Stats from “Vegan Fusion World Cuisine” by Reinfeld and Rinaldi
Oh man, there are so many things I want to blog about. Lately however, my life has been so busy. I’ve just had very little time to write. I am hopeful that in the next few weeks, I will be able to free up more time to do what I love…cook and develop great plant based dishes, learn more about the health and environmental effects of eating vegan, and sharing it all on my blog!
For this short post, I thought I’d share some food for thought, based on stats from source noted above.
· Over 60 million people die of starvation each year
· The livestock population of the US consumes enough grain and soybeans each year to feed over 5 times the human population of the country. 80% of the corn and 95% of the corn grown in the US is used for animal feed.
· It takes sixteen pounds of grain to produce once pound of meat.
· It requires 3 ½ acres of land per person to support a meat centered diet, 1 ½ acres to support a lacto-ovo (a vegetarian that eats dairy and eggs) diet, and 1/6 of an acre to support a Vegan diet.
· If Americans reduced their meat consumption by 10%, it would free up 12 million tons of grain annually.
· One acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes. This same amount of land produces 165 pounds of meat.
· ½ of the water used in the US goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock.
· It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat
