EBS Mensa goes Vegan

The governor of California Jerry Brown is saying that people should change to veggie-burgers instead of normal meat burgers in order to save resources and prevent the next drought. According to the Pacific Institute, the meat and dairy industry is making up 47% of California’s water footprint, which is enormous. While a beef burger uses 621 gallons of water for production (especially of meat) one similar veggie burger only uses 42 gallons of water in production, which is almost 15 times less water resource usage than for a beef burger.

The National Geographic statistic is that a vegan diet saves up to 600 gallons of water per day. According to UNESCO even a vegetarian diet requires only half of water in production. In front of the struggles with environmental change and damage, this water and energy saving could help to save life on earth. The average daily water footprint of a vegan diet are just 300 gallons of water, while a vegetarian diet with dairy products consumes 1200 gallons of water daily. The most water wasting diet is of course the carnivore diet which has a average footprint of 4000 gallons of water per day. In total, it takes less water to produce one food for a vegan than tp produce just a month of food for a meat eater.

Therefore, the Stockholm’s international water institution emphasized that we all should change to a 95% plant-based-diet by the year 2050. I think these numbers speak for themselves. We need to address the prejudices and start to educate more people about environmentally friendly life style.

EBS Mensa Goes Green

Source:
- Truth or Drought
- Book: Diet for a New America by John Robbins

Let’s talk about how much water is needed to produce vegan and cow milk and dairy products. It is a fact, that a carnivore and even vegetarian diet is highly water consuming.

To produce one glass of cow milk, overall 30 gallons of water are used. In comparison, one glass of almond milk costs only 23 gallons of water and a glass of soy milk only 9 gallons. Therefore, vegan milk options are far less environmentally damaging that non-vegan dairy products. To produce one pack of butter even 109 gallons of water are used. The production of 2 slices of cheese consumes 50 gallons and one scoop pf ice cream 42 gallons of water.

Compared to vegetables, milk products require at least three times more water for production. For egg production it takes ten times more water, for pork even 19 times more water and for beef even 48 times more water. It’s incredible how much water people can save by changing to a plant-based-diet. Eating lower on the food chain takes the same volume of water to feed two people instead of just one, while no nutritional value gets lost.

EBS Mensa Goes Green

Sources:
- Motherjones.com
- Scientific American: Growing More Food With Less Water
- The Water Footprint Assessment Manual: Setting the Global Standard

We found a very interesting article in the Bill Gates Notes, which we want to present.

Meat is a luxury, because the more money people earn in some regions, the more meat they are consuming. Chinas meat consumption doubled in the 1990 with the economic boom. Same phenomenon can be observed in other developing countries such as Brasil, Mexiko and others.

Even though the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also tries to provide children in Africa with meat, dairy and eggs, Bill Gates points out the negative sides of a carnivore nutrition. The raising of animals is one of the most damaging issues to our environment. Animals are feed much more calories than we can extract from them, also a great part of crops in the world are produced to feed animals. Therefore, forests become more and more eliminated in order to create farmland. Thus, not only the earth gets damaged, the increased amount of raised animals also produces more greenhouse gases and the whole production and processing damages the environment even more.
Gates therefore states: “The richer the world gets, the more meat it eats; the more meat it eats, the bigger the threat to the planet.”

Bill Gates discusses the book Should We Eat Meat? by Vaclav Smil. Smil sets up some statistics in his book, such that the quarter of all ice-free land in our world is used to feed livestock. Raising livestock and producing just one kilogram meat takes several thousands of liters of water, not only for watering animals but also for cleaning them and grow crops for them. However, extracting the greenwater from rain, only about 44 liters are used for one kilogram meat. Nevertheless, as droughts in the world increase, producing and consuming meat becomes a huge problem for our planet.

Therefore, only cutting back on meat and turn to veggie-options will prevent us from destroying our planet. This will not only reduce the environmental damage, but also more people can be fed with the same and even less land amount, which will prevent world hunger. Smil, however, sees a development towards less meat in rich countries like Germany and France, where people become more aware of the environmental issues of a carnivore nutrition. Therefore, it is our task to inform people and raise awareness.

Source: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat

EBS Mensa Goes Green

As a student moving away from parents and starting up everything new, the question arises: “What should I eat?” You will not only have to cook for yourself but also buy the food. Maybe you want to start your vegan journey as soon as you are out of your parents’ house, so if you are starting up as a vegan in a new city, here are some tips for you:
1. Stock up on some easy vegan recipes you can cook at your tiny students kitchen. Peta2 recommends the “Vegan lecker, lecker” book by Marc Pierschel because the recipes are not complicated and included basic, easy-to-find ingredients.

2. As a student you live on a certain budget and should not spend all your money on food. Tipp: visit some Turkish, Arabic or Asian stores. There you will find a great selection on fruits and vegetables, tofu, humus and great salads.

3. Visit your universities cafeteria and check on some vegan alternatives. Here is a list of vegan cafeterias in Germany: http://www.vegane-mensa.org/. Frankfurt and Wiesbaden are already offering vegan alternatives on three days per week.

4. The initiative “Käfigfreie Mensa” campaigns for eggs at German cafeterias that were not produced from hens in laying batteries. Website: http://www.kaefigfreie-mensa.de/

5. If you don`t want to cook or eat at the cafeteria, check out the Happycow website, which leads you to vegan restaurants in your town. Website: http://www.happycow.net/

6. For on-the-go snacks, visit our previous article which lists vegan options at fast-food chains and bakeries. Link: http://ebsgoesvegan.blogger.de/stories/2456142/

Have fun and enjoy.

EBS Mensa Goes Green