Facts and fallacies

Fact - All herbivores and omnivores successfully build muscle and bone from plants. For humans up to 20% extra strength can be gained from eating plant based foods compared to animal based foods.

Fact – Humans’ brain size and efficiency developed by cooking starches, not eating meat.

Fact - Vegans are considerably healthier and live longer than carnists.

Fact - Animal based foods are a determinant in almost all ‘western’ diseases including - Obesity, Cancer (including colon, lung, breast, prostate, stomach, liver), leukaemia, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, vascular and heart disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s, arthritis, gout.  

Fact - Meat and milk consumption is the ‘privilege’ of the rich.   In every society, the rich have suffered and died from our modern day ‘western’ diseases.  The poor died from ‘non-western’ diseases including digestive diseases, nephritis, TB, parasites, rheumatic heart, metabolic diseases, pregnancy and birth diseases.

Fact - Meat and milk production is inefficient and polluting.

• A meat based diet requires 7 times more land compared to a vegetable diet. 
  
• Livestock production takes up 30 percent of the earth’s land surface, reducing forest areas and biodiversity. 
  
• Livestock farming accounts for over 8 percent of global human water use and is the largest single source of water pollution. It takes over 100,000 litres of fresh water to produce the average person’s annual consumption of meat and milk, considerably more than any of us use to wash in.
  
• It takes over 50,000 joules of energy to produce 1 joule of dietary meat energy (40 megajoules per meal); up to 20 times more energy than the equivalent in plant based food.  Eating meat and milk is more environmentally destructive than driving a car.
  
• Livestock represents up to half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.  The world average is 18 percent which is still more than all road transport emissions. 
  

Fallacy - Animal products build muscles and bone. Some people try to take a short cut believing that by eating animals, they can inherit the features of the animals shared ability to grow muscle and bone.  The price for this mistaken view is less strength and more chronic illnesses.
Fallacy - We need meat and milk to be healthy.