One of my close relatives was really concerned that we don’t feed our son any meat. I have started giving eggs to him fearing low Vitamin B12 and D levels , but he has been an ‘eggetarian’ so far. My relative was saying that without eating meat we are not getting any nutrition at all. So not true. In fact if we follow the diet set by our ancestors we wont be malnourished neither would we be affected by the diseases caused by western diet.
In fact human body is designed to be herbivorous. I guess there should be hundreds of articles arguing that point. But what I want to convey here is the relatively new awareness about livestock being a major contributor to greenhouse gases, land degradation and biodiversity issues. Nearly 18% of greenhouse gases are produced by livestocks which is higher than the share generated by transportation.
There are some researches which conclude that adding a little meat and dairy to a low-fat vegetarian diet makes it more efficient in terms of land used to produce it. However I still believe the overall cost (that includes the GM corn and other feeds, water required, etc) would still be higher for a diet that uses meat.
Moral of the story: If you care about the environment you should at least become a partial vegetarian.
