I am looking to write an article on the environmental effects between meat eating, vegan and raw vegan (fruitarian). But I can not find any environmental scientific information online that compares water, land and energy usage. Does anyone know where I can find good sources? Thanks.

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  • Hi Miachel, did you end up writing this article? I was just looking stuff up myself and found your post. I just don't think people understand the emotional aspects of why its endorsing suffering to eat meat. It's not enough for them to hurt an animal because they see them as inferior so I want to find facts about the environmental impact of meat, and how being vegan improves the entire world on every level. 

  • You don't need a lot of facts to make a valid point. You need reasoning and exclusion of bias. The reasoning, doesn't fare enough usually regardless to convince anyone to change their dietary behavior - but shouldn't stop you from searching further for your own sanity, and only the detached curiosity of others. Exclusion of bias, seems to work a little bit more efficiently in the case where you want to convince someone else of their apparent "superiority" of being a different kind of consumer.

  • A peer reviewed article comparing lactoovovegetarian and meat based diets:

    http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full

    The conclusion was that they were both unsustainable, particularly the meat-based diets. See the reference list for more leads.

    Consider introducing a figure displaying a trophic level scale showing the amount of biomass and energy loss in each level from grass to tertiary consumers: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/05/animals-that-eat-animals-th...

    "as energy moves from one level to the next, such as from primary consumer to secondary consumer, the amount of energy available decreases dramatically, with as little as 10 percent being transferred to the next level. The rest of the energy is given off as heat generated by metabolic processes." 

  • I'm new here, so please pardon me for jumping right in. The issue of food security is an important part of your question. The population will probably not be sustained by 2050, based on the amount of food that can possibly grow on the planet without more deforestation. That is, unless people stop eating meat.  Increased meat consumption has created a situation of food insecurity. Here's something fun: the proposal to eat more bugs to survive in the future, because they can thrive off of waste. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/13/insects_as_food_and_feed/

    Why won't people stop eating meat?

    • because meat eating (and dairy) is addictive and it clogs up your brain (so you don't have to think anymore)

      bugs are animals.

  • I have found authors like John Robbins have a lot of documented data that is very credible. His last book Food Revolution has a lot of it. Let me know if you need more links.

    • Yep. Lots of good references in that gem!

  • Wikipedia has some info on this to get you started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism

    Also a guy said that the book on Paleo diet says that everyone can be on a Paleo diet if the population were reduced by 4/5ths.

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