You Have Another Good Reason To Limit Your Meat Intake!

To prevent heart disease, one of the advices that you ought to get from doctors and dietitians is to cut down your intake of saturated fat. This means you should take less meat, a good source of saturated fat.

But now, there is another good reason for you to take less meat:

Save the Earth!

Why is this so?

Research showed that 22 per cent of the earth's total emissions of greenhouse gases come from agriculture. This is almost the same as that comes from industry but is more than that of transport. Livestock production, including transport of livestock and feed, actually accounts for nearly 80 per cent of agricultural emissions, mainly in the form of methane, a heat-trapping gas.

Japanese scientists also reported in July 2007 that 1kg of beef generates an equivalent of 36.4kg of carbon dioxide, more than the equivalent of driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

I am not sure if you have heard this before and what your reaction is. But for me, I have never heard this and I do feel shocking when I learnt about this.

Wait... There are some more figures to come...

At present, the global average meat consumption is 100 grams per person per day: each person in rich countries consumes 200 g to 250 g per day but every person in poor countries eats only 20 g to 25 g. In other words, the meat consumed by people in poor countries is only 10 percent of that are consumed by people in rich countries.

A research report recently published on 13 September 2007 by The Lancet suggested that people in rich countries should limit their meat intake to the equivalent of 1 hamburger per person per day to help the global environment.

The researchers actually suggested a 10-percent cut (equivalent to 10 g per day) in global meat consumption by 2050 in order to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture and improve the health of rich and poor nations.

Perhaps we should take less meat from now on not only to help ourselves to prevent heart disease and other diseases but also to help the people in the poor countries. More importantly, we can also help the environment for our next generation!