As the days roll on by, I find it harder and harder to justify consuming animal direct or byproducts. It seems like such a contradiction: to call oneself a spiritual, empathetic being, yet to consume the slop that comes out of a hell house of slaughter in such an unjust, undignified manner for the creatures being sacrificed?

Its hard for me to become fully vegetarian - I became quite unhealthy on my first attempt, as I put my body through a lot of physical demand - but I've reduced my overall animal product consumption to probably 1/8th the rate of my normal use and am striving for more. It's an easy task for me when the only thoughts going through my head aren't the salty, tasty goodness of a steak medium rare, but rather the insidious, dubious nature of its acquisition.

Hopefully I'll be able to make another go of it, only this time in a more healthy manner.

The disconnect with what we eat has been another means of controlling the great human swarm....confuse and demoralize. My family and I have come to the decision to tear up our front lawn and grow as much food and enjoyment as possible with any short fall obtained through bartering with our neighbors....the fetid model of capitalism and the mantra of growth to survive is DEAD.....STOP THE SHOPOCALYPSE

While I agree that the pollution meat facilities create is something to look into and be concerned about, I don't like the argument about how much soy and grain it takes to feed the animals because it has no foundation. It doesn't say how much it takes to feed them in contrast to how much meat the animals actually provide. Also, is the "land dedicated to meat production" including the farms that also provide us with all the other foods we consume? I have the highest regard for people who choose to be vegetarians, but I think society in general needs to think a little bit more about the information they are fed, and not just by into statistics with no basis.

This statistics do have a basis, when you feed cattle with grains, or vegetable proteins in general, they produce less than 5% of this food in meat proteins for human consumption. Just using crops dedicated for cattle in the usa alone we could feed the world, these are real numbers, do some research. And regarding the "land dedicated to meat production" they don't include agricultural farms, if you come to argentina you will see the vast kilometers of countryside dedicated exclusively to cattle. Great article by the way!

While I generally agree that the way meat is produced is inherently unhealthy and morally wrong, I think vegetarians miss the point when they start advocating vegetarianism as the answer. The problem is not simply the way we produce meat; the problem is our whole relationship to nature as a whole. Vegetarians (who will now consume larger quantities of grain) are no closer to nature than their meat-eating cousins because they continue to depend on agriculture for their survival.

When humans began dominating the land instead of working with it (through agriculture), we grew shorter and less healthy (grain is toxic if it isn't cooked, and there isn't a lot of nutrients in it), BUT we were able to consume much larger amounts of calories, at a reduction in our vitamin and mineral intake, which means we were able to expand our populations. It is this population growth that continued to this day and puts us in our present situation: being entirely depend on mass production for our food.

Think about it: if all that grain we were giving to animals were instead given to people, think how many more people we'd be able to support (The statistic I've heard it it takes 8 pounds of grain protein to produce 1 pound of meat protein). Wonderful... then we just run our backs up against the same problem, except we'd have 8 times the amount of people to deal with. I also hope you realize that the soy that you now have to eat because you don't eat meat is grown in Brazil. I suppose you didn't know that thousands of acres of Brazilian rainforest are being wiped out in order to provide you with that "meat-free" soy. Congrats!

I'm also rather distraught, at times, that vegetarians fail to posses the same empathy for plants that they do for animals. Plants are part of the natural world as much as animals are, we are just as dependent upon them for our survival (maybe even more so), and they deserve the same respect animals do, yet choosing to be vegetarian completely ignores the destruction wrecked upon the natural environment by agriculture.

It's more than just meat, guys. It's our whole system of food that has failed, and the mentality that spawned it, and even if we all became vegetarians tomorrow, the problem would not be even close to being fixed.

Agriculture today is a HUGE problem, but that's not what this article is about, you got all defensive with what i wrote, but i was answering "irish love" that said there was no basis for the statistics quoted above. I agree the problem is our relationship to nature as a whole but i think availability of food does not regulate human growth, if we as a species decided to eat vegetal food only we wouldn't have to overproduce all this insane amount of grains to feed our cattle, less wealthy obese and less poor starving..

I wasn't responding to you in particular, I was more responding to the first person (who never became a full vegetarian, but tries to eat less meat) and to vegetarianism as a whole, and I just find fault with the idea that vegetarianism is the answer. That's why the article was posted, basically; the author feels that producing the amount of meat we produce and eat is detrimental to society. My counter-claim is that it's not merely meat that's the problem, but food in general, and the nature relationship as a whole.

Also, while availability of food is not currently the only regulator of human growth, it was the most important at first, and still continues to be and important one, so I disagree with that assertion. If we had more food, everyone would be able to eat more, which means there'd be more people. Obviously, things are slightly more complicated than that, but all else being equal, more food=more people, and that's not helpful to the core problem.

Eating more grains doesn't make people healthier. There's nothing in grains (except toxins and fiber) that's really good for people (except calories, to keep them alive), but it's not nutritious to be consuming large quantities of grain. Basically, you want to feed grain to people instead of cattle, right? What will make people healthier is more fruits, vegetables, and a more varied diet. The idea that we will take all that grain and feed the starving poor and solve that problem is absurd, because they need more than grain. (Sorry for repeating myself like 3 times.)

Regardless of who my comment was directed to, the problem is a little bigger than "We produce too much meat." Our entire mentality is wrong, and I added the comment because I think pointing at the production of meat as this HUGE problem is a distraction from looking at what the core of the problem really is, namely, our relationship to our natural world.

i guess anyone who wanders through this site has the notion that humans as a species do not have a healthy relationship with the natural world, but this assertion it's way to general, once you realize this you start thinking about solutions, of course i'm not stating that vegetarianism is THE ANSWER, but i strongly believe there are a lot of answers to our sick relation with nature in the "grasslands, cattle, mushrooms, primates" dynamics. I do not agree with your "toxins and fiber" description of grain-based food, certain grains, including quinoa, buckwheat, and grain amaranth, are exceptionally nutrious, quinoa was classified as a "supercrop" by the United Nations because of its high protein content (12-18%), and i'm not saying we should feed only the poor with grains, i'm talking, again, of the human species as a whole, we should all eat a well balanced organic vegetable diet, including legumes, grains, green leafs, fruits, seeds, etc. i guess what i'm trying to say in a nutshell is "i know we won't SAVE THE WORLD by not eating meat, but this is something we can do for our own health, animals and the ecology of our planet"

y espero que aprecies el tiempo que me lleva escribir en inglés ;P

 greetings from argentina!

Quinoa Wiki

"It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal as it is not a grass."

Buckwheat Wiki
"Despite the common name and the grain-like use of the crop, buckwheats are not grasses and are not related to wheat."

Amaranth Grain is a grain (obviously), but most of the foods you're eating as a vegetarian are not going to be based on any of these three things. Can you go to your local store and find any of these things? I couldn't (granted, I wasn't seeking them out, but I didn't see them). When people talk about "grain-based foods", we're generally talking about food based on wheat, which, if you're a vegetarian, is part of what you're eating. Things like pasta, bread, etc. I would also presume that you're increasing your intake of vegetables, which is healthy, but even that is still coming from the same agricultural concepts that subverts the natural world. No matter which way we turn, we're screwed.

Moving along, I'm personally having a little trouble getting my head around these two concepts: instead of feeding grains to animals, we should be feeding them to people (this is how one of the arguments tend to go), yet we need to eat a generally healthier diet (including reducing our intake of grains, and upping our intake of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, etc.). There is no reason why animals shouldn't be included in a healthy diet, and if you want everyone to eat a well-balanced diet, we're not going to have enough food to feed everyone. That's the conflict I keep coming upon. It's more than just grains; it's more than just animals. It's the fact that there's too many damn people on this planet! The only way to really give everyone enough calories is to feed people more grains, but that's not going to be healthy enough. It's basically a catch-22.

So what can I do as an individual? I'm still personally doing a lot research myself to figure a healthy, environmentally friendly way of eating. I'm just finding that becoming a vegetarian isn't the way to do it. I try to eat meat if I know it is "organic", or "free-range", or whatever term you use to denote the raising of meat that treats the animal humanely (although this isn't always the case, obviously). I don't have a problem with the concept of eating meat. Plants and animals are equally living things and deserve equal respect. If one can eat plants "respectfully", one can eat animals "respectfully".

To be honest, I'm aware of a lot of this is not responding to things you particularly said, but are things that are merely on my mind. I'm putting these concepts out in the open because any help looking for answers is appreciated.