Plant-Based Progress

Fad diets engulf “the fattest country in the world,” encouraging us to concoct strange juice mixes and have calorie counts in the negatives. Women and men starve themselves into societal images of perfection, compromising their health for 10 pounds of weight loss. However, some of these same extremists label plant-based lifestyles such as veganism and vegetarianism go “too far.”

Animal farms are responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to veganoutreach.org, as well as almost two thirds of ammonia admissions. Deforestation occurs to make way for farming land and has now overtaken 70 percent of the rainforest. Excess of animal waste pollutes water sources, and fish are now swimming through and filtering oil that has been dumped in the ocean from large fishing boats. Then humans consume these same fish. Biodiversity is at a decline, and global warming has increased due to the increase of greenhouse gasses degrading the ozone layer.

Plant-based diets are proven to increase a person’s individual health unlike the insane cayenne pepper and lemon juice concoctions that circulate on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. A thousand-person Harvard study has shown that regular meat consumption increases colon cancer risk by roughly 300 percent. High-fat diets have also been linked with increased levels of estrogen, which expands the chance of breast cancer immensely. High meat diets also increase your chance for heart disease, diabetes and kidney stones.

Veganism and vegetarianism also attack the problem of world hunger ferociously. According to gentleworld.org, in 2011, 883 million tons of corn were produced; however, 40 to 50 percent of that corn was fed to farm animals rather than being eaten directly by humans. Likewise, it takes around seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork, and four and a half pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken. Imagine the reallocation of that corn and grain to the starving men and women who struggle to survive daily. 

The Earth and its inhabitants are becoming more unhealthy daily, but a plant-based diet combats many issues we are now facing, not just the obesity epidemic. However, the stigma surrounding these lifestyles threatens to take away the reality of their positive impact.