We eat tons of meat, but not enough fruits and vegetables.

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The plate of most Americans and Canadians looks like: ½ meat, ¼ vegetables (if we are being optimistic) and ¼ starch. Mostly it looks like ½ meat and ½ starch.

There are costs to being a meat centric society:

1. To your bank account
- Meat protein costs more than vegetable protein.

2. To your health
- A number of studies show a link between eating a high meat-based diet and chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, etc.

3. To our environment
- As other parts of the world adopt a meat centric way of eating, more cattle needs to be raised. Meat production requires huge amounts of land, energy and water, which leads to habitat loss, soil erosion, water depletion, and pollution from pesticides and animal waste.
- Meat demands an ever-increasing amount of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.

4. To the welfare of animals
- The meat industry raises animals in cramped, overcrowded spaces, artificially breeds them, separates them from their young and denies them sunlight and fresh air

Solution: Vegetarian diets

Appropriately planned vegetarian diets can be

• Healthful
• Nutritionally adequate
• Provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.
• Allow you to live longer (British medical journal found that vegetarians outlive meat eaters by 6 years)
• Allow you to expand your taste horizons (Vegetarian meals can be diverse, fast, colourful and delicious!   It’s not only about tofu)

Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits: 

Flexetarian approach

If you don’t want to switch to a vegetarian diet, you can try a flexetarian approach, which combines both meat eating and vegetarian eating

• Will allow you to eat less meat (red meat)
• Will allow you to eat more grains, Fruits & Vegetables

My advice: try and reduce your meat (red meat) intake to no more than 1 per week

Check out 3 Foodies who are reducing meat in their books and diets

• Mark Bittman – New York times – “How to Cook everything Vegetarian”
• Gordon Ramsay – healthier options  “Healthy Appetite”
• Michael Pollen – “The Omnivores dilemma” – costs of meat production

Let us know what you are doing to reduce your red meat consumption