I first gave up meat a little bit over two years ago as a three-week challenge to myself to see how I could help clean up my diet. At the time, I was in my "health-freak" phase, looking to adopt a diet that would best benefit my body. Only later, after I had decided to stay vegetarian (and later, vegan), did I begin to look into what my plant-based diet meant for the planet, not just for me. The more research I did, the more convinced I became that cutting meat out of my diet is one of, if not, the best decision I have ever made.
Here are some facts and statistics that I found shocking, inspiring, and incredibly interesting that helped me to make the switch away from meat and into a lifestyle that has the power to change and repair not only ourselves, but also our world.
1. Adopting a plant-based diet reduces your carbon footprint by 50 percent.
A recent UK study found that meat-eaters have nearly twice the carbon footprint as those who follow plant-based diets. Just by giving up meat and animal products you can slash your carbon footprint in half, an incredibly easy switch that has a huge impact on our environment.
2. Plant-based diets can prevent (and potentially reverse) chronic illness.
Plant based diets have been known to significant lower risks of (and even reverse) heart disease, the number one killer in the United States. It has also been known to reduce the risks of both strokes and cancer, two other major killers in the United States.
3. More than half of the water consumed in the United States is used for animal agriculture.
Did you know it takes 460 gallons of water just to produce one quarter pound hamburger? Or that a single gallon of milk requires a whopping 1,000 gallons of water to produce? It takes over 1,200 gallons of water just to produce an eight-ounce steak, which is the equivalent to showering for 10 hours straight. So if you're someone who's worried about the water crisis currently occurring in states such as California, then a plant-based diet might be for you.
4. Animal agriculture is responsible for 91 percent of Amazon deforestation.
Rainforests are being cut down constantly so that the land can be used for livestock production. As it is, livestock takes up about 45 percent of the earth's total land. Nearly half of U.S. land alone is used for animal agriculture.
5. Vegans use 1/18 of the land and 1/13 of the amount of water used by meat eaters.
An acre and a half of land can be used to produce either 375 pounds of meat OR 37,000 pounds of plant food. For a world facing global hunger and starvation, utilizing the land to produce the maximum amount of food possible not only benefits the human population as a whole, it just makes sense.
6. Livestock and animal agriculture are responsible for around 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions.
That's more than biomass burning, human sewage, atmospheric deposition and fossil fuel processes combined.
7. Going plant-based for a year can save more trees and forests than going paperless for a year.
On average it takes about 55 square feet of rainforest to produce one pound of beef. This calculates to around 45 to 55 trees. So going a a full year without beef would allow you to save around 3,432 trees, which is almost 404 times more than you would save going a year without paper.
8.Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
In fact, if every American dropped just ONE serving of chicken from their diet every week, it would be the equivalent of taking 500,000 cars off the road. If everyone in America stopped eating meat at all for only one day a week (such as meatless Mondays), it would be the equivalent of taking a 5,000,000 cars off the road. And that's just America!
More than 100 animals are lost every day to rainforest destruction, which is largely attributed to animal agriculture.
Every minute in the United States, 7 MILLION pounds of waste and excrement are produced by animals raised for livestock. The average dairy farm (2,500 cows) actually produces the same amount of waste as a city with 41,000 residents. That's insane.
