HERBIVORE CENTRAL: Charts & Graphics

MY STORY / MY PURPOSE

I used to believe all of the common cultural myths about eating meat. After all, I was 'educated' in the American public school systems...You know the old hogwash: "we require protein intake which can only be obtained from eating animals in order to live; vegetarians are scrawny, unhealthy, anemic weirdos with rickets and mental problems; farm animals are treated well and then killed instantly and humanely anyway, so it doesn't really hurt them"....etc.,etc., ad nauseum....

Then one day in 1997 I received a random mailing from an animal rights group. It opened my eyes to the fact that animals are not treated humanely nor killed quickly before butchering. I stopped eating them for ethical reasons alone, on the spot. Then something very interesting happened. I stopped getting sick. I used to get a cold every two months or so, diarrhea about once a month, and the flu once a year. No more. So I looked into this subject further.

It turned out there were some very significant health reasons. One of the best books I have ever read on this is Diet for a New America by John Robbins.It footnotes virtually every sentence with a scientific study to back it up. Carnivores hate this book and try very hard to nitpick it to pieces, but the numerous studies it cites remain valid.

The environmental ramifications are very important as well. Livestock operations are infamous for polluting groundwater, using up enormous amounts of fresh water supplies, and having forests- including the Amazon itself- razed to make space for cows to graze upon.

As for the moral reasons, I suggest you watch a short documentary called Earthlings (see video embedded below).Besides the wanton cruelty to animals, meat consumption is the cause of world starvation. This is because livestock consume so much food that could have been used to feed humans directly, that millions of acres are wasted for people's meat habits. Every pound of beef you eat was grown by feeding that cow 4.8 pounds of grain. Multiply this by how many pounds of meat you eat in a year. How many starving kids could have used that much grain? Your cow already ate it - too bad for the kids......Plus there are the moral issues with how animals are treated and slaughtered. Their living conditions are pretty shocking these days. Then they are frequently skinned and gutted while still alive and fully conscious (this includes so-called organic and also kosher facilites). Would you wish this on a worm even?

There are many excellent sites that go into great detail on these subjects, and I will not try to top them. They have done a lot of research to back up their statements, and I encourage you to read these sites and check on their sources. I have linked to some good ones above.

My purpose here though is to make it easy for people to get an idea of this grandiose subject without having to wade through lists of statistics and studies. Most people just don't have the time or patience for this.

It is also clear to me, as a vegetarian, that a lot of info on this subject is very dubious and copied incessantly from the official line. Scores of net articles are also copied and sourced from each other, then presented as gospel truth.

Consider this site a springboard to reality...

HEALTH FOOD STORES: SCAM CITY

I have been in numerous so-called 'health food' stores, including very large national chain stores. They all have a few disturbing things in common:

1. They are extremely expensive! Anything and everything in them is outrageously marked up. If you look around when in one of these stores you will notice the other customers are all rich folks- who else could afford to shop there more than once?

2. They sell some healthy foods, but also sell lots of unhealthy foods! It is not hard to find 'grass fed' and 'organic' beef and chicken, all kinds of cheeses, candies and sugars, various types of milk, exotic beers, and other unhealthy stuff all over these stores. Have fun picking the healthy foods out of all this crap.

3. They are only in larger cities of 1/2 million or more! Small town people have no access to them without driving an hour or two. This leaves most people shut out of this little world, or I should say subculture, of people that have good access to all of the healthy options trumpeted by the animal groups.

Try buying vegetables and fruits at regular grocery stores. Just read the labels and only buy American or Canadian grown. Produce grown in latin america, especially mexico, is frequently fertilized with the nearest village's raw sewage.
( Look up "night soil" on the net. ) Since hepatitis is rampant there....

Wash all your American/Canadian produce with soapy cold water, and never eat the skin or peel, and you should be pretty safe even if it is not organic.

Whenever you get a chance, buy from local gardeners and farmer's markets.

As far as the fake meat products, you can get them at normal grocery stores- they are usually tucked away in a weird spot so just ask an employee where they are. Not that you need that stuff anyway...

Following these simple guidelines will keep you from going broke at the 'health food' stores.

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