pollution from hog farms appears to have caused permanent brain damage in nearby residents.^[4]

Consider This
Amount of farmed animal manure produced in the United States: 
five tons of waste for every person

References

1. Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem, Minority Staff of Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, 104th Congress, Dec. 1997.
2. U.S. EPA. (2001, Jan.). EPA-821-B-01-001.
3. Center For Disease Control. (July 5, 1996). Abortions Possibly Related to Ingestion of Nitrate-Contaminated Well Water. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, Report 26 , pp. 569-571.
4. N.Y. Times. (2003, May 11). Neighbors of vast hog farms say foul air endangers their health.

References for "Consider This" section:
Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem, Minority Staff of Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, 104th Congress, Dec. 1997.

Eating Habits Must Change to Cut Emissions – WWF

BRITISH eating habits contribute far more to global warming than originally thought, a new study has warned.

A comprehensive investigation into UK food chain emissions, published by the WWF and Food Climate Research Network this week, found food consumption accounted for 20 per cent of total UK gas emissions.

But when land-use changes were taken into account, this figure rose to 30 per cent, it said.

The new report – How Low Can We Go – concluded that if the UK was to cut emissions by 70 per cent by 2050 the food chain would have to improve its productive efficiency and switch to non-carbon fuels. 
Controversially it also said Britons would have to substitute meat and dairy consumption with more cereals and vegetables.   

Mark Driscoll, head of WWF-UK’s One Planet Food programme said: “The full impact of our diets on climate change is astonishingly high – this report shows that.”

The report revealed a reduction in meat consumption would ease land pressures by substantially reducing the acreage needed to grow animal feed.

It also criticized livestock production abroad where an area of forest equivalent to half of England is cleared every year to make room for bigger ranches.

And in the UK it said livestock farming accounted for 57 per cent of agricultural emissions.

The report has heaped further pressure on Defra to back a reduction in livestock numbers after similar conclusions were reached in a Department of Health report last November.

The health report engendered wide-spread condemnation from farmers at the time and led to a fire-fighting exercise from Jim Fitzpatrick, Farm Minister, who backed British producers.

So far Defra has continued to back the industry. A spokesman for the Department agreed emissions associated with meat consumption should be reduced but said this could be done at a farmer level.

“We are working with farming organizations on a roadmap for reducing emissions from agriculture, which will be published this year.

“Many sectors, including the dairy, beef, lamb and pork sectors, are already working on plans to reduce their environmental impact,” said the spokesman, adding livestock played an important role in sustaining the British landscape.

Jim Begg, director general of Dairy UK, went one step further. He said the WWF was irresponsible to encourage livestock farmers to slash output when the world population was on the rise.

“Processors, retailers and dairy farmers are quietly making progress towards targets that will see a major reduction in emissions through more efficient handling of slurry, eliminating waste to landfill and using more recycled plastic in milk bottles.

“This is where the true greenhouse gas savings are being made,” he said.

Source : Farmers Guardian