In an article published in the september 2003 edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel examine the comparative environmental impact of the average American meat-based diet and the average American lactoovovegetarian diet (lactoovovegetarians eat dairy and eggs, but no other animal-based foods). They found that the amount of feed grain used to produce the milk and eggs in the vegetarian diet was 450 kg, while the amount of feed grain used to produce the animal products contained in the meat-based diet was almost twice that (816 kg). This explains the difference in the amount of cropland used to produce the food contained in each diet. The vegetarian diet used less than 0.4 ha of cropland, while the meat-based diet used 0.5 ha of cropland. It also explains the difference in the amount of fossil fuel required to produce the food consumed in the vegetarian diet as opposed to the meat-based diet. 25 Calories of fossil fuel are required to produce 1 Calorie of animal protein, while only 2.2 Calories of fossil fuel are needed to produce a Calorie of grain protein. 17 % of fossil fuel used in the US is used for food production.
50 % of the total land in the US is used for food production. And 90% of cropland loses soil at a rate 13 times that which is sustainable. It takes 500 years to replace one inch of lost soil, so farmers are using increasingly large amounts of commercial fertilizers in an attempt to replace lost nutrients. These fertilizers are created using large amounts of fossil fuel, and toxins from them are contaminating the local water and making their way into the ocean. And 85% of fresh water consumed in the US is used for agriculture.
Most Americans claim that they need to eat meat in order to get enough protein. The truth is that the meat based diet contains 112 g of protein per day and the vegetarian diet contains 89 g of protein per day, but the recommended daily allowance (RDA) is only 54 g of protein per day. So even without eating meat, most Americans are getting much more protein than they actually need.
Randy Peterman said,
May 1, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
Everybody needs different amounts of protien in their diet, but 54g per day is a pretty low number. Because of nutritional advice I recieved from a nutritionist, I eat 200g of protein per day. some of this is whey protein, and some is from meat. Anyway, you can’t really say THE meat based diet or THE vegetarian diet, maybe THE AVERAGE meat based diet? This is a pretty controversial subject with me, I love my meat. Earlier this year I ate the vandalizer at lefty’s in Moscow – a huge burger with a 2 lb patty. Got my name on the wall and everything. So maybe the amount of farmland needed for meat production is greater than for crops. Maybe people should eat less meat, or maybe some meat is more sustainable than others. Going vegetarian seems rather extreme and unlikely for most people to adopt. What would be a good step in that direction without jumping from the meat-eating world altogether?
marissacaryl said,
May 1, 2008 @ 7:09 pm
54g per day is the Recomeded Daily Allowence published by the United States Government. While I am not saying that it is right for everyone, the point was that most of us eat more protein than is really nessescary to be healthy. And meat, dairy and eggs are not the only good sources of protein, there are many good plant-based sources of protein. (Where do you think the protein in meat, dairy and eggs originally comes from? Animals can’t make the building blocks for protein any more than humans can). I am also not saying that everyone needs to become vegetarian, just that eating meat (especially factory farmed meat, which is what the article I was disscussing in my post was talking about) has a greater environmental impact than eating plants, and many of us do not need to eat as much meat as the average American does.
When I wrote THE meat based diet, I was refering to the average diet used for the statistical comparisons in the article. I was not saying that every person who eats meat has the exact same eating habits.