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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I am very, very glad to hear that you are at very least a responsible vitamin taker. I know that a lot of multivitamins think it's a selling point to offer 3000% of some vitamin du jour and that worries the shit out of me.
The fact of the matter, though, is that vitamin deficiency is pretty easy to diagnose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin
There's a table there to show you all the diseases associated with it, and a lot of those diseases are associated with starvation, not with the diets we currently enjoy. Now it is very true that the American diet is high in animal fat and deficient in vegetables and fruits, but we do not have an epidemic of beriberi, rickets, or scurvy. I think Americans get enough vitamins as it is in their typical diet.
It is true as you pointed out that our bodies are doing very poorly with a lot of the stuff we throw at them. It turns out that our body doesn't register high-fructose corn syrup as calories which in turn doesn't trigger impulses of being full. Without those impulses, we can take in thousands of calories per day without any stopping. We partially saturated harmless vegetable oils and made them trans fats, which our body possesses no natural enzymes to break down.
I think there's the false notion that because it's natural that it's good. This is not necessarily the case. But the more processed the food is, the more untested compounds we put in our bodies, the more likely it is that we are damaging our health long-term. I prefer to eat mostly unprocessed foods, and the fewer ingredients I don't recognize, the better usually. You can compare the Mediterranean diet where the emphasis is on a lot of plain unprocessed foods versus the American diet which places an emphasis on process.
And now it's my turn to ramble. At least as a vegan, you won't have a heart attack! Just be sure you're getting enough fat to keep your brain running.
Eating meat is, in fact, the number one cause of global warming. Consider the facts:
• The United Nations report Livestock's Long Shadow determined that raising animals for food emits 18 percent of all global warming emissions, which is about 40 percent more than all the world's transportation systems—that's all the cars, trucks, SUVs, Hummers, ships, and planes in the world combined. (All residential and industrial buildings combined account for about 15 percent of emissions, and the entire chemical industry accounts for about 5 percent.)
• When measured by CO2 alone, power plants appear to emit more global warming emissions than animal agriculture, but this comparison is deceptive, as power plants don't generate energy for their own sake but rather to provide power for industrial and consumer purposes—like animal agriculture. To say that power plants are the number one cause of global warming would be like saying that humans are the number one cause. In fact, animal agriculture uses enormous amounts of the energy produced by power plants to grow and process feed crops (the vast majority of staple crops grown in the U.S. are fed to farmed animals); to operate factory farms, slaughterhouses, and processing plants; and to ship animals' flesh, eggs, and milk in refrigerated trucks and to store it in refrigerated cases.
• All this power used (and CO2 emitted) by the animal agriculture industry is in addition to the fact that the industry is the number one emitter of both methane and nitrous oxide. Along with carbon dioxide, these two gases cause the overwhelming majority of global warming.
• The official handbook for the Live Earth concerts says that "refusing meat" is the "single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint" (emphasis in original). The researchers for this handbook based this on their scientific research, based (we assume) on the points above.
If you'd like to learn more about helping to save the Earth one bite at a time or order a copy of PETA's free "Vegetarian Starter Kit" that's full of delicious recipes and handy shopping tips, visit www.GoVeg.com/eco.
This article’s focus on chickens is again misleading. The solution for environmentalists is to withdraw our support for animal agriculture. Eating chickens is unnecessary, and it's a part of the number one cause of global warming. In fact, according to Environmental Defense, "If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week [and substituted vegan foods], the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads."
In addition to emitting enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, the chicken industry also causes staggering amounts of pollution. Oklahoma's attorney general is suing poultry factory farms in Arkansas because their manure runoff is decimating life in Oklahoma's waterways. He said that if nothing is done, the chicken factory farms would "[d]estroy the water and … destroy the future for our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren." In addition, Greenpeace recently condemned KFC and the chicken industry in general for destroying the Amazon rain forest to grow crops to satisfy their voracious need for chicken feed.
It may be an inconvenient truth to meat-eaters who care about the environment, but solving global warming and the world's other leading environmental problems will not be accomplished simply by switching light bulbs or cars. Consider that researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching to a hybrid car. And as noted, the U.N. report mentioned above says that animal agriculture is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."
Sincerely,
Matt Prescott
Assistant Director
PETA
The pacific sardine lives along the coasts of North America from Alaska to southern California. Sardines, once a major part of the California fishing industry, are now considered to be "commercially extinct."
Another species classified as "commercially extinct" is the New England haddock. Ecologists have also been concerned about the significant reduction in finfish, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Lake Erie cisco, and blackfins that inhabit Lakes Huron and Michigan.
I fear for your safety!
There is nothing more dangerous in this world than telling a Conservative that they might not be able to have an endless supply of anything!
The hysterical rage they fly into is hazerdous to anyone standing near.
Be prepared for screams of "Communism!" and "You hate capitalism!"
To even suggest (even as mildly as possible!) that we may currently have an unsustainable consumption of meat, fish and oil will be met with either ridicule at best and death threats at worst.
Please be careful!
IS Salon officially classified as one of President Bush's "Free Speech Zones"? Are any of these discussions of sustainability allowable under the Patriot Act?
If not I will take steps to protect myself now by publically denouncing the author of the begining quote as a traitor to the US and a terrorist sympathizer!
I love Bush and America can eat, drink and pollute as much as it wants without end or fear of any negative consequence whatsoever.
I love Bush!
(please to render me to Syria for "re-education"!)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
