bradford mvsu costs of meat

The costs of meat consumption

Health Effects: Is Meat the #1 Killer in America?

Heart Disease– 1 in 2 people will die from cardiovascular disease– Almost all of which are attributed to two sources:

• 1) Saturated Fat• 2) Cholesterol

– In the American diet, most of the saturated fat and all of the cholesterol comes from animal products

– Consumption of meat, fish, poultry and dairy products is the primary cause of atherosclerosis and strokes in non-smokers


Heart Disease

• Compared to meat eaters, mortality from heart disease is only 1/3 as high for lacto-ovo vegetarians, and only 1/10 as high for vegans

• Vegans have cholesterol levels 35% below average in US; averaging 128; Virtually impossible to get a heart attack is cholesterol is below 150;

• A plant-based diet is the only non-pharmaceutical way to achieve drastic cholesterol reductions


Cancer • The China Study (China-Cornell-Oxford Study) finds link

between animal protein (not only fat) and various cancers • One study finds rates of cancer for vegetarians have 56%

rate of all types of cancer (German Cancer Research Center)

• High fat, high protein foods (meat) linked to: prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer..


Possible Counter-arguments

• Omitted Variable Bias- does the study control for exercise? An active lifestyle mitigates many potential risks; much of obesity in US (and heart disease?) may also arise from sedentary lifestyle. o Does China Study takes into account ("controls for") lifestyle

differences• Still possible to get cancer and other ailments from non-meat

sources: e.g. cigarettes; many non-meat junk foods, etc. [but this doesn't refute the previous findings]


Obesity

• Obesity is an epidemic in the US • In China, average person consumes 25% more calories, but

obesity is rare (you don't get fat eating rice!)o eat only 6% as much animal protein as Americans

Osteoporosis

• Not caused by lack of calcium, but by a surfeit of protein• Excess animal proteins acidify the blood, leaching calcium from

the bones, which is excreted in urine• Of 1,600 women 80 years or older, vegetarian women had lost

only half as much bone mineral as meat-eating women, on average

Health Effects: Toxins

Toxins

• 95% of DDT (a carcinogen) comes from consumption of meat and dairy

• concentrated doses of pesticides: livestock feed has higher levels of pesticides than do crops for human consumption, and animals store these toxins in their fat

• breast milk of vegetarian women has only 1-2% of pesticides in their breast milk as the national average (New England Journal of Medicine)


Contaminated Chicken • 30% chicken consumed in US contaminated with salmonella• 70-80% chicken contaminated with campylobacter --> 200-800

deaths a year, 2-8 million cases of sickness a year• 25% of chickens covered with feces and bile• chickens are soaked in chlorine baths to clean them• Contaminated chicken kills at least 1,000 in the US per year


Contaminated Fish• 40% of fish tested in fish markets were found to be

"beginning to spoil" (Consumer Reports) • Often fish have been dead for two weeks or more• PCBs found in 43% of salmon; catfish have high levels of

DDT; mercury found in 90% of swordfish

Ecological Impacts: Food versus Feed

• 1 lb of beef requires 16 lbs of grain• Why? most of the solar energy is lost when converted into

meat: only 11% of grass goes into the production of cow flesh;• Cows are the most inefficient converters of feed, of all domestic

animals • The amount of grain required to produce a pound of beef could

feed 32 people• Cows have a protein conversion efficiency of only 6%; cows

produce less tan 50kg of protein for every 790 kg of plant proteins they consume

Ecological Impacts: Food versus Feed

• 2/3s of our agricultural exports go to feed livestock abroad (and do not feed the hungry)

• 1/4 of the earth's landmass is used to as pasture for cattle and other livestock; 29% of the US is grazing land

• In some areas 50+ acres can be required to feed one cow• Cattle production now the 4th largest "manufacturing" industry

in the US• 100,000 cows slaughtered in the US every 24 hours

Beef and Pollution

• Cows in the US generate about 1 billion tons of organic waste in the US every year

• Cattle feedlots account for more than 1/2 of organic waste pollution found in fresh water

• Organic wastes produced by a typical 10,000-head feedlot is equivalent to the waste generated in a city of 110,000 people

• 1 lb of grain fed beef now requires about 1 gallon of gasoline• Cows emit massive quantities of methane, and is responsible for

much of the rain forest destruction (which absorbs CO2)

bradford mvsu costs of meat

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