What is a vegetarian/vegan diet good for the environment?

IT is good for the environment because the overpopulation of livestock especially in such concentrations as in factory farms creates a huge amount of toxic waste. We feed 70 percent of what we grow in the US to animals. That is a huge waste of resources that could be used to feed people. It takes about 10 pounds of plant food to produce just 1 pound of meat. That means all the resources used to produce that other 9 pounds is just wasted.

The UN study released in 2006 stated that livestock production is one of the top 2 or 3 things humans do that damage the environment and that livestock production produces more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined.What is a vegetarian/vegan diet good for the environment?
Because large production of farm animals creates a lot of manure which runs off into ponds, lakes and rivers and creates an unnatural balance of nitrates in the water and causes normally benign microbes such as fisteria to reproduce at a tremendous rate and cause fish kills and even human infection and immune system problems.What is a vegetarian/vegan diet good for the environment?
Hi,



If you consider the cost to produce it, eating meat protein calories are roughly one-tenth the cost as eating vegetable protein calories. So for the energy costs to produce it being a VEGAN is less good on the environment.



BUT what is better for the environment is in preventing the tremendous costs for health care due to eating cheap meats supplemented with cheap high carb foods.



If I may let me explain.



Many years ago I found that the meat eating Atkins Diet Plan I was on made me healthier compared to my old high carb diet since it put my diabetes symptoms into remission, but I did not understand the consequences of eating a high protein meat diet for the long term.



After suffering the consequences of my Atkins diet regimen over several years, what now works best in order for me to keep my pruritus-Urticaria in remission, after my gallbladder-biliary-liver and heart disease problems, is a VEGAN diet that is low-carb low-fat and high-protein. Because of my gallbladder-biliary-liver disease I no longer can eat nuts or olive oil or dressings or other fats or any cholesterol because it causes immediate pruritus since my liver鈥檚 biliary system is plugged with cholesterol and calcium sludge, and I can not eat too many carbs because of yeast infections that break out after one, two, or three high carb meals.



What I now do is what they teach most students in high school nutrition classes - which is to add up the vitamins and minerals from my 鈥榙igestible鈥?foods and calculating the RDA's [Recommended Dietary Allowances] or DV's [Daily Reference Values] for each day to see if I am more than 100%. Things like bran is not considered since it is not digestible for humans, and is like a work horse or work oxen eating straw instead of digestible grass or alfalfa leaves. Also, after I accidentally poisoned myself with supplements, I leaned that supplements like iron and magnesium and colloidal silver etc are super toxic since they are 'metallic' minerals and oftentimes raw fertilizers with a 1000 fold markup. These 鈥榤etallic鈥?mineral supplements have not yet been converted into a non-toxic food when during photosynthesis the electrons in a fertilizer are stripped away making it the more positively charged 鈥榥on-metallic鈥?and non-toxic mineral element within the plant. Also, the highly profitable synthetic vitamin supplements I used to purchase have no unambiguous research backing them, and there is some obviously valid research concluding that they are more toxic than beneficial to any animal that has ever consumed them.



What now keeps my diseases in remission is mostly a diet of cooked lentils then mixed with tomato sauce and boiled celery to make a quick microwave super high protein veg-chili. I boil all my foods since my digestive system is in such poor shape and I need as many nutrients as I can get out of the semi-expensive foods I buy. I used to eat much more meat when I was an Adkins dieter, before my pruritus attacks became so obvious that the cholesterol and fats in the meat or eggs was the root cause. FYI - IF you know of people getting colon cancer, it was during my Adkins period I learned to always eat enough vegetables to be a minimum of 2 x the weight of the meat that I ate - in order to not have any constipation or worse. I used to have reddish stools since I was likely on my way to getting colon cancer myself from eating much more meat protein than I could ever digest properly in my stomach and colon.



After the Atkins Diet allowed my present health issues, I eventually learned to replace the beef and chicken and sometimes river trout in my chili with lentils, since the nutritional content of lentils ranks high alongside, and comparable to, very lean meat or lean fish if it is grown in well fertilized soil. [Note: e.g. the labels on store bought spinach sometimes have a 4 fold difference in nutrition based upon the fertility of the soils and the growing methods for the farms it is grown on.]



I also eat a-lot of boiled frozen broccoli and boiled organic or re-washed and re-boiled canned spinach with a vinaigrette of organic sugar with glass_bottled_cider_vinegar. The glassware is because of some friends that got lupus from eating too much plastic stuff, or inhaling it since they were house painters who used vinyl paints.



The nutritional DV numbers that I now eat are three times what most others in my family are eating every day. I keep at about 100% and they are about 25 to 33%, but they are all morbidly obese diabetics. Even though I was once morbidly obese myself and had a heart attack from too many carbs for too long, (which I think gave me all the symptoms of beriberi, scurvy and pellagra, along with the beginnings of my gallbladder-biliary-liver disease,) I am now more fit in comparison to most others I know.



I hope this helps you along your own journey, and I hope you will have learned something from my own 鈥榤istakes.鈥?br>


My best to you,

A1

[(-:]What is a vegetarian/vegan diet good for the environment?
It isn't. Vegetarians like to pretend that they are improving the environment by not contributing to cattle farming, but their "contribution" does little more than fuel their sense of self satisfaction.



The reality is that the commercial agricultural industry puts just as much carbon into the air and kills just as many wild animals harvesting wheat and vegetables (pesticides, combines killing field animals) as cattle farming does (besides, obviously, cattle).



Don't become a vegetarian. If you must, at least don't be one who thinks they are better than everyone because of it.What is a vegetarian/vegan diet good for the environment?
Not really. In principle it sounds good but with China's new found wealth, their meat consumption has increased dramatically. Every ounce you don't eat someone else will.