The Importance of Sustainable Eating

Many people throughout the United States have cut out animal products, at least partially, from their diet. Recent studies weighing the benefits of going vegan or vegetarian have proven that reducing one’s consumption of animal products leads to a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimers, and lung disease. On average, vegetarians and vegans live 8 years longer than those who consume meat. As well as the benefits for humans, reduced meat production is very helpful for the environment. Meat production leads to pollution through fossil fuel usage, animal methane, effluent waste, and water and land consumption. Meat is one of the prime factors contributing to the current 6th mass extinction, also known as the Holocene extinction. Hundreds of millions of people around the world do not have access to clean water; converting to a plant-based diet conserves water and therefore would be helping to provide water to those in need. Scientists at the University of Oxford have found that converting to a plant-based diet could reduce one’s carbon footprint by up to 73%. Additionally, animals could be spared from unnecessary abuse and slaughter. Each person who transitions to veganism saves approximately 100 animal lives per year. If everyone in the world went vegan, the world’s food-related emissions would be reduced by 70% by the year 2050. Reducing one’s consumption of animal products is not only beneficial for animals, but for humans and the ecosystem, too.

sustainable eating
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Iliana

Sources

https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/201603-plant-based-diets/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/plant-based-diet_b_1981838#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20recent%20report,gap%20between%20smokers%20and%20nonsmokers.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160926-what-would-happen-if-the-world-suddenly-went-vegetarian

Published by Iliana Close

Iliana Close is a senior at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California with interdisciplinary interests in medicine, conservation and public health policy. She is a lifelong vegetarian and environmental activist with a passion for human and animal rights. Iliana has been competing in science fairs in biology and computational systems and analysis since she was in 5th grade and has competed at the state level for the past 3 years. She has received many 1st place and Grand Prize awards, and in 2020 she was honored to be an ISEF finalist for her project “Predicting the Development of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome Using Machine Learning and Automated Feature Detection.” When Iliana is not studying or working on her science fair projects, she spends her time taking care of her seven adopted animals, playing piano and trombone, or with the horses at the Stanford Red Barn.

One thought on “The Importance of Sustainable Eating

  1. YES!!!! I’ve been vegan for 31 years now. It is the best thing you can do for your health, and the health of this planet!
    Keep these articles coming!

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