Disease Proof : Disease Proof : Health & Nutrition News & Commentary : Dr. Joel Fuhrman

There are a lot of reasons to stop eating meat.  Improving our health is a large one given the association between meat consumption and chronic, life-threatening diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and various cancers.  Every time we choose to fill our plates with plant foods instead of animal products, we are doing our bodies a huge service both in the short and long term.  However, most people don’t realize how forgoing a steak, hamburger or piece of chicken is enormously protective against the warming of the planet and the destruction of the rain forests.  The evidence has become overwhelming that global warming is happening and it is happening fast, and we humans are largely responsible.  Limiting meat consumption around the world is the number one solution recommended by scientists to slow and potentially tackle this issue that will undoubtedly impose devastating consequences if we do not take realistic actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The World Preservation Foundation is an organization based in the United Kingdom devoted to researching the most effective means to reduce global warming urgently.  The primary conclusion of the prestigious scientists studying this issue is that over fifty percent of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions are from livestock raising (and the dietary patterns that drive it). This figure was derived from a 2009 report from the Worldwatch Institute in addition to the United Nations’ famous report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, which argues that livestock farming is one of the most significant contributors to this serious environmental problem.¹ This means that a 50 percent reduction in livestock products worldwide could result in a minimum 25 percent reduction in GHG emissions.² Those are huge figures! Imagine what we could accomplish if we all ate less meat.  Unfortunately meat consumption is still rising throughout the world.

Why is the production of animal meat from factory farms so detrimental to our planet? Livestock farming contributes methane, ozone, black carbon and nitrous oxide to the environment, as well as carbon dioxide.  These gases warm the planet rapidly, which will result in ever more challenging environmental problems if we do not take action to limit emissions.  For instance, methane interacts with aerosols in the atmosphere and becomes 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide over the course of a century to increase the global warming process.  Additionally, the potency of methane to carbon dioxide increases over time, trapping 100 times more heat over 5 years.  Also note, scientists have shown that black carbon (aka soot) is responsible for 45 percent of the warming of the Artic.  Black carbon is 680 times as heat-trapping as carbon dioxide and it causes ice sheets and glaciers around the world to melt even faster.³  Brazilian researchers have found black carbon in the most rapidly warming areas of Antarctica, where 50 percent is related to the burning of trees in the Amazon, and 40 percent to the livestock industry.⁴

How does livestock create black carbon? It actually comes from animal waste produced on factory farms, waste processing, and the burning of vegetation to accommodate crops used to feed livestock.  NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that cutting black carbon produced from biofuels like wood or dung could help reduce the estimated 1.5 million premature deaths per year attributed to biofuel soot.⁵

In addition to the above statistics, there really are so many environmental consequences to eating meat that we don’t think about as we peruse the aisles of the grocery store.  For example, the raising of animals for food production sacrifices much more land than would the amount of land used to grow fruits, vegetables, and other plant crops.  We are now clearing acres upon acres of the rainforest to feed the growing demand for animal products in developing nations.  Not only does this cleared land sacrifice the original forest and its capacity to sequester carbon in trees or in the soil, but these lost trees sacrifice a tragic amount of plant and animal species.  It is truly sad to imagine the loss of life in the rainforest due to human inflicted degradation. Statistically we are talking big numbers: two thirds of the plant and animal species on earth reside in tropical forests, of which 5 million acres are destroyed every year releasing 2 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, contributing 20-to 25% of global warming.6 These dense forests are the “lungs of the earth” and our healthy survival is potentially dependent on their existence. 

Not eating meat or reducing our consumption is highly protective to our health, but we all should take note that we are doing a huge service to the planet and posterity by avoiding meat and sharing meat-free meals with our families and friends.  Check out www.worldpreservationfoundation.org for more information.

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Although vegetarians and vegans all have the avoidance of meat eating in common, their reasons for eschewing animal products are diverse. After all, in addition to the health benefits from abstaining from meat, many are motivated by animal suffering and certainly there are compelling environmental reasons. Meat-free followers of Dr. Fuhrman obviously do it for health reasons or a combination of health reasons and other motivations. I respect my father for providing information on nutrition and nutrition alone, without animal welfare or environmental motivations, as that is not his field of expertise.

However, I think it would be wonderful, perhaps even a necessity, if everyone understood the powerful connection our own health has with the health of the planet and the animals we share it with. My last post discussed the relationship between meat production, global warming, and world hunger. I learned much of this information at a global warming conference conducted by the World Preservation Foundation based in London. Let’s all open our eyes to the possibility here that this information may be critical for all of us.

It is no secret that the rainforests of the Earth are a truly magical, natural wonder. It also happens to be a place that we are massively, rapidly, and irreversibly destroying. The rainforest is home to intricate ecosystems and more unique plants and animal species than anywhere else in the world.

Amazingly, two-thirds of all known plant and animal species are found in the rainforest while rainforests themselves cover just 2 percent of the Earth’s surface. Not only are rainforests home to countless plants and animals, but they are literally the “lungs of the Earth”. Rainforests are the single greatest terrestrial source of the oxygen in the air that we breathe. Keep this information in mind while reading the following statistics about how quickly we are destroying it to meet global demands for meat:

1. We are currently facing one of the greatest mass extinctions ever to occur on Earth. Over 30 percent of the biodiversity on this planet has been lost since 1970. In the tropics, we’ve already lost over 60 percent of its biodiversity. A study conducted by the United Nations found that the rate of current plant and animal extinctions is over 1000 times the natural rate of extinction. This is by no means a natural phenomenon. The majority of these extinctions are due to abolition of the rainforest in order to grow soy and corn to feed livestock.
2. Brazil is the largest beef industry in the world; the country produces roughly 7 million metric tons of beef every year from a total population of 165 million cattle.
3. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 91 percent of the Amazon rainforest that has been destroyed since 1970 can be attributed to cattle raising, including the growing of feed crops
4. Rampant deforestation for cattle-raising is becoming popular in Central America. Since 1960, more than 25 percent of the area’s rainforests have been cleared for pastures alone.
5. The United States is the largest beef importer in the world, importing beef from Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil and most recently, Costa Rica. Many US livestock companies are reported to have purchased tracks of rainforest in Costa Rica for cattle-raising, which is sold back as beef to the United States.
6. The Cerrado, or Brazilian Savannah, is home to 5% of global biodiversity, but is being rapidly converted into farmland used to produce soy to feed agricultural animals. 400 square kilometers of the Cerrado is cut down each year to meet beef demands in the UK alone.
7. Overstocking and overgrazing leaves the land depleted of most nutrients, which accelerates desertification. Chopping down the irreplaceable and wonderfully gargantuan rainforest trees results in the abolition of our huge carbon dioxide conversion tank and the world’s primary oxygen supply.
8. If global warming rates continue as they currently are, within a few decades the earth’s temperature will rise 3.5 degrees C. This will be enough to complete destroy the Amazon Rainforest and further accelerate the rate of global warming, the melting of the ice caps and the rise of sea level, obliterating costal human habitats.

For those of you who have commented, “I don’t believe in global warming.”
I wish you could have been there to see live satellite photos of thousands of square miles of the forest up in smoke, with huge clouds of black soot rising into the clouds. The amount of oxygen-producing forests that already have been decimated is clearly measurable and not a belief option. Why would one deny this exists, that humans contribute to it or that the ice masses are melting? It is not a myth that humans are destroying the natural habitats, and the species of plant life that are important for the health of our planet and that this, among other human activities, contributes to global warming.

I realize there are people who have an opposing view, but the increasing demands for meat-eating by formerly underdeveloped, highly populated nations, could dramatically increase the rate of destruction of the forest, over-utilize limited fresh water supplies, and dramatically add to pollution, in addition to increasing carbon dioxide and the gradual warming of the planet.

As I write this, I think of the movie Wall-E, in which the Earth became one big wasteland and the obese, lazy humans of the future have to move to a spaceship because planet Earth is no longer hospitable. I do not speak for my father, but as a young adult interested in the future of this world, clearly, saying no to meat-eating is a simple change that we can all make to protect the world’s precious natural resources. Maybe we’ll save a few human lives too in the process.

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Earlier this month I was given the opportunity to accompany my father (Dr. Fuhrman) to an international global warming conference held by The World Preservation Foundation in London. I knew that attending the conference would enlighten me about how the food choices we make influence not just our own health, but in a much broader sense, contribute to the earth’s “well-being”. At the conference, members of British Parliament convened with scientists, physicians and experts from around the world to share their expertise and enlighten attendees, and people tuning in on the internet and their television sets about measures we can take to preserve the earth’s resources and avert global warming. It was clear from the outset why my father was invited to speak, for those organizing the conference were well aware of how minimizing or eliminating the consumption of animal foods is essential to save the planet from the daunting environmental catastrophes we currently face. If these sobering statistics touch you the way they touched me, they will make you even more impassioned about making the choice to eat predominantly vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds and avoid animal products. The foods you put in your mouth today really do influence the world of tomorrow. Here are some of the facts about meat production I learned at the conference: 

1)     Raising livestock and their by-products account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide green house gas (GHG) emissions. 

2)     Thirty percent of the entire land surface of Earth is devoted to livestock production, including plants used to feed the livestock.

3)     Replacing meat with plant-derived sources of calories and protein could reduce the land area required to feed the human population by more than 80 percent and recover about 25 percent of the landfor restoration, solar energy capture, or other eco-friendly purposes.

4)     Between 23-30 percent of our global ecological footprint comes from agriculture, primarily livestock production.

5)     Beef takes 70 times more land to produce than vegetables.

6)     80 percent of the world’s soy production is consumed by livestock.

7)     About 50 percent of the world’s grain supply is used to feed livestock. This is while almost 11 million children who live in the countries where these feed grains are grown, die ironically of hunger each year.

8)     In 2009, for the first time, the number of people suffering from hunger exceeded 1 billion. This doesn’t include people facing hunger shortages from natural disasters.

9)     If all 6.78 billion people on Earth began consuming as many animal products as residents of the United States, we would need over 3 planet Earths to meet the demand. If all people on Earth became vegetarians, less than one Earth would be needed to meet food demands.

The land and resources required in the production of animal products is startling.   It is sad to think about how many people are starving in the world, while most of the soy, wheat, and corn grown around the globe are fed to livestock.

I learned so much more at the conference, such as how global warming is melting the ice caps and raising ocean levels and the destruction this will have on our world in the future. I learned more about the essential nature of the Amazon Rainforest as the “lungs of the earth” and how livestock production is fueling continual and rapid deforestation via burning of the rain forests to prep the land for animal feed crops, and how this contributes to the emission of black carbon (soot) in the air that is deposited via wind currents in Antarctica, accelerating the melting. I also became aware of the world’s current water shortages, how much water is used in the production of meat and how our oceans are rapidly being depleted of fish. I began writing about many of these things to include in this post, but this resulted in pages and pages of jaw dropping facts.   I hope to include more about what I learned at the conference in future posts. 

Even though I learned that much land, water, and energy is used to produce meat and the destructive affects this has on our environment, I remain hopeful that the accelerating destruction of our world’s ecology can be turned around. If people understood the big picture: how animal products contribute to chronic disease, is torturous to animals, and hurtful to our planet I think most would willingly make the change to a plant-based diet. The key to solving this problem, just like solving most health problems, is knowledge. 

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• We might be underestimating the problems with our environment. Here are a list of environmental problems that may be much worse than we thought; chemical contamination, air pollution, habitat loss, water crisis, desertification, ocean acidification and excessive trash and garbage; via Earth First.

• Wal-Mart will soon slap labels on all products carried in its stores displaying the items eco-rating which measures its environmental friendliness. To determine the rating, Wal-Mart will ask suppliers to answer questions about their product, such as how it is package and manufactured; from Green Tech.

• U2 front man Bono is an eco-nut, but some environmentalists are screaming that the band’s new 44 concert tour is an environmental disaster. They say the carbon footprint of the extravaganza is equal to sending the band members on 34,125 million mile trip from Earth to Mars; TreeHugger reports.

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Before I planted this year’s garbage tomato in the spring, I grew a bunch of sprouts from the seeds I saved from last year’s tomato. By the time I was ready to plant, I had ten sprouts! But I had to give some away. I’m barely smart enough to grow one tomato.

My mom and grandmother each got tomato—each on is thriving—and I also gave some out to my fellow employees. A few of them died, just like the very first plant I stuck in the ground, but my buddy Kurt is raising a monster tomato, even without the garbage!

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• Merriam-Webster adds new words to the dictionary every year. This year, “carbon footprint” made the list. It describes how much carbon dioxide something emits. So did “Green-collar”, any job working with the environment, and “Locavore”, people who eat locally grown food; via Fresh Greens.

• Dr. Fuhrman’s friend and veggie advocate, Heather Mills, has opened an organic vegan cafe in Hove Lagoon in West Sussex in the United Kingdom, called The Vbites Café. Heather is a big proponent of a meat-free life and may soon launch her own line of frozen vegan faux-meat foods; TreeHugger explains.

• Electric cars are already very popular in Europe, but experts speculate the sales of electric cars in the U.S. could jump 86%, by 2030. Now, the cost of battery charging systems may exceed $320 billion over the next few decades, but the healthy-savings due to less pollution could save us $210 billion; Reuters reports.

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• Coral reefs are amazing! They’re colorful, unique, bustling with unusual marine life and very, very threatened. Scientists believe, given the raising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the world’s coral reefs will face extinction by 2100; via TreeHugger.

• Canada has topped the United States as the worst on tackling global warming. Our neighbors to the north now have the highest per capita emissions in the world. The U.S. ranking improved largely due to President Obama’s pro-climate change policies; the AFP reports.

• The WWF—the World Wildlife Fund, not the wrestlers—wants to label red meat and dairy products, encouraging people not to eat more than 3 portions of either each week, in order to help curb the large amount of emissions involved with producing them; from Food Navigator.

• Very often coal ash from mining facilities is dumped into giant slurries nearby residential communities—you know, no biggie—but according to the EPA, 26 coal ash sites in 10 states are at risk of flooding, like what happened in Tennessee last year; the Associated Press reports.

• When completed in 2010, a Colorado wind farm will boast 34 turbines spread across 6,000 acres, supplying 51-megawatts of green energy to Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming. That’s enough juice to power 14,000 households; the Associated Press explains.

• More proof that Americans are warming up to climate change prevention. A recent survey found nearly three-quarters of African Americans would back federal policies for global warming, with 54% of those surveyed calling climate change a serious problem; via Red Green and Blue.

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• Besides making a mess after a good pillow fight, chicken feathers are pretty much useless and amazingly the poultry industry generates 2.7 billion kilograms of chicken feathers each year. But now, a new technology promises to turn carbonized chicken feathers into fuel tanks for hydrogen fuel-cell cars, hurricane-resistant roofing and lightweight car parts; via CleanTechnica.

• Computers have a come a long way from talking red lights in a science fiction movie. Nowadays, they can even be green. IBM is working on an energy efficient supercomputer that uses water to recycle its excess heat. It’s a revelation because normally cooling large computer systems requires hefty amounts of air-conditioning; Reuters reports.

• No doubt, the global recession is a drag. Everyone is tightening their belts, but as far as earth-saving goes, the recession has been good. People are driving less, in order to save money, so less oil was burned up. In 2008, experts say emissions actually dropped 3%; from The Associated Press.

• You’d think city dwellers would have a higher carbon footprint than people living in suburban areas. Apparently not, a new study claims urbanites emit 70% less carbon emissions in transit than suburbanites. One reason why is cities are more location efficient, meaning important destinations like work are closer to home; TreeHugger explains.

• Another way to make cities greener is to spruce up existing infrastructure. Chicago is preparing a $350 million energy efficient retrofit of the Sears Tower. The makeover will include the installation of wind turbines and solar panels on the roof. The hope is the skyscraper will be able to provide all the power it needs all by itself; The New York Times reports.

• Would you pay $175 a year to fight global warming? I think I would. That’s what experts say new climate change legislation will cost the average household each year. The $175 comes from the increased cost of doing business and higher sticker price for consumer products—like cars and refrigerators—but many households can expect rebates; via The Daily Green.

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• If you take the train into New York City you’ll now be greeted by a 70-foot-tall digital billboard outside Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. Last Thursday, Deutsche Bank unveiled the world’s first real-time carbon counter, displaying the running total of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere; via Red Green and Blue.

• Experts at the United Nations insist a green economy and green industry should be the goal of all countries to help combat climate change and the overcome the economic crisis, saying “business as usual” is not an option and the $100 billion spent every year on renewable energy must be increased three-fold; the AFP reports.

• The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the world faces an ever-growing risk of “abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts” due to global warming, with carbon dioxide emissions having already compromised the natural ability of oceans and forests to absorb CO2 created by burning fossil fuels; from the AFP.

• Bananas are a healthy food packaged in their own wrapper, which we normally throw away, but researchers have now developed a system of mashing banana peels and mixing them with sawdust to make briquettes. Then, after they’re dried in the sun for two weeks, the bricks can be burned as fuel. No word on their carbon-footprint though; BBC News reports.

• Officials in San Jose, California have introduced plans to develop a $20 million program for processing food and yard waste into usable biogas. The proposed facility would ferment biomass in an air-tight digester, producing biogas and fertilizer pellets. The gas can be used to power the operation or sold to fleets; Green Inc. explains.

• Fungus makes good biofuel too. Back in World War II, U.S. soldiers encountered a fungus that ate their cotton tents. Today, scientists from Denmark are cultivating the enzyme to break down plant matter and create cheaper ethanol, but the process isn’t easy. Plant matter must first be treated with heat, steam or chemicals; via Bloomberg.com.

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• More fuel efficient cars are on their way. Last week, the U.S. General Services Administration ordered 17,205 greener cars, to come from General Motors with 2,933, Chrysler with 7,924 and Ford with 6,348—costing a grand total of $210 million; via GreenBiz.com.

• And to improve cars, a laboratory in Colorado is working to enhance the efficiency of car air-conditioning. Tooling up new air-conditioning could save the United States 7 billion gallons of gasoline each year and help reduce carbon emissions; Green Inc. reports.

• The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is looking to go carbon neutral by 2020. Estimates claim global air travel accounts for 2% of carbon dioxide emissions. Currently, the IATA is focusing on carbon trading and eco-friendly fuels; via SustainableBusiness.com.

• The petroleum industry, i.e. oil, is being blamed for 1.5 billion kilograms of pollutants released into the environment. According to a new report, 90% of the 5.5 billion kilograms of pollution comes from just 12 industries, such as oil, mining and chemicals; the AFP reports.

• Twenty years later, Exxon is getting nailed for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill near Alaska. The supertanker poured 50,000 tons of oil into the ocean off Alaska’s south coast. So on Monday, a U.S. federal appeals court ordered Exxon to pay a $507.5 million penalty; the AFP explains.

• This is funny. In 1909, The Titusville Herald in Titusville, Pennsylvania ran a report by the United States Geological Survey saying all petroleum and iron would be exhausted by 1939, natural gas by 1934 and coal by the 21st century—guess that didn’t happen; via Paleo-Future.

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