There are no reasons whatsoever to eat meat these days. I can't wait to see the film...I'm glad the truth is out there. Another film which is a must-see is "Meat The Truth", presented by Marianne Thieme, a politician from the Netherlands. In her film she questions Monsieur Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" on global warming and what he left out
hypocritically, oops, I meant to say conveniently or intentionally?

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Sorry, but I didn't see it and probably won't. I have a problem with the way Michael Pollen's word is treated like gospel, much like the movie Supersized Me was uncritically accepted by that other film maker. I have read reviews on Food Inc. In both docs they raise valid points. But they also have sloppy research on other points. It is scary to me how someone can make a documentary that everyone simply reacts to instead of thinks about it rationally.

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What can you do? Well, yes I saw the movie as well as others like it (one about corn was a fine film). So, I do not eat MEAT. Period.
I read EVERY INGREDIENT on EVERY PRODUCT I purchase. I do not buy anything that contains Fructose, or any kind of corn syrup. I saw a
loaf of packaged white bread (a no no) and the second ingredient was fructose corn syrup. I eat yogurt with no additional ingredients in it -- no sugars, or fructose or "DEAD" fruit.
I eat twice a day, am slim and healthy. You
can eat healthy food with care and you will
feel much better for it.

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I'm so sick of the Alternet Vegetarian Idealogues.

I have a diet of mostly protein with very little carbohydrate and zero processed high glycemic carbs.

All organic grass fed meats cheeses (this is a wonderful and amazing food) and eggs. Lots of high fibre low sugar green vegatables also all organic.


my LDL is 75
my cholesterol is 135
bp is 140/70
BMI is 23

basically perfect health and I eat Animal Flesh. You should too.

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Since many people choosing to avoid factory farmed meat do consider the moral issues in addtion to the environmental problems, I think it is important to consider the moral issues with most relatively humanely raised meats. Just as we should not be setting our standards of acceptable treatment of humans in relation to World War 2 style death camps or the Spanish Inquisition, we ought not to find morally acceptable the mere cessation of the cruelties of the last century (i.e. the intense cruelty of the factory farming of animals), but also ponder over the moral issues related to our interactions with other species over the last thousands of years.

I think it is unfair and irresponsible to use collective human technology against other sentient beings unless it is a matter of survival. When we (humans) make nuclear weapons or guns we (except for the arms industry) don't give them away indiscriminately partly for self preservation. I like to think that at least in part it is because we are trying to be responsible with the power of collective human knowledge. It would be unfair to use it against other humans without very good reason. For thousands of years collective human knowledge has been used against other species without sufficient thought as to whether it is unfair to the other species. I think most unbiased logical analyses will find the use of collective human knowledge against other sentient beings to be unfair (unless it is a matter of survival). Even to this day, we still use our technology against many humans too in unfair ways. If and when society becomes almost ideally responsible about collective human knowledge then society should ban the irresponsible use of technology against other sentient beings unless it is a matter of survival.

Betrayal of trust is something that I would recommend avoiding. While many creatures do engage in deception, we humans use our collective human knowledge to cultivate the trust of the animals (in non-factory farming style raising of animals) and then betray that trust.

As a Devotional Vegan I recommend the life principles of conscientiously avoiding the following. Harming living beings. Exploiting living beings. Adversely affecting the well being of living beings. Doing to a living being that which the living being would not want done to self.

Sincerely,
Aouie

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The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.

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The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

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"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet. A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today. According to a recent United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined. Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands." The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans.

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)

On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk. (United Nations)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock. (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S. Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

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I just got home from the grocery store where I had some extra time and checked out few labels. It's not the first time. But I think the constant bad news about corn products might be sinking in. The ingredients are still there. They have to be. But they are harder to find, finer print and less color contrast. There is an enormous amount of pressure on the agribusiness people. At some point they have to compromise. ANNA

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It's a baby step I know, and I was in a financial bind - can't do Whole Foods often nowadays, but I frequent the farmers' markets.

I looked at all my regular supermarket breads and found one local bakery that had several - not their entire line, but several - without any high fructose corn syrup in the ingredients.

They cost not much more than the big bakery breads with HFCS. And I like the taste, without that odd jangly sweetness to it.

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Transition is a noun (pronounced "nown"), not a verb. It indicates a state, or condition of change. For instance, one may be in transition from just being vitamin-obsessed to becoming a completely blithering tofu head. But try as you might you just cannot "transition" from being a total idiot to being a sensible person, or to anything else, for that matter.

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Free range chickens and grass fed beef. Tastes good too. Beans are tasty and good for you. Fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dark chocolate, red wine. Ah, it's almost like poetry.
FYI: I'm 71 and feel really well. Happy, well fed, healthy, walk a lot, read, watch little TV. Keep truckin' folks.

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This is the most hypocritical term I've read in a long time!

There is NOTHING "…humane…" about killing and slaughtering an animal! Think I'm overreacting? Go to your friendly local slaughterhouse and watch the "fun". Unless you're a knuckle-dragging, totally unfeeling troglodyte, doing so might turn you "meatless" a helluva lot quicker than all the meaningless rhetoric being bandied about, here.

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"Transit off of a corn-based diet"?

That is not Standard English! It is offensive!

Please! No double prepositions, and no prostitution of nouns as verbs. Try "transit from a corn-based diet."

People stop reading your message if it's couched in garbudge inglish.

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There is a huge push for a select few to take over food production world wide through untraceable alliances. I, and my farm, are trying to be enslaved, with me having NO choice.

I have really appreciated all the posted comments so far.

Food production today, guided by the same force, profiteering,control, getting the most for the least, that produced Wal-Mart, our present economic crisis, and our modern day LARGE SEED, CANDY ON A STICK "CORN" plant, has resulted in UNHEALTHY FOOD, (higher cancer,allergies, and heart disease)and the UNSUSTAINABLE MINING OUR OUR SOILS AND FRESH WATER.

Most all major food production today is ANNUAL GRASSES. This is how I have become a PEST CREATOR! We live in a COMPLEX WORLD! This means tremendous interactions at all levels between all the parts.

Annuals are rasied by plowing up, spraying to kill, everything in the field BUT the one plant you want to market. This practice alone works to make me a pest creator. It would be like going into the rainforest, and killing all plants and animals, except the one you want to market.

This would act as a great haven for UNCONTROLLED GROWTH by those plants and animal, including fungi, bacteria, and etc. that act to take advantage of this virgin territory, or the cancer type organisms, the one's that want to EXPLOIT EVERYTHING FOR THEIR PERSONAL GAIN!

We also cannot afford to PUT THINGS BACK WHERE WE TOOK THEM OFF....SO.... this makes me a MINER!

Because of these practices, I am still around to farm another year, BUT, the food I produce IS NOT HEALTHY ON THE MASSES!

This issue should be addressed ABOVE HEALTH INSURANCE!!! I would rather prevent ILLNESS THAN TO HAVE ACCESS TO THE BEST CHEMOTHEARPY IN THE WORLD!

The food I produce helps the pharmecuetical companes make billion dollar profits each year!

Also, because of 75% of the farmable land, being in the marginal bases, which means the best way to gain people energy in these areas is to GRAZED livestock, I believe certain meats, small amounts, and of the FREE RANGE TYPE, should NOT act to hinder long term health!

I live in an area that has had the world's largest cattle feed yards! THIS IS NOT, the kind of meat I would advise anyone eating.

If anyone would like to contact me further on these issues, I could be reached at jhubbard@pld.com.

Thanks for your time!

Jerold Hubbard,

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Sorry, but I didn't see it and probably won't. I have a problem with the way Michael Pollen's word is treated like gospel, links of london
tiffany much like the movie Supersized Me was uncritically accepted by that other film maker.

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