The environmental cost of producing and eating meat has been something I’ve been reading and thinking about for a long time now. I understand that, as a person deeply concerned about the environment and the conservation of our natural resources, I need to make my lifestyle work in harmony with those concerns. I try to run an energy-efficient household, try to use natural products around the house and try to clean it using environmentally friendly solutions. I understand that each time I go out and buy something that can’t be easily recycled, I’m giving my personal OK to the industries that produced those products without any concern for how it may add to the growing junk piles and landfills here on our Earth.

This also applies to eating meat, as it is very, very resource intensive and currently very, very harsh to the environment. I have seesawed over the years from hardly eating any meat to moderate meat intake. I can’t honestly explain why, as someone who has a great deal of compassion for the animal world, I ever consider meat-eating to be an acceptable thing to do. I guess diet is something that is very cultural and humans tend to stick with the food they grew up with, food that signifies comfort and taste. So, maybe it’s a habit, I don’t know. I can’t deny that meat tastes good to me. It does. However, I’ve learned to make some good vegetarian food and eating it doesn’t feel like a letdown, but more like a pleasant treat. So, I slowly but steadily experiment with more recipes, stick with the ones that work, and then remake them often enough that they become familiar, and therefore comfortable. I hope I do an even better job this year, that is my goal.  There are many more reasons than dietary health and compassion for animals to consider reducing one’s meat intake.  It will translate into better land-use practices which in turn influences our water and air, our fuel prices and the price of basic food staples across the world, where many humans simply aren’t getting enough to eat.  That means, more vegetables, grain and legumes for you, which in turn should help to ease or even eliminate the malnutrition we are still fighting to this day across the world.  If we do our part, and change our lifestyles, that may put pressure to end the huge subsidies that go to agriculture in the United States and Europe, which have helped to make our food choices in the U.S. very bland indeed.

This is a very well written and informative article by Mark Bittman for the New York Times on the consequences of a human population that is eating more meat around the world, and how that affects the environment.

• Meaty Dilemma