Yale College Vegetarian Society
Vegetarian Fact Sheet
The Energy Shortage
- 1/3 of the all raw materials consumed in this country goes toward
meat, egg, and dairy production.
- The animal-based American diet is so inefficient, that it turns out
that it is actually more energy-efficient to drive than walk. So much
fossil fuel goes into producing the meat we eat, and so few calories
result from it, that putting the gas directly into your car, assuming it
gets 24 or more miles to the gallon, is more efficient than eating animal
products and walking
- Grain, vegetable, and fruit production requires less than 5% of the
raw materials that animal products require.
Pollution
- America's livestock population produces twenty times as much excrement
as its human one. Animals produce 250,000 pounds of excrement per second,
half of which can in no way be recycled.
- Cattle ranchers destroy tropical rainforests to provide grazing land
for cattle, to in turn provide beef for Americans to eat. At the current
rate of destruction, all of Central America's tropical rainforests will be
gone in less than 40 years. Since 1 967, we have cannibalized one acre of
forest every second. At that rate of destruction, America will have no
forests in 40 years.
Health
- According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a
vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of heart attacks.
- Studies have shown a direct correlation between meat consumption and
colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine
cancer and lung cancer. Every 55 seconds another American succumbs to
cancer.
- Colon cancer: meat and animal products rotting in the intestine
release carcinogenic toxins, which cause the cancer.
- Breast cancer: high levels of estrogen and dioxin (a pesticide which
acts like estrogen in the body) in animal products, overstimulates breast
cells and eventually sets off the uncontrolled growth that is cancer.
All data taken from Diet for a New America by John Robbins.