Is vegetarianism really green?

American actress Natalie Portman is best known for her roles in Leon the killer, Star Wars and Black Swan, but she is also known as a vegan in the United States. She called for veganism at the WE Day forum in Los Angeles, claiming that eggs and milk are “exploitation of female sex animals“.

Some people think that vegan, like Natalie, is noble, greener, more earth-friendly.

Yet this argument does not hold water. As far as the environment is concerned, veganism is not only not green, it’s worse than some meat-eating omnivores!

The journal Elem Sci Anth has published a paper looking at the impact of different diets on land carrying capacity.

The results showed that in the United States, the overall carrying capacity of the land was the highest if the country adhered to a vegetarian diet with dairy products or two kinds of omnivores with meat. In contrast, a vegan diet requires relatively more agricultural land. To be able to “eat”, they need to convert more pastures and forests into agricultural land, which increases carbon emissions and is very environmentally unfriendly.

Promoting a strict or all-vegetarian diet not only poses a huge risk to women’s health, but also threatens the health and even death of infants and young children.

Indeed, plant-based food can provide us with rich dietary fiber, a variety of vitamins, minerals, and so on, these animal food is not available.

However, it has to be mentioned that vegetarianism has many, many dangers. Such as increased incidence of cardiovascular disease, lack of vitamin B, vitamin D, iron, zinc and other important nutrients needed by the body.

These nutrients cannot be obtained from plant-based foods. Lack of these nutrients can lead to anemia, low immunity, memory loss and other adverse consequences.

An all-vegetarian diet can also lead to a lack of high-quality protein, which can be found in plant-based foods but is of relatively poor quality.

In Newcastle, residents were interviewed about their views on whether vegetarianism is really green.

The Tropical Rainforest notes that in order to meet The meat needs of developed countries, much of The Rainforest in Latin America has been developed for grazing. ”In terms of forest area, each hamburger sold costs more than 6.25 square meters of forest,“ it says.

The UN environment programme has urged people to abandon meat and dairy products: ”To really reduce the impact (of population growth), substantial changes must be made to diets around the world, away from all animal-related products.“

Another problem for the environment is world hunger and social injustice, which is another motivation for vegetarianism. Vast amounts of land and resources are used to produce the meat of the developed world. According to Diet for a New America, a single plot of land can support 20 times as many vegan people as the American Diet.

Each doctrine has its own stand, but the result is a seemingly interlocking effect. The debate should continue. But as AEON puts it in an article on vegetarianism, ”we want food to be delicious, diverse, cheap, convenient, sustainable, animal-friendly, local, and chemical-free. But these values are often in conflict.“

In other words, there is no perfect food.

People cannot generalize about vegetarians, because they each have their own different opinions and ideas and different values.

For example, people should eat more vegetarian food because of their physical functions. Personal belief, cultural background and educational environment; World outlook and values; Eating more vegetarian food is good for health.

In a word, people’s living habits and beliefs in the world are all kinds of people have the right to choose their favorite way of life.

The world is big, we have to learn to accommodate all kinds of different things,