A Mess of Meat

By far the most difficult thing I encountered this week in maintaining a meatless diet was how busy my week was. Not only did I have my schedule completely filled, but my family made their annual visit here too. While I have been self-disciplined throughout the past week on my own, as I even ordered a tofu burrito from Don Juan’s (I didn’t even know they offered tofu), it was way more difficult with my family here. My whole family loves to eat meat. One day we were at lunch and I told my brother I had planned on taking them to a burger place for dinner, he was upset that he couldn’t order a burger for lunch too. The social pressure to eat meat around my family occurs on an everyday basis when I live with them. I admit, I did eat meat when I went to Slainte (a restaurant known fro their stuffed burgers) with my family, but at least we ordered the Irish nachos without meat, so that’s a little better right?

http://www.bu.edu/sustainability
http://www.bu.edu/sustainability

While there are many resources that have a ton of data supporting the idea that vegetarian diets are more sustainable that meat-based diets, there is another question that is still unanswered: are vegetarian diets sustainable, or are they just more sustainable that meat-based diets? I thought this was a particularly interesting idea in the Vegetarianism and the Environment article. Chooseveg.com provides a lot of data supporting the lower impact of vegetarian diets on the environment. One statistic that stood out to me in the article and the chooseveg.com website was the mass amount of water used to produce animal meat. Water usage is something that many people think about as a distinct topic, but it is very intertwined with the production of meat. I almost feel like having a vegetarian diet is killing two birds with one stone. I could have done my sustainable behavior challenge on my water usage, like shortening my shower time or turning my faucet off more when I brush my teeth, but I feel like I am limiting my water usage by having a vegetarian diet. Here are the links to the resources I looked at, they have great statistics!

http://www.chooseveg.com/environment

http://umurj.org/feature-articles/vegetarianism-and-the-environment/

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *