The Benefits of Adopting a Plant-Based Diet
To start to wrap things up, I'd like to help you visualize how you can incorporate more plant-based foods into your diet. A. It really is so much easier than you think. 90 percent of the battle is all in your head. (1) The truth is, the hardest part of deciding to give up cheese, steak, or any animal-based food is just deciding to do so. (2) Of course, major dietary changes do require you to make some temporary adjustments and do take time to fully set in, but they are worthwhile in the long run. 2. And remember to take baby steps! a. You don't need to go home tonight and swear off all meat and dairy forever. Real and sustainable change almost never happens overnight. b. Instead, when you get up for breakfast tomorrow, consider replacing that bacon with a banana—much healthier for you—or try pouring organic soymilk on your cereal instead of dairy milk!
And in this transformation, college is a great place to start! 1. The dining halls here at UConn--especially Whitney--offer a range of vegetarian and vegan options. 2. Or, if you live off-campus, you are free to experiment with new recipes, fruits and vegetables, and healthier plant-based packaged foods without having to worry about whether or not your family will like them. IX. Honestly, there is no reason for us to be overexploiting our animals and our planet when so many cheap and tasty plant-based alternatives are available.
The animal industry is also largely responsible for today's worsening global water crisis, in which our main water sources are being polluted by animal waste. 1. Between watering the crops that farmed animals eat, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning away the filth in factory farms, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, more than half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food. c. All factors considered, you save more water by not eating a pound of meat than you do by not showering for 6 months! 2. Animals raised for food in the U.S. also produce far more waste than the entire U.S. human population—roughly 89,000 pounds of fecal matter per second, all without the benefit of waste-treatment systems. 3. Think about all this waste flooding into our lagoons, rivers, oceans, and ultimately our drinking water. There's only so much that our water purification systems can do as the pollution crisis worsens year after year. TRANSITION: But again, while the threat is formidable, the situation is not hopeless; there are steps that we can all take in the right direction, away from animal products, which can help reduce any further damage to the environment. Now I noticed in your surveys that many of you were interested in knowing more about the health benefits of incorporating more plant-based foods into your diet, or even going vegetarian or vegan.
As it turns out, research in the past 10 years has overwhelmingly supporting the claim that the health benefits of incorporating more plant-based foods and fewer animal-based foods into your diet far exceed the entailed risks. A. Recent research has indicated a close correlation between vegetarian and vegan eating and longer lifespans. 1. According to a 2002 University of California study of tens of thousands of vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous Seventh-Day Adventists, vegetarians lived on average almost eight years longer than the general meat-eating population, which is similar to the gap between smokers and nonsmokers.
The results of this study also indicated that, for the subjects involved, vegans were on average 30 pounds lighter than meat eaters.
As summarized by Green Living Magazine, flesh foods are also often loaded with dangerous neurotoxins and contaminants such as hormones, carcinogenic herbicides and pesticides, and antibiotics. 1. Because these toxins are fat-soluble, they concentrate in the fatty flesh of the animals we eat. 2. Food poisoning-inducing viruses, parasites, and bacteria such as salmonella and trichinella are also inevitably present in the meat products we consume.
On factory farms, pigs, like dairy cows, are treated not as animals but as industrial machines. Female sows are kept in metal cages so small that they do not even have room to turn around.
Like cows, they are fed hormones and antibiotics to maximize their growth rate; but due to the sheer number of animals typically crammed into each Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, or CAFO (as factory farms are formally called), sick individuals rarely receive adequate veterinary attention. Those that do survive through their reproductive peak face a long and suffocating truck ride to the slaughterhouse.
TRANSITION: As I have already emphasized, I would first like to talk to you about life on a factory farm, and the daily horrors that millions of cows, pigs, and chickens face every day throughout the United States. The competition to produce inexpensive meat, eggs, and dairy products has led animal agribusiness to treat animals as objects and commodities. The worldwide trend is to replace small family farms with 'factory farms' - large warehouses where animals are confined in crowded cages or pens."
Now before I go any further, I'd like to show you a brief video clip that will give you a tiny window into the truth of what farm animals endure in the journey from the farm to your plate. 2 out of every 3 farm animals in the world are now factory farmed. Just think, if that video clip was hard to watch, consider what must be like to experience it.
And in response to any concerns you might have as to a plant-based diet lacking adequate protein, iron, or calcium, let me just tell you: you are not any more likely to be deficient in any of these things as a vegan or vegetarian than you are as an omnivore. The key to a nutritionally sound plant-based diet is variety. 1. A healthy and varied plant-based diet includes fruits, vegetables, plenty of leafy greens, whole grain products, nuts, seeds, legumes, and if you like, soy-based meat substitutes and dairy products . 2. Some plant-based protein sources include lentils, chickpeas, tofu, peanut butter, soy milk, almonds, spinach, brown rice, whole wheat bread or cereal, potatoes, any kind of beans, and much more. 3. Some plant foods that are rich in iron and calcium include collard greens, hummus, calcium-fortified orange juice, kale, tahini, almonds, broccoli, and soy yogurt.
One great thing about sticking to a plant-based diet is that it helps you get creative with how you combine your vegetables, fats, and proteins so that no salad tastes boring or bland.
When you eat a plant-based diet, you are living lower on the food chain and are in the long run reducing your carbon footprint. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, "livestock production is one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity." In this same report, experts estimated that livestock accounted for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide that year, a bigger share than that of all transportation combined. The United Nations Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department has also indicated that grazing now occupies 26 percent of the Earth's terrestrial surface.
Raising animals for food is also grossly inefficient, because while animals eat large quantities of grain, soybeans, oats, and corn, they only produce comparatively small amounts of meat, dairy products, or eggs in return. 1. Today in America, more than 70 percent of the grain and cereals that we grow in this country are fed to farmed animals. 2. Only about 10% of the energy contained in animal grains can be transferred through meat to humans. So many of the world's hunger problems could be solved by simply switching to more plant-based food options!
And so as I conclude, you at this point have two options. A. You can walk out of here and try your best to forget what you've just heard, to not think of the damage and suffering that was inflicted in the making of that burger in your hand, or you can do yourself, America's farm animals, and our planet a favor by making a change. B. And I challenge you all today to make that change--wherever you are right now in the spectrum from carnivore to vegan, to take that next step toward sustainability. Honestly, what's the worst that can happen?
Thank you.
Introduction -Disconnect (upcoming speech, holiday), close your eyes 1) Imagine spending years on end lying in a cage no wider than your own body, too small for you to stand up or even turn around. 2) Imagine spending years of incremental thirst and starvation, followed by a painful forced gorging with food that makes you sick. 3) And imagine spending your entire life in abject terror of those who are supposed to take care of you.
That does not adequately describe the miserable existence of an animal raised for food in the United States today. The reality is much, much worse. Today, I would like to talk to you about the harms of the animal industry and the benefits of eating a plant-based diet, particularly those relating to animal cruelty prevention, environmental impact, and health and longevity.
In order to keep up unnaturally high levels of milk production, dairy cows are drugged to be kept perpetually and painfully pregnant. They are kept in stalls so small that they do not even have room to turn around, are force-fed a corn-based diet that makes them sick, and are made to spend months on end standing knee-deep in their own manure.
These animals daily suffer udder infections, metabolic disorders, and lameness, often with little or no veterinary care. Since it is unprofitable to keep dairy cows alive once their milk production declines, they are usually killed at about 5 years of age, though their normal lifespan exceeds 20.
Virtually all U.S. birds raised for food are factory farmed inside densely populated sheds and cages.
To cut losses from birds pecking each other in frustration, farmers cut half of chicks' beaks with a hot blade and no anesthesia. The birds suffer severe pain for weeks. Chickens and turkeys raised for meat are administered growth hormones which sometimes cause them to grow so fast that their bones cannot keep up with the weight increase. As a result, it is not uncommon for birds to break their legs just trying to stand up. TRANSITION: Fortunately, choosing to include more plant-based foods in your diet can help reduce the demand that drives these cruel industries; and every person who chooses to go vegan on average saves the lives of over 100 animals each year.
