James and I try to eat completely vegetarian one to two days a week, but we decided to do a whole week of eating only vegetarian. While we believe it always important to be environmentally-conscious, it is the perfect time to encourage others to do so since this Saturday is Earth Day!
It is commonly thought that vegetarians eat no meat because of animal rights. While I am ALL FOR animal rights, I typically choose to eat vegetarian for environmental reasons. We typically only buy meat from organic, and humane treatment farms to begin with. Some of the statistics regarding the ecological footprint for the production of meat are shocking:
- Land equaling the size of seven football fields is bulldozed every hour across the globe to create more room for farmed animals and food to feed them.
- The EPA reports that roughly 80% of ammonia emissions in the US come from animal waste.
- Growing a pound of corn takes 100 to 250 gallons of water, while growing the grain, for feed, to produce a pound of beef takes 2000-8000 gallons of water!
- Producing a little more than two pounds of beef causes more greenhouse gases than driving the average car for 3 hours.
- Tons of animal waste end up in giant pits in the ground or on crops, making agricultural runoff the number one source of pollution in our waterways.
- A meat eater's diet is responsible for seven times as much greenhouse gas emissions compared to a vegan's diet.
While I have not made a change to eat 100% vegetarian all the time, I do try to practice this multiple times a week, or in this case, trying it out for a whole week straight. Switching to even one more vegetarian meal a week is a step in the right direction towards cutting down on your ecological footprint.
So vegetarian week #1 of 2011 begins...Our first meal of the week is gourmet grilled cheese & tomato soup. I blogged these recipes back in February. It is a delicious and gourmet spin on a comfort food classic.
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