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MEAT: THE DEATH
DIET
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the
chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution
to a vegetarian diet." ALBERT EINSTEIN
Meat means mega-deaths for people, animals and much of our
living environment. If the ethical aspects don't persuade you
that eating meat is unjustifiable, the risks to your health should
convince you: meat commonly contains one or more of the following:
hormones, antibiotics and chemicals all of which may weaken your
immune system and thus render you susceptible to various diseases,
including cancer. Furthermore the fat in meat boosts cholesterol
levels, increases the risk of bowel cancer and can clog arteries,
thus increasing the risk of a stroke or a heart attack.
Every hour some 600,000 animals are killed in Canada and the
U.S. for their meat. Every year more than one million people
die of cancer and heart attacks in Canada and the U.S. and meat
products play a major role in both diseases. Moreover, millions
of acres of land and rainforest are destroyed each year by the
cattle industry to produce food products no one needs.
If people in Canada and the U.S. alone would reduce their meat
intake by only 10 per cent, the grain saved by feeding less cattle
could easily feed the millions of people who now die of starvation
throughout the world every year.
Vegetarian meals are easy, tasty and healthy. The belief that
vegetarians only eat vegetables is a myth. Most vegetarians eliminate
only meat, fowl and fish from their diet, but do eat dairy products.
Complete vegetarians or vegans are more strict and eat no animal-related
food in any form such as eggs, milk, butter or cheese. They also
avoid jelly which usually contains gelatin made from the cartilage
of animals and cookies which may contain beef fat. Nor do they
use animal products such as leather or furs.
Vegetarianism and gourmet cooking go hand in hand. There are
countless vegetarian cook books with delicious recipes. The Vegetarian
Epicure by Anna Thomas is a fine example.
The four main reasons for a meatless diet are:
1. Better health
2. Better environment
3. Less hunger
4. Less cruelty
BETTER HEALTH: A 21-year
study of 25,600 vegetarians has shown that the incidence of diabetes
and cancer in this group was much lower than that of the general
population. The risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer is
at least four times less for vegetarians than for non-vegetarians.
Colon cancer in vegetarians is rare.
Vegetarians also have fewer heart problems, because their cholesterol
levels are generally considerably lower than those whose diet
includes meat. A Harvard School of Public Health study showed
that cholesterol levels in meat eaters on average were 41 per
cent higher than those of complete vegetarians.
The average Canadian man's risk of death from heart attack is
50 per cent. Simply avoiding meat alone reduces that risk to
15 per cent (Both figures are slightly lower for women).
Perhaps most significant is the discovery that vegetarians have
a more active immune system, according to a recent study in Germany.
Researchers found that white blood cells in vegetarians to be
twice as effective in eliminating tumor cells as those of meat
eaters. This helps explain why the cancer rate of vegetarians
is considerably lower than that of meat eaters.None of this is
too surprising since it is now known that animal fat and the
wide use of chemicals, antibiotics and hormones in the livestock
industry pose serious health hazards to people. For example,
in the sixties the artificial hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES)
was widely used as a feed additive. DES made cattle gain weight
15 per cent faster on 12 per cent less feed. Unfortunately it
also caused human birth defects. The hormone was eventually banned,
but new hormones have replaced it, e.g. Monsanto's bovine growth
hormone rbST injected into cows to boost milk production.
Then there is Mad Cow Disease which poses a very serious threat
to public health. It is caused by ground-up diseased animal cadavers
which mixed with regular feed are fed to cattle. In other words
infected meat is fed to vegetarian cattle! Why? Because it increases
profits by reducing the feed costs. For more information
click: OUR
FATAL FOOD and/or FOOTINMOUTHDISEASE
Nutritionally, there is no need for meat in the human diet. Paleontology,
studying the fossil remains of early humans, say our distant
ancestors were all vegetarians. Take one look at your teeth and
you know you were meant to be a vegetarian. It's interesting
to note that the world's largest and strongest animals, the whales
and the elephants, are also vegetarians. Famous human vegetarians
include Socrates, Plato, St. Francis, Leonardi da Vinci, Voltaire,
Leo Tolstoy, Henry Thoreau, Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein
and Gandhi.
Vegetarians who eat dairy products as part of their diet get
all the nutrients necessary for good health. Vegans on the other
hand must be careful since deficiencies in protein and Vitamin
B12 can easily occur. Protein is vital to life. It repairs damaged
cells and helps build new tissue. Protein deficiency results
in weight loss, growth retardation, anemia and loss of skin elasticity.
In acute protein deficiency cases Kwashiorkor results, a disease
characterized by a grotesque extension of the abdomen, depigmentation
of the skin, change in hair color and hair loss. It is an all
too common sight in certain parts of Africa. B12 is essential
for the production of red blood cells and the proper functioning
of the nervous system.
Anyone wishing to try vegetarianism is well-advised to start
as an ovo-lacto vegetarian which allows the consumption of eggs
and dairy products. Before eliminating those from your diet,
a nutritionist should be consulted.
BETTER ENVIRONMENT: Raising
cattle is an enormous waste of land. It takes up to 20 times
as much land to produce a pound of animal protein than a pound
of plant protein. Raising livestock is a major contributing factor
in soil erosion. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Amazon
rainforest. An average of 20 million acres of rainforest is destroyed
in Brazil every year. Almost all the trees are burned rather
than used for lumber. The cleared land is then put into pasture
for grazing. The thin layer of top soil which took countless
centuries to develop is washed away in a few years by rain and
floods, leaving the land as a barren wasteland. It has been calculated
that it takes 55 square feet of rainforest to produce a single
quarter-pound hamburger. Meat production is also an enormous
drain on water. To produce a pound of meat takes about 100 times
the amount of water needed for a pound of wheat.
LESS HUNGER: It is estimated
that about 90 million people will die of starvation in the world
this year. Every 1.5 second a child starves to death. Close to
two billion people are undernourished.
Most grain grown in Canada and the U.S. is used to feed livestock
rather than people (The U.S. figure is around 75 per cent). The
number of people who could be fed with the grain and soybeans
now fed to livestock in the U.S. alone is 1.3 billion. Meat is
a very inefficient source of protein in terms of land use. On
average it takes 21.4 pounds of plant protein to produce one
pound of beef protein. An acre of legumes (lentils, peas, beans)
produces 15 times the amount of protein an acre devoted to meat
production does.
Land in Third World countries that could grow crops to feed the
hungry is often used instead to raise cattle to produce meat
for export. Central America alone exports some 200 million pounds
of meat to the U.S. annually.
LESS CRUELTY: If slaughterhouses
had windows few people would eat meat. While the public is often
invited to tour fruit-packing plants, breweries, dairies and
other food-processing plants, no such tours are offered by the
operators of slaughterhouses. Anyone who has seen what goes on
inside these blood-drenched places of horror understands why.
Seeing fellow "human" beings mill around slashing throats
and bellies of animals, hoisted on hooks like car assembly parts,
would leave little appetite for a hamburger at the end of the
production line. Even fewer would eat a wiener after learning
what exactly is in it. For slaughterhouse
horrors, click: http://www.mercola.com/2001/apr/28/cattle.htm
It is one of the dark enigmas of the human psyche that allows
a person to lovingly stroke a lamb at the petting zoo in the
afternoon and enjoy eating rack of lamb in a restaurant at night.
Most people manage to discard the barbaric circumstances that
precede the meat on the dinner plate. Veal cutlets with a glass
of wine is completely divorced from the reality that a calf was
kept from birth in a narrow wooden crate inside a building, never
seeing a meadow or feeling the sun, until the day it's slaughtered.
Most chickens today are housed indoors in wire cages and kept
alive by artificial means. This barbaric form of factory-farming
produces both chickens and eggs far inferior to the few produced
in a natural environment. Lobster aficionados are deaf to the
lobster's squeals of pain as it is plunged live in boiling water.
Regrettably it is rarely recognized that there is a very thin
line between human insensitivity to the pain and suffering of
animals and insensitivity to the pain and suffering of fellow
human beings. Or as Leo Tolstoy put it: "As long as there
are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields...." Torture,
war and genocide are justified in the minds of many people by
seeing their enemies as "mere animals."
If the above should fail to persuade meat-eaters to change their
eating habits, the matter of cost may do it since money is a
language everyone understands. Meat is the most expensive part
of most meals. So by not eating meat your food costs can be drastically
reduced. If one takes meat-related health problems into account
as well, the savings and advantages of a meatless diet are simply
too big to ignore.
So for better health, a better environment, less hunger, less
cruelty and lower food costs: don't eat meat. You don't need
it, so why eat it?
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