2. Health Effects:
Is Meat the #1 Killer in America?
Heart Disease
– 1 in 2 people will die from cardiovascular disease
– Almost all of which are attributed to two sources:
• 1) Saturated Fat
• 2) Cholesterol
– In the American diet, most of the saturated fat and all of the
cholesterol comes from animal products
– Consumption of meat, fish, poultry and dairy products is the
primary cause of atherosclerosis and strokes in non-smokers
3. Health Effects:
Is Meat the #1 Killer in America?
Heart Disease
• Compared to meat eaters, mortality from heart disease is only
1/3 as high for lacto-ovo vegetarians, and only 1/10 as high for
vegans
• Vegans have cholesterol levels 35% below average in US;
averaging 128; Virtually impossible to get a heart attack is
cholesterol is below 150;
• A plant-based diet is the only non-pharmaceutical way to achieve
drastic cholesterol reductions
4. Health Effects: Is Meat the #1 Killer
in America?
Cancer
• The China Study (China-Cornell-Oxford Study) finds link
between animal protein (not only fat) and various cancers
• One study finds rates of cancer for vegetarians have 56%
rate of all types of cancer (German Cancer Research
Center)
• High fat, high protein foods (meat) linked to: prostate
cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer..
5. Health Effects:
Is Meat the #1 Killer in America?
Possible Counter-arguments
• Omitted Variable Bias- does the study control for exercise? An
active lifestyle mitigates many potential risks; much of obesity in
US (and heart disease?) may also arise from sedentary lifestyle.
o Does China Study takes into account ("controls for") lifestyle
differences
• Still possible to get cancer and other ailments from non-meat
sources: e.g. cigarettes; many non-meat junk foods, etc. [but this
doesn't refute the previous findings]
6. Health Effects: Is Meat the #1 Killer
in America?
Obesity
• Obesity is an epidemic in the US
• In China, average person consumes 25% more calories, but
obesity is rare (you don't get fat eating rice!)
o eat only 6% as much animal protein as Americans
7. Osteoporosis
• Not caused by lack of calcium, but by a surfeit of protein
• Excess animal proteins acidify the blood, leaching calcium from
the bones, which is excreted in urine
• Of 1,600 women 80 years or older, vegetarian women had lost
only half as much bone mineral as meat-eating women, on
average
8. Health Effects: Toxins
Toxins
• 95% of DDT (a carcinogen) comes from consumption of
meat and dairy
• concentrated doses of pesticides: livestock feed has higher
levels of pesticides than do crops for human consumption,
and animals store these toxins in their fat
• breast milk of vegetarian women has only 1-2% of pesticides
in their breast milk as the national average (New England
Journal of Medicine)
9. Health Effects: Toxins
Contaminated Chicken
• 30% chicken consumed in US contaminated with salmonella
• 70-80% chicken contaminated with campylobacter --> 200-800
deaths a year, 2-8 million cases of sickness a year
• 25% of chickens covered with feces and bile
• chickens are soaked in chlorine baths to clean them
• Contaminated chicken kills at least 1,000 in the US per year
10. Health Effects: Toxins
Contaminated Fish
• 40% of fish tested in fish markets were found to be
"beginning to spoil" (Consumer Reports)
• Often fish have been dead for two weeks or more
• PCBs found in 43% of salmon; catfish have high levels of
DDT; mercury found in 90% of swordfish
11. Ecological Impacts:
Food versus Feed
• 1 lb of beef requires 16 lbs of grain
• Why? most of the solar energy is lost when converted
into meat: only 11% of grass goes into the production of cow
flesh;
• Cows are the most inefficient converters of feed, of all domestic
animals
• The amount of grain required to produce a pound of beef could
feed 32 people
• Cows have a protein conversion efficiency of only 6%; cows
produce less tan 50kg of protein for every 790 kg of plant proteins
they consume
12. Ecological Impacts:
Food versus Feed
• 2/3s of our agricultural exports go to feed livestock abroad (and
do not feed the hungry)
• 1/4 of the earth's landmass is used to as pasture for cattle and
other livestock; 29% of the US is grazing land
• In some areas 50+ acres can be required to feed one cow
• Cattle production now the 4th largest "manufacturing" industry
in the US
• 100,000 cows slaughtered in the US every 24 hours
13. Beef and Pollution
• Cows in the US generate about 1 billion tons of organic waste in
the US every year
• Cattle feedlots account for more than 1/2 of organic waste
pollution found in fresh water
• Organic wastes produced by a typical 10,000-head feedlot is
equivalent to the waste generated in a city of 110,000 people
• 1 lb of grain fed beef now requires about 1 gallon of gasoline
• Cows emit massive quantities of methane, and is responsible for
much of the rain forest destruction (which absorbs CO2)