Eat to Be Green

What you eat can have a bigger impact on environment than car you drive.  Livestock and manure methane alone directly release greenhouse gases equivalent to what’s produced by 33 million cars.  Meat also takes an incredible amount of resources to produce.  Sorry for the crude format, but these were notes I'd jotted down for myself...

• Takes 7 pounds of corn to add 1 pound of weight to a cow.  66% of grain produced in US goes to feed livestock.


• One pound of fertilizer is used to produce 3 lbs of cooked beef (to fertilize grain to feed the cow).


• It takes 4500 gallons of water to produce 4 oz. of raw precooked beef.


• 1600 calories of fossil fuel energy are needed for every 100 calories of grain-fed beef we eat (compared to 50 calories of fossil fuel energy for every 100 calories of plant food).


• Eat less meat, or at least switch to organic or pasture- and grass-fed animals.

From Alan Greene's Raising Baby Green.