Never Mind the Low–Carb diet…
Now it’s the Low-Carbon Diet!
Each of us can help Mother Earth shed her carbon-climate-changing overload by transforming our eating habits to a low-carbon diet.
Well-known South African nutritionist Mary-Ann Shearer (www.naturalwaynetwork.net) puts it in a nutshell.
Now, a huge body of research shows Compassion was right on target. Recent research includes:
“Reducing beef is the first step to a green diet.” – Michael Jacobson of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest. (Time magazine, 2 March 2009)
“Focus on eating lower on the food chain, with more plants and fruits and less meat and dairy.” Kate Geagan, dietitian and author of Go Green Get Lean. (Time magazine, 2 March 2009)
Switching from a red-meat-based diet to vegetarianism could save about the same amount of CO2 as trading in a Toyota Camry for a Toyota Prius. - University of Chicago research as quoted in Time magazine.
We need to treat meat and dairy as one of the quickest and most fundamental ways in which to lower carbon emissions through food. If meat is to have a place in a sustainable diet at all, it should be consumed infrequently on ‘special occasions’. - Professor Tim Lang - Meat Info & The Daily Telegraph.
Reducing meat consumption could wipe 20 trillian dollars off the cost of fighting climate change. See article.
Either we reduce our meat consumption or we must prepare ourselves to pay the price! Let’s contribute by changing our diets, away from animal products, away from livestock. Let’s explore alternatives!” - Kurt Schmidinger, Future Food. See articles here and here.
An Oxfam report released in March 2009 examines both the social and environmental implications of food consumption and sets out four ways in which we can adapt our consumption habits to achieve both environmental and social sustainability and justice. See report here.
Compassion in World Farming’s CEO, Philip Lymbery, warns that the world must find a new way to feed itself if we are to stave off calamity. Says Lymbery:
“Sixty billion farm animals are reared and slaughtered in this world of ours each year – the majority of them being kept in industrial systems of agriculture. Industrial farming of animals is the biggest issue of animal cruelty on the planet.
“Already the livestock industry accounts for the use of one-third of our planet. With the world’s human population expected to increase from 6 billion to 9 billion people by 2050, livestock production – at the current rate of consumption – would explode to 120 billion farmed animals.
“The root of the problem is too many animals in too small a space. If we don’t take action, we will soon be looking at too many animals on too small a planet.”
On World Water Day (22nd March) and on every other day, for that matter, we need to remember that meat-eating carries a giant water footprint. Did you know? It takes 13 million litres of water to raise and convert one cow or ox into meat! Did you know? To produce one portion of beef (250g) requires the same amount of drinking water that one person needs (at one litre a day) for 34 years of life!
For further info, go to: http://www.waterfootprint.org/
Action Alert 
