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Go Veggie 1 Day A Week
Beyond being a solid source of a full spectrum of good stuff—vitamins, nutrients, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients—a plant-based diet requires a lot less energy and water to produce than a meat-based diet. Meat is the least-energy-efficient food on the planet and requires a serious amount of water, and is a major polluter. Beef requires 35 calories of energy for every 1 calorie it provides. That doesn't sound like a very good investment—imagine someone asking you to invest $35 for a $1 return. Cows are thirsty: producing just 1 pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water—that's 40 times more water than it takes to produce a pound of potatoes.
Get this: Eating just 2 to 4 pounds less meat a year will save as much water as not showering every day for a year. Note: These figures are based on these two calculations:
A 5-minute shower with a water-conserving showerhead (2.5 gallons per minute) x 365 days = 4,562.5 gallons per year (2 pounds of meat = 5,000 gallons of water)
A 5-minute shower with an ordinary showerhead (5 gallons per minute) x 365 days = 9,125 gallons per year (4 pounds meat = 10,000 gallons water).
Plus, livestock produce a massive amount of waste—130 times the waste generated by humans! Eleven billion pounds of manure, sludge, and slurry waste are produced by livestock every year. All that waste in turn emits VOCs (volatile organic compounds), hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and endotoxins. One VOC is methane (the number-two greenhouse gas causing global warming, with 20 times the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide). The livestock industry alone is responsible for almost 20 percent of the methane in the atmosphere. Adopting a more-plant-based diet, or even going veggie just 1 day a week, is a powerfully green choice. Your body, freshwater supplies, and ice caps everywhere will rejoice.
