Impact of nutrition on the environment

Researches say that society has contaminated lands and rivers with chemical wastes and poisons, fouled shorelines with massive spills of oil and altered the chemistry of the air on which life depends. Ozone depletion continues. Forests have been destroyed to provide land for industries and cattle farming. There has been massive extinction of species because the animal habitats are destroyed.

Scientists realise that forests and grasslands are very important for transferring carbon between the atmosphere, vegetation and soil. However, they point out that the green areas continue to be reduced and depleted to make way for more cattle. The environmental damage that occurs in converting forests to pasture for beef production is well known. The cost of the environment is huge, with little forest regeneration taking place on abandoned grazing land, and the self sustaining rainfall cycle of entire regions is now under threat due to forest destruction.

Researches point out that people’s meat diets have contributed to the destruction of rain forests. Huge areas of vegetation are removed to give way to cattle farming.

They alert to the fact that natural marine animals are being reduced by man’s poorly conceived fishing practices, including the mining of the oceans.

They also say that natural animals are being pushed out by societies predilections for hamburgers. They inform us that forests of all kinds are being cleared to raise the beef for these addictions. With the forests go the natural animals, as well as the oxygen people need for their survival.

They inform that natural animals are dying in droves because humans carelessly dump all manner of petroleum products and poisons of all kinds into and onto the earth. The earth is losing species at an alarming rate….

Let’s see how human nutrition systems can interfere with the environment…

 Fruitarian impact on the environment

 Fruit nutrition promotes the planting of new trees bringing all the benefits to the life supporting mechanisms of the earth. 

By eating fruit you spread the seeds of the fruit contributing for new trees according to the laws of nature developed for millions of years …you do not have to kill any life form even a vegetable…

Year after year, the tree gives you the fruit you need you don’t have to do anything for that as far as the tree is healthy and good. 

Fruit can reforest the planet. By reforesting the earth fruit and nut trees prevent erosion and mudslides and stabilize temperature extremes and bring rain to deserts, dust bowls and drought areas. Trees along with vines create oxygen, purify and filter the air. Trees eat carbon dioxide, which prevents global warming.

The space land needed to plant many trees is minimum when compared to the space needed to plant food for livestock as well as the area they occupy and pollute. Trees do not need to be sprayed with chemicals, in a natural environment the ecosystem is balanced and there are no parasite plagues.

Trees reduce the pollution of the planet, as there is no need of tin cans, glasses and cardboard wrappings, as used in other foods. The fruit peels can be used to fertilize soil. There is no need to waste human time in trash pickup, no landfill exhaustion, and no trees killed for packaging, no energy wasted in recycling plants.

Fruit tress, bushes and vines provide housing materials and when the fruit trees are old they can be used as timber or make a fire to heat a house.

By eating fruit our influence on nature is minimum and only benefits can be withdrawn in this man and nature interaction….

 Vegetarian impact on the environment

 It has been said that a plant- based diet is the most compassionate, least destructive way we humans can live upon this planet. Many researches say that a mostly vegetarian planet would resolve so many problems, land destruction and problems of insufficient food for worldwide population. Researches say that each vegetarian saves one acre of trees every year.

We can see how this happens by comparing the effects of an omnivorous diet on the environment with a vegetarian diet...

Although the results compared to an omnivorous diet are indeed great this diet still promotes the development of agriculture, which causes the destruction of biodiversity of life in the fields and mountains and is destroying little by little our ecosystems and all the life support mechanisms of our planet. Food wrapping and conservation also generate trash contributing to the destruction of the planet…. 

Omnivorous impact on the environment

Researches point out that in 1997 210 million tons of meat was produced. They say that this fact has enormous ecological as well as economical consequences worldwide.  The latest scientific research indicates clearly that today’s mass keeping of livestock is one of the main causes of the dying of forests.

Researches alert that about 50% of water pollution in Europe is caused by mass keeping of livestock. Nitrate from agriculture has already penetrated so deep into the ground water that some of the mineral water labels no longer comply with guiding values for drinking water.

Nitrate from liquid manure being released as ammonia into the air in an environmental poison, causing acid rain and other deposits containing acid. In Holland, most part of the precipitation comes from ammonia gases out of cow barns they cause more damage to the country than all of the automobiles and factories.

They tell us that ammonia does not only have terrible consequences for forests, but also for water. Over fertilization causes among other things an unnatural growth of algae, which in turn extract oxygen from water.  

In their opinion consumers who are responsible for the production of meat are also mainly responsible for wasteful use of resources. On the same piece of land that is needed to produce one kilogram of meat, one could harvest 200 kg of tomatoes or 160 kg of potatoes in the same period of time.

Approximately 100 litres of water are needed to grow 1kg of grain, the production of 1 kg of meat, however, takes 2000 to 3000 litres of water.

Researches inform that about half of the worldwide produced grain is being fed to animals in order to eat their meat. If less meat is eaten the quantity of the grain saved could save about one billion people from starvation.

They tell us that over the last 25 years, cultivation of corn for animals has taken over fields that used to produce wheat, rice and millet as staple food. The margin of grain used has increased from 10% to 36%.

According to estimates made by the World Watch Institute in Washington, the price for meat would have to be doubled or tripled if one took in consideration the full ecological costs including burning of fossil fuel, lowering of the ground water level, chemical pollution of the soil and release of gases like ammonia and methane. Not to mention the resulting costs of the public health system.

In some researches opinion meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water and air.

They say that a totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat eating requires more than 4000 gallons of water per day.

They explain that a typical pig factory generates raw waste equal to that of a city of 12000 people. In fact, the meat industry is the single greatest polluter of water.

Researches tell us that the meat industry is directly responsible for soil erosion because so much grain is needed to feed animals being raised for food. In the U.S animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn grown and more than 95 percent of oats. They point out that the world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people more than the entire human population on Earth. According to the World Watch Institute the easiest way to reduce grain consumption is to lower the intake of meat and milk. They say that roughly two of every five tons of grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, poultry or fish. In their opinion decreasing the consumption of these products especially beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land.