The Blacklash of Burgers

After conducting four different, in depth research session I have reached a conclusion. My initial question was whether a reduction in meat consumption was necessary to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. My answer? Yes, it is. However, it is a bit more complicated than a simple “yes” implies. My research has proved to me that the meat industry has major impacts on our environment. If we continue to produce meat at this rate, the world we live on will not be able to sustain human life for much longer. We live on a finite planet, yet we are conducting agricultural practices as if our resources our infinite. So, as for whether meat reduction is necessary for a sustainable life, I believe the answer is yes.

When it comes to health, however, it gets a little more complicated. Personally, I believe that one’s health and the choices they make are up to them. All the information for the harmful effects of eating meat are out there. Even the government recommendation of meat has been reduced due to its harmful effects. Yet billions of people continue consuming it daily. Why? Because, truthfully, they just don’t care. In my opinon, reducing your meat intake is a necessity if you wish to live a healthier, longer life, but others may not agree. The facts are all out there concerning higher risks of heart disease, cancers, and diabetes, but if people are not concerned about contracting those diseases they most likely will not see eating less meat as a necessity.

For my fourth and final research session, I was looking to discover if there are any cons to a global vegetarian diet, and if so, what they are. To answer my question, I simply searched “future if we stop eating meat” onto google scholar.  The results were plentiful. However, the site that initially drew me in was an article posted by the National Geographic. I knew this was a reliable website and would provide me with accurate, reliable information due to their highly accredited magazine and background in topics such as science and the environment. The specific article I read was written by Cary L. Sue who is one of the many writers for National Geographic’s “Education Blog.”

In her article, Cary included a video created by ASAP Science to give a more visual perspective to her topic. The video was made up of drawings that were narrated by a speaker who explained the effects that agriculture and meat consumption have on the environment, which I have previously learned and discussed. Following the video, Cary went on to discuss both the pros and the cons of a vegetarian world.

First, the pros. Many of these I already had knowledge of from previous research sessions. These included facts such as plant-based diets being typically much healthier than diets including meat, therefore health care costs would lessen. She also discussed topics of increased biodiversity, reduction of greenhouse gases and less water usage globally. Cary also brought up some pros I did not know were connected to a vegetarian diet. For instance, if more people went vegetarian we would see a reduction of pre-mature deaths of approximately 6-10% since there would be ultimately less heart disease, cancers, stroke, and cases of diabetes.

I had never really considered the cons of a vegetarian diet, besides the personal struggle to find proper protein, but reading what Cary had to say made a lot of sense. One of the first cons she wrote about was that millions of people would go unemployed. If the meat industry was no longer necessary, millions of farmers, packagers, producers, and shippers would be out of a job. A global vegetarian diet would also greatly effect the poor who rely mainly on meat to get the calories they need to survive. As for biodiversity, a con would be the threat of urban sprawl. Millions of acres of land are currently dedicated to livestock farming practices and without the need to raise cows, chicken, sheep, etc. the land would be up for grabs. This could easily cause the construction of more urban cities. Ultimately, this would still be causing greenhouse gas emissions due to the increased demand for construction, electricity, plumbing, and energy usage. Lastly, a major con of a global vegetarian diet has to due with the conversion of farmland to cropland. If farms’ purpose were to grow plants and crops only, there is a great chance that much of the land would become victim to desertification. This is due to farmland’s soil that, over the years of fertilizer and pesticide use, have become nutrient deficient.

For my third research session, I wanted to receive insight to some differing perspectives. Specifically, I was looking to discover the government’s views on the topic since a lot of the environmental effects discussed are still quite controversial in a political sense. I came across an article published by the Washington Post. It was written by Roberto A. Ferdman, who I looked up and learned that he is a reporter for Wonkblog who specializes in covering food and economics, along with some other topics. In his article, his main focus was on the government’s influential dietary guidelines and whether or not they need to be altered.

Every five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes the dietary guidelines which includes the government’s idea of what a healthy lifestyle should include. The purpose of this is to advise people about what foods they should be consuming and how much of those foods to prosper. Before 2015, however, the guidelines only included recommendations for what was healthy for humans. It completely excluded any information on how the food people were consuming was effecting the environment. So, the guidelines published in 2015 thus accounted for both human and environmental health concerning food choices. This was a very controversial action for the government, though, because they would ultimately have to tell people that they should be consuming less meat. By doing so, they would be majorly effecting the meat industry and their success rates.

The meat industry was obviously very upset and concerned by this, so the government tried creating somewhat of a loop hole. Instead of posting that people should be consuming less meat altogether, they pushed the idea that people should simply change their preferences to more leaner meats, not less meat. Ultimately, this does not do very much for the environment. But this is where it gets tricky. If the government were to make a statement about the environmental effects that meat production has, they would receive a major backlash from the meat industry and could effect thousands of jobs throughout the country. Meat industry advocates such as The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) and National Cattlemen's Beef Association are fighting back saying that the environmental effects of food do not belong in the dietary recommendations. With large organizations such as these fighting back so harshly, the government’s job concerning publication of the dietary guidelines becomes much harder. So, as of right now, the government is still not clearly stating whether or not meat intake is necessarily harmful to the environment. However, it can be concluded that this has much more to due with the backlash from the meat industry than it does with the truth behind the environmental effects.

                       The Hidden Health Impacts Behind Eating Meat

After delving into the environmental effects, I wanted to discover more on the health related impacts consuming meat has. To do so, I went to google scholar and simply searched “health and meat consumption.” I was overwhelmed by the extensive results, many that included phrases such as “meat consumption and diabetes,” “meat and risk of heart disease,” “red meat and mortality,” you get the picture. I decided to explore the one titled, “Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus” since it was an analysis conducted by the American Heart Association and I figured they must know an extensive amount on this topic. The link I initially clicked led me to a scholarly journal in which I was able to read the abstract, the background of the research, the methods performed, and the results of the research. Overall, they were looking to discover a relationship, if any, between red and processed meat and the risk of chronic heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. To accomplish this, they analyzed two different, yet similarly large, groups of people: those who consumed a high amount of red and processed meat, and those who consumed a low amount. After analysis of the participants, they saw a distinct relationship. What they discovered was processed meat intake was associated with 42% higher risk of chronic heart disease and a 19% higher risk of diabetes. There, however, was no correlation between meat intake and stroke, so at least there was a bit of somewhat positive news. (Micha, R.)

Following this, I also explored some of the other scholarly articles that resulted from my “health and meat consumption” search. Here, I found another study, this one conducted by the International Journal of Cancer. Their research also proved a positive relationship between red meat consumption and the risk of colorectal, or colon, cancer. In the study, those that consumed small amounts of red meat had little to no risk of contracting colon cancer. Whereas the correlation between those consuming high amounts of red meat and colon cancer were 1.28, or a 95% correlation.

The final shocking thing I derived from this research session was how much more meat Americans consume than other countries. On average, American eat three times the average amount of meat than other countries. This can be directly correlated to the high amounts of obesity and death within our country. The graph posted in my next post clearly displays how much more meat Americans consume than others.

Research Session 1:  Graphs

Graph One (top) displays the relationship between how much of a specific food is consumed in kilograms on average and how much kilograms of Carbon Dioxide emissions are released from each.

                        “Not All Meat is Created Equal”

Throughout this research project my main objective is to discover the hazards behind consuming meat. In addition to this, I want to determine if lowering meat consumption would have beneficial effects on the environment and, if so, how impactful would these benefits be? Specifically, the questions I want answered are as follows:

1. What makes certain types of meats more harmful than others? Which ones are the most harmful ones to produce? To consume?

2. Is a reduction of meat consumption necessary to lead a healthy lifestyle?

3. Will a reduction of meat consumption benefit the environment, or is it simply too late to create a sustainable future?

4. How many people would it take to make a difference in the environment? What are strategies to getting more people on board with reducing their meat intake?