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The consumption of meat effects on the planet
Health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle
Health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle
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Every year, humans kill over 56 billion farm animals, with 3,000 animals dying every second in the slaughterhouse around the world. In the United States, there are about 12.7 million people being diagnosed with cancer; eating red meats might be linked. Not only is the growth of the meat industry hurting the health of Americans, but also negatively affects the climate. As a society, we should be more educated about the food we eat and how it affects our bodies. Vegetarians are about 40 percent less likely to develop cancer compared to meat eaters, shown by large studies done in England and Germany. In 2007, the American Institute for Cancer Research published their second review of the major studies on food, nutrition, and cancer prevention stating: the high fat content of meat …show more content…
Meat contains a large amount of protein, which is used in many different ways including the repair and building of body tissues. Meat contains numerous nutrients, such as: zinc, selenium, and iron; which are used to help carry oxygen throughout the body. Containing several important vitamins like: vitamin A, B, D, and especially B12. Some vegetarians or vegans suffer from B12 deficiency because it is only found in animal products. Vitamin B12 is important in the up keep of nerves and red blood cells, as well as making DNA. Not only does meat offer great health benefits, it’s also helpful to the community and shares only a low impact on the environment. Factory farming, better methods of food processing, production, preservation, packaging, and delivering have been made; meaning less trips to the grocery store and a greater opportunity for Americans to get the right amount of calories they need. Because meat is cheaper to process and produce, farmers are able to have more of a variety of livestock. Since the growth of factory farming, the number of jobs has risen and the communities around the farms have
I will first show the lack of validity and soundness to Howard’s claim that A) a vegan lifestyle is a healthier choice and B) his claim that one must switch to that lifestyle to enjoy these said benefits. To the claim made in A, Howard uses his own health problems he endured on his meat diet, and uses it as a constant variable comparing it to his now relative healthy lifestyle as a vegan. On first glance anyone who eats a calorie-laden, unbalanced diet and ends up weighing 300 pounds, as Lyman himself admitted, will have health problems regardless of his orientation to meat or vegetables. With this said his comparing analogy is inertly flawed and must be disregarded from the argument he presents. On march 8 before the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Mary K Young, MS.,R.D,NCBA Director of Nutrition Research and Information, presented the benefits of eating meat. Using Data from the 1995 USDA Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSI) she confirms that red meat enhances one overall diet quality. Young goes on to point out that red meat is the number one source for protein, B12, and zinc, number 2 source for B6 and third greatest source for iron, niacin and potassium. She also pointed out that red meat alone has the greatest concentrates of iron and zinc together. Also included cited in Young’s report was the research recently published in the Journal of the American...
We care so much about what the food is and how it is made that we overlook about where the food had come from. According to the reading selection, “Killing Them with Kindness?” by James McWilliams, an American history professor at Texas State University, states “animals raised in factory farms have qualities that make them worthy of our moral consideration…[and yet, we] continue to ignore the ethical considerations involved in eating meat” (311). This exhibits that when Americans are so engrossed in healthy eating, our morals about animal rights are neglected. Most of what we eat are animals, and animals like we do have emotions, interests, and possibly goals in life. We pay no heed of the animal’s interests and it should not be that way since our interests are no more important just because we are more superior, intelligent beings should not give us the right to perceive animals in such a manner. In addition to paying notice of the origin of where the animals come from, we need to be aware of what killing animals will do to the earth. In the TedTalk, “What’s Wrong with the Way We Eat,” Mark Bittman states “10 billion animals are killed each year for food and they represent 18% of the harmful greenhouse gasses” (Bittman). This reveals that our careless consumption would not only lead to the suffering of animal deaths but the suffering of our world and our imminent death. As we increase our progression with our unhealthy obsession over healthy eating, there will not be any positive effects for the body, the animals around us, or the world. If we were to be conscious about the source of our food and the consequence of eating then we will be able to eat healthily and
Over the past few decades, small and medium sized farms have been taken over by large-scale factory farms. These farms house billions of animals used for consumption each year. The conditions on factory farms are filthy, overcrowded and disease ridden. Animals forced to live out their lives on these farms are subject to extremely harsh conditions, such as mutilation, confinement and living spaces piled high with feces. Not only do conditions on factory farms make life for livestock absolutely miserable, but factory farms are also negatively impacting human health and the environment. The production and sale of meat has become a billion-dollar industry based upon the bloodshed of other sentient beings. With this being the case, at the very least, factory farms need to be properly regulated and companies involved need to be held accountable for their abuse.
In the article,Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler, Mark Bittman discusses the devastating effects the meat diet has on the planet. As the population continues to increase, the consumption of meat also increases. According to the article, it states that “Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per
They've studied about 53.000 participants. Among these participants were about 17.000 vegetarians. They've studied the data of all these participants and something interesting became clear: People that were not consuming meat during their lifetime had fewer cancers on average than people who were consuming meat. There was also a remarkable result. Colon cancer is a type of cancer associated with consuming of red meat. However it became clear from the study that vegetarians had more colon cancer than other participants. Although the results are interesting, it's not completely new. It is already well known that people can reduce the cancer if they regularly eat fruit and vegetables. If you stick to this then it is said that you can decrease the risk of getting cancer. The new element of this study however is the fact that it concentrates on full vegetarians. The study doesn't only focus on meat eaters that eat fruit and vegetables occasionally. This gives a better view on the effect of meat by itself on the development of cancer. The researchers studied the participants from the age of 20 to 89. These people were organized into 4 groups. There were of course the meat-eaters. Also people who ate fish got their own group. The remaining groups were the vegetarians and the extreme vegetarians. Extreme vegetarians are also called vegans. What the difference is between vegetarians and vegans is that vegans are very strict. Vegetarians just avoid meat and such things. Vegans avoid every ingredient that is related to animals. Vegans don't even want to wear clothes that were made of animals. So vegans go much further than a 'normal vegetarian' The group of people who ate fish and the vegetarians showed fewer cancers than meat eaters. So it's not only vegetarians that show better results. The people who eat fish also
Currently, meats and other foods have loose limitations on their quality. For example, a can of tomato soup can contain up to ten fly eggs in a normal sized glass cup. While this sounds horrid and abominable, current food policies have greatly increased in comparison to approximately a century or a little more ago. The inventions of different machinery that “cleanses” the meat, the changes of various slaughterhouses that have impacted the modern foods and other similar products as well as the usage of new chemicals to prevent growth and reproduction of harmful bacteria are few examples of recent advances. Improvements of meat and canned food quality have impacted the overall health of people and animals in both good and bad ways.
Roughly over 20% of 121,000 middle-aged men and women died over a period of 28 years during a study of red meat effects on the body (Harding). Beef, pork, lamb, mutton, and veal are all red meats. While these meats are rich in vitamins and protein, they can lose much of their benefits through cooking and processing. Limiting how much red meat an individual eats could add years to their life by avoiding heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes. By simply replacing one meal weekly, that consists of red meat, for a meal that is poultry, fish, nuts, or vegetable based could reduce the risk of dying in middle aged years by 7 to 9% (Harding).
What the American culture is used to is eating three meals with a few snacks in between a day, and two out of the three meals usually involve eating meat. Most people don’t realize the risks of eating meat. Today’s medical experts say that avoiding meat helps you avoid saturated fat. They have found out from studies that women who eat meat daily have a fifty percent greater risk of developing heart disease than vegetarian women and a sixty-eight percent greater risk in men (staff writer). People may not know about serious diseases meat can obtain such as, mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease. In the September 1999 issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases, approximately 76 million food borne illnesses- resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths occur in the United States each year from improperly cooked or diseased meat (Licher). That is a lot! You can also get salmonella poisoning from meat. People think that the problems come from eating red meat and are opting for fish over steak, but new evidence proves that fish can cause health problems too, risks that can’t be cooked away. This is a growing problem called histamine poisoning (Peck). Children are learning at a younger age that they don’t like meat, maybe because they don’t like the taste, or maybe it’s because they have a fear of eating their favorite cartoon or movie hero. For example, the pig from the movie “babe”.
Meat cultivation uses more land, water and resources to house, transport, and slaughter animals and their grain and food than it would cost to fund in vitro meat studies. In April 2008 the In Vitro Consortium first met at the Norwegian Food Research Institute. The consortium is “an international alliance of environmentally concerned scientists striving to facilitate the establishment of a large scale process industry for the production of muscle tissue for human consumption through concerted R&D efforts and attraction of funding fuels to these efforts. ”Meat in both its production and its consumption has a number of destructive effects on not only the environment and humans but also live stock. Some of these effects are antibiotic resistant bacteria due to the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, meat-borne pathogens (e. coli), and diseases associated with diets rich in animal fats (diabetes).
This is a much bigger deal than people think. In fact, according to an article by Peta, How Does Eating Meat Harm the Environment, it has such an effect on the environment that the Union of Concerned Scientist list meat eaters as the second biggest environmental hazard facing the earth. The number one affect being fossil fuels produced by cars. It was also found in a report published by the Worldwatch Institute that nearly 51 percent of all greenhouse gasses are produced from animal agriculture. This is a very staggering number when a lot of research is being done to make vehicles more environmentally friendly when we could make a huge impact just by changing the way we eat. It is even more astounding that it takes the same number of fossil fuels to produce one hamburger as it takes to dive one car 20 miles (Peta How Does Eating Meat Harm the Environment). The production of this meat is also a big cost. It takes more than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of oat are feed to livestock. The world’s cattle alone are feed the equal amount that would be needed to feed 8.7 billion people. That’s more than the entire world population. If we cut back on our consumption of meat we could take corn and oats that we produce and feed the world. When producing meat many of our natural resources are used. We use water, fossil fuels and top soil, and we are
The health benefits of a vegetarian diet are hard to ignore. Vegetarians have a lower chance of developing many diseases, such as cancer and diabetes. Women who eat meat daily are more likely to develop breast cancer. According to an article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, “consumption of well-done meats and, thus, exposures to heterocyclic amines (or other compounds) formed during high-temperature cooking may play an important role in the risk of breast cancer.” Men are also more than almost more likely to develop prostate cancer than those who do not include meat in their everyday diets. “Up to 80 percent of prostate cancer is attributed to dietary practices, and international comparisons show strong positive associations with meat consumption” (Alexander, 2010). Vegetarians have also shown to have lower blood pressure, better digestion, and more energy than humans with a meat based diet. The effects of a vegetarian life style ...
According to the World Health Organization, dietary factors contributes to at least 30% of all cancer in Western countries and about 20% in developing countries (Meat Consumption and Cancer Risk). There has also been numerous of research regarding how meat can be linked to cancer. According to the Meat Consumption and Cancer Risk article by Physician Committee, “Meat contains animal protein, saturated fat, and, in some cases, carcinogenic compounds such as heterocyclic amines (HCA) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) formed during the processing or cooking of meat. HCAs, formed as meat is cooked at high temperatures, and PAHs, formed during the burning of organic substances, are believed to increase cancer risk.” In addition to that, hormone-related,
Vegetarians tend to be healthier than those who consume meat. This is due to the prevalent unnatural chemicals used in the processing of meats, and eating these are unsuitable for the body. Meats already contain harmful amounts of cholesterol, and over-consumption of red meat can lead to early heart disease. Animals that are raised on farms for their meat are not treated well, and this mistreatment can lead to harm in the meat they are producing. Although one life choice cannot change one’s environmental
The first benefit to being a vegetarian is health reasons. Recent research studies have shown that vegetarians have better health than people who eat meat. The risk of a disease is less likely when being a vegetarian. For example, vegetarians have a lower rate of gallstones, kidney stones, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and colon disease. Studies have also shown that not only does a vegetarian diet have a greater chance of preventing these diseases but becoming a vegetarian can sometimes even cure these diseases. In a study conducted by Dr. Ornish from the University of California, he found that a vegetarian diet is also good for unclogging arteries of patients with very serious heart disease. The American Medical Association announced, in 1961, that heart disease, which is the cause of over half of deaths in the United States, could be eliminated by a vegetarian diet. The AMA has also reported that a high saturated fat diet is a key component to high levels of the diagnosis of coronary heart disease. The reason for vegetarians less risk for heart disease ...
When these agricultural resources are given to the animals involved in meat production, these resources are lost. Besides the loss of land, the process of animal production is contributing to pollution and other greenhouse gases that are doing irreplaceable damage to the environment and contribute to untold negative health