I'm not a stellar cook, but I must say my dinner was delicious tonight! I bought some couscous from one of the international stores (more like a pantry, size-wise) on Saturday. I grabbed it along with a jar of pesto and some chick peas because, even though it was a seriously pricey purchase, I needed something new! So tonight was couscous with sun-dried tomatos (another reason I bought it... they were in the box and I don't see them too often around here), plus sauteed eggplant, bok choy and green pepper. YUM! On that note, just wanted to post some factoids here for any of you who aren't aware how much your steak costs. (wink) Just humor me, I am practicing for my future social studies students!!

Livestock consumes 70% of U.S. grain production. Twenty million people die each year as a result of malnutrition and starvation. Americans could feed 100,000,000 people by reducing their intake of meat by just 10%.

One acre of prime land can produce many pounds of edible product. Here are a few examples:
30,000 pounds of apples
40,000 pounds of potatoes
50,000 pounds of tomatoes
250 pounds of beef

Livestock-cattle, poultry, goats, sheep- totaling 15 billion worldwide now outnumber people three to one. Livestock graze on half of the world's land mass. The explosion of livestock poulations has resulted in a parellel explosion of animal wastes that pollute surface and ground water. U.S. livestock produces 230,000 pounds of excrement per second. The amount of waste created by a 10,000-head feed lot is equal to the waste of a city of 110,000 people.

World livestock production is now a significant factor in the emission of two of the four global warming gasses: carbon dioxide and methane. Every steak we eat has the same effect as a 25-mile drive in a typical American car.

Each year, an estimated 125,000 square miles of rain forest are permanently destroyed, bringing about the extinction of approximately 1,000 plant and animal species.

Producing one pound of feedlot steak results in the loss of 35 pounds of topsoil. It takes 200 to 1,000 years to form one inch of topsoil.

It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 edible pound of beef. It takes 49 gallons of water to produce 1 edible pound of apples.

Eighty percent of the meat produced in the United States contains drugs that are passed on to you when you eat meat.

Animal products contain large quantities of saturated fat, cholesterol, and have no dietary fiber. The U.S. Surgeon General has stated that 68% of all diseases are diet related. A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and grains (and free from animal products) can prevent, improve, and sometimes cure breast cancer, impotence, and obesity.

Seventy-five percent of federal poultry inspectors way they would not eat chicken.

Seeing the root cause of our problems is how we can begin to solve them most effectively. Each individual has the opportunity to make a difference in creating a sustainable world for ourselves and future generations. There is no escaping the ecological cost of eating meat, but there are ways to cut the price.
stolen from Student's Vegetarian Cookbook. Raymond, Carole. 1997, Prima Publishing:Rocklin, CA.

Just promise me you'll consider these statistics (and they're a few years old so it could be worse!) before buying your next tray of ground beef or your chicken sandwich at lunch, ok?