For the conscious Pinoy
Last July, I wrote my debut article on being a vegetarian kid growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s and I was so pleased to get such positive feedback from vegetarian advocates, environmental and animal rights activists, and health-conscious readers. People have written me asking for a follow-up article on the topic, so here it is.
Where to eat. For hearty meat-free meals, I highly recommend Corner Tree Café (150 Jupiter Street, Makati) and Greens Resto (92 Scout Castor Street, Quezon City). For meat substitutes, visit Varona Vegetarian Health Foods (2008 Leveriza Street, Pasay City — a place my family has been frequenting since the ‘80s. Varona’s also offers free cooking lessons.)
Vegetarians in the Philippines? One Pinoy vegetarian movement is Luntiang Lunes, the local version of Meatless Monday, a global crusade launched in 2003 by Columbia University and John Hopkins Schools of Public Health. Together with its founder, Custer Deocaris, Ph.D. of the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), Luntiang Lunes encourages Filipinos to forgo meat and consume indigenous vegetables with brown rice at least once a week. Dr. Deocaris points out how the Philippines is blessed with food biodiversity — over 240 underutilized species of highly nutritious and (even medicinal) plants that we can use for food, and it’s very unfortunate that a lot of Filipinos are left to settle for basura like leftover burger and chicken-meals in Styro containers.
A vegetarian event happening on Sept. 29 at 7th High Club in Fort Bonifacio is “Red Runway: Fashion Show and Vegan Cuisine.” Vegan cocktails will be served throughout the event organized for the malnourished children of Muntinlupa by Caridades, a group of international fashion models working in Manila, in cooperation with the Rizal-Muntinlupa Red Cross. For tickets, you may contact 850-6813, 0917-8387672 or visit facebook.com/redrunway2011.
Avoiding meat helps save humanity and the world? All over the world, more and more are going non-meat and people don’t just convert for personal health reasons, but are also doing it for the animals, for humanity’s well-being, and for the earth. Here’s how a vegetarian diet can help save the world more than any other choice you can make:
A meat-based diet uses more than 4,200 gallons of water daily, while a plant-based one has a daily consumption of only 300 gallons of water. Three days of a typical meat-eater’s diet requires as much water as one uses for showering all year. (Yes, you save more water by not eating meat than you would by not showering for a year, so you might want to reconsider the kangkong growing in your backyard.)
About 650 gallons of water and 55 square feet of tropical rain forest may be torn down in order to raise cattle just so a single meat-eater can enjoy one juicy quarter-pound burger. (Imagine that.)
Livestock produces 20 times as much waste than humans. One feedlot alone generates as much waste as an entire city that doesn’t have a sewage system. Animal waste washed into rivers and lakes cause increased nitrates, phosphates, ammonia, and bacteria that kill plant and animal life. Gasses such as hydrogen sulfide and methane (a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide) from animal waste cause acid rain and various environmental disturbances.
It takes 10 times as much land to produce food for a meat-eater compared to a pure vegetarian. For example, an acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes that can be shared by many, but a mere 165 pounds of beef to be consumed by only a few people. (You see, mother earth can actually feed everybody, her resources are just distributed the wrong way.)
Cattle raised for meat are fed with huge amounts of grains and soy. (Of course, cows should eat grass, right? One vegan advocate equates a cow eating cereal to a person eating his tennis shoe.) These grains can actually nourish starving fellowmen all over the world and put an end to the global food crisis. For example, 16 pounds of grains can already nourish 16 people. But if you allot this portion to fatten up a cow so that it can be slaughtered in time for that tasty one-pound steak dinner, then you’ll be adding 16 people to the world’s hungry list.
Lately, everyone’s “going green,” eco-friendly bags are “in” and we see the popular slogan “Reduce, reuse, and recycle” everywhere. We may join every one of these campaigns, but I don’t think all of these really help unless we also consider and consciously take action on the serious impact eating meat has on the earth.
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“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Are you one too? Let’s get in touch: http://www.katrinaanntan.ph.
