Saving the world over dinner
Part-time carnivore
n. A person who chooses not to eat meat all the time.
Cutting out meat and dairy products from our diets is a more effective way to cut our carbon footprints than taking every bus, train, car, boat and plane off the face of this earth. Eating less but better meat is not only a lot healthier on your body but the planet too.
We are not expecting everyone to become vegetarian but if we all had 3 or 4 veggie days a week it would be like half the world becoming veggie, we’d all be healthier, animal welfare would increase and our actions would be less damaging on the environment.
Something’s not quite right here....
· There are now one billion obese people worldwide which are the same number of starving people in the developing world.
· Ancient forests in South America are being bulldozed to allow massive monoculture soy farms to provide feed for the world’s animals. Destroying hundreds of years of growth and carbon sequestration, biodiversity and the homes of people who have lived there for centuries.
So what are you waiting for, make a simple, positive change to the world today by becoming a part-time carnivore.
We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion to view here.
People have many different reasons for being part-time carnivores. These include World Hunger, Climate Change and Health.
Most experts agree that there are 5 types of part-time carnivore, although some claim to have found a 6th option.
What kind of part-time carnivore are you?
See how many people at the Uni have signed up and how much land and CO2 we're already saving each week on our stats page.
If you've signed up you can also see your personal total on the stats page.
Livestock consume about a third of the world's grain and only about 10% of that food gets converted into meat. Not very efficient!
Producing less meat would make more land available for growing crops for people to eat. With the world's population predicted to grow to 9 billion by 2050, choosing to be part-time carnivores will help to ensure that there is enough food to go round.
It's not just the methane from farting and burping cattle that we have to worry about. Fossil fuels burned in feed crop farming, transportation, refrigeration and processing all make meat rather more carbon intensive than most other food.
On top of all that, the meat industry is destroying huge areas of forest - some of the best natural carbon capture and storage systems. At the current rate, 40% of the Amazon Rainforest could be replaced by cattle ranches and to grow soy to feed cattle. So, being a part-time carnivore can make a big difference to your carbon footprint.
Meat is delicious. That's what most of us think anyway. So, given the chance to eat lots of meat, we do. But our natural diets are mostly plant based, so how do our bodies cope with a high meat diet?
Evidence is mounting that eating too much meat can have nasty long term health impacts. We're not just talking about getting fat, although the link to obesity is an obvious one. Avoiding heart disease and bowel cancer should be reason enough to be a part-time carnivore.
Aberdeen Uni Part-Time Carnivore is affiliated to the global Part-Time Carnivore project. You can follow the project on Facebook and Twitter and, if you are not at the Uni, you can sign up on the main website, parttimecarnivore.org.
