Meat - Monday, October 03, 2005 (old post)
This may offend and disturb some people.I was on my way home from work today giving a ride home to one of my colleagues, and we got talking about chicken for dinner. Then we got on to the topic of vegetarians and i said that i really wasn't willing to shorten my life in order to save thousands of animals lives. And that got me wondering exactly how many animal lives have been sacrificed for my meals. So i tried to work it out, and it's a bit shocking.
Before i get into it though, i do believe that being a vegetarian can potentially shorten your life span. The lack of protein, iron and other nutrients is detrimental to your health, and also, you don't have a healthy carb/protein balance and a lot of vegetarians eat heaps of bread, rice and pasta which if they don't balance it out with exercise will cause weight gain... which can also potentially shorten your life. I believe that if you take an average meat eater and an average vegetarian then you would find that the vegetarian is generally less healthy. *Disclaimer* This is just my belief based on personal observation not fact based on scientific or medical testing. It goes the other way of course with big fat meat eaters dying of heart attacks, but that's not the average.
So anyway... i eat meat with my meals every night for dinner and about three times a week with lunch, on a sandwhich or whatever. So on average i eat meat about 10 times a week.
Now, i know that the animal didn't die directly because i wanted it for dinner, and that lot's of people get portions from the same animal. One animal feeds several people but for the purposes of my calculations I'm going to say that each meal i have contributes to the death of one animal. I'm not good enough at math to really figure this out properly. I'd also have to know how many people each type of animal feeds and how often i eat said type. So this will be fairly simple.
10 x 52 = 520 520 animals a year die because i wanted to eat part of them.
520 x 23.3 (I'm 23 years and three week old tomorrow) = 1211612116 animals have died in my lifetime in order for me to eat meat 10 times a week.
That's countless chickens, cows, sheep, pigs and fish. One deer, two ducks, maybe a half dozen frogs, one snake... and who knows what you get in some chinese takeaways.
Does this make me want to become a vegetarian?
Nope.
In fact tonight i'm having lamb. Mmmm baby sheep... it's my fave.
posted by Michelle @ 5:24 PM
4 Comments:
At 12:52 PM, October 05, 2005, Kelly said...
Noooooooooooooooooo! Not baby sheep!!! Ew thanks for talking about meat, meat and more meat. Kinda makes me wanna be a veggie :o) p.s. DON'T EAT THE BABY SHEEP!
At 3:38 PM, October 05, 2005, Lis said...
Sometimes you scare me a little.Yeah, sometimes I wish I could be a vegetarian, I have even tried (when I was like 11) and failed miserably, had to go on yucky iron tablets, it just wasn't worth it. As it is, I eat very little red meat, don't eat pig meat at all (they are a very intelligent species). I eat chicken and fish, my sister says it is okay because they are ugly, not like cute little lambs and cows. The simple fact is, we are omnivores, can't get away from it. Still, the consumption of meat, I think, is one of the more disturbing parts of life to think about. Thanks for sharing Michelle.
At 4:23 PM, October 05, 2005, Michelle said...
You're welcome :-)
At 6:44 PM, October 05, 2005, Lrav said... Meeeeeeat, meeeeeat, glorious meeeeeeatt!!!I love meat. All people that don't are stupid.
posted by ... @ 2:33 PM
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