Sound Off: Stop the Fast Food!

Stop the fast food! Or at least, eat less red meat. Here’s a stickler for many people. What produces more greenhouse gases: rearing cattle or driving a car? The answer may surprise you, because it sure surprised me.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, those farmed-raised cows produce more than 18 per cent more carbon emissions than driving a car down the highway. For many adults, teenagers and children today, it seems we have given up quality for the convenience of cheap and easy fast food. Gone are the usually quiet, relaxed and especially, healthier family meals, now replaced with the common fast food restaurant. With everyone acquiring busier and busier lifestyles, we have just become too busy to prepare a good family meal. But it doesn’t seem we are too busy to surf the Internet, watch television or play video games. Before considering the benefits of becoming a vegetarian, beyond the personal health benefits of living longer and reducing the risk of diabetes, a few forms of cancer and coronary artery disease, (since vegetarians eat closer to the bottom of the food chain, they are also less likely to suffer from the effects of the bioaccumulation of mercury from eating animals at the top of the food chain), you may also want to consider the environmental and social justice benefits of becoming a vegetarian.

Consider the amount of resources needed to raise cattle. Never thought about it? Well, the world’s cattle are almost like pigs, for they alone consume more than the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. Hey wait, that’s more than the world’s population.

Guess where half of the water consumed in your country goes? To produce that pound of meat on your hamburger, it’ll take 2,500 gallons of water to produce it, while it only takes 60 gallons of water to produce the same amount of wheat. Besides saving an acre of trees each year (rainforests are being cleared to the amount of seven football fields every minute to provide grazing land for rearing cattle), you can vote with every dollar you spend.

Want to save the environment? Stop the fast food, perhaps enter the quiet life of a vegetarian and spend more quality time with your family at mealtimes. According to the National Center On Addiction and Substance Abuse, people who spend quality time with their families are less likely to think about suicide, to be involved in drugs, drinking or smoking, and perform better academically. Read The Virtuous Consumer by Leslie Garrett to create a healthier and kinder world.