Conscious health for you and the planet

- Nearly half of the water consumed in the US is used for livesock.

- In the US, animals are fed more than 70% of the wheat, corn and other grains we grow.

- According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, animals raised for food produce 20 tons of manure for every household in the US each year.

- An area of rain forest the size of seven football fields is destroyed every minute to make room for grazing cattle.

- Each Vegetarian saves 1 acre of trees every year!

- More than 260 million acres of US forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farm animals

- In the past 50 years, fishers have exterminated 90% of large fish populations

- Overgrazing beef cattle lead to the extinction of indigenous plant and animal species, soil erosion, and eventual desertification that renders once-fertile land barren.

- Crops that could be used to feed the hungry humans are instead being used to fatten livestock animaks. It takes an averge of 16 pounds of grain to produce just one pound of "edible" animal flesh.

- Cholesterol only exists in animal products, so the easiest way to lower and control cholesterol levels is to cut meat out of the diet.

- Dairy products contribute to congestion and skin problems. Most acne is caused by dairy consumption.

- Hair loss has a direct correlation to intestinal clogging. Vegetarian diets are naturally high in fiber and reverse intestinal build-up and hair-loss.

Vast tracts of land are needed to grow crops to feed the billions of animals we raise for food each year. According to scientists at the Smithsonian Institute, the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed every minute, much of it to create more room for farmed animals. Of all the agricultural land in the U.S., nearly 80 percent is used in some way to raise animals-that's roughly half of the total land mass of the U.S. More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals.

We feed more than 70 percent of the grains and cereals we grow to farmed animals, and almost all of those calories go into simply keeping the animals alive, not making them grow. Animals raised for food expend the vast majority of the calories that they are fed simply existing - just as we do. Only a small fraction of the calories consumed by farmed animals are actually converted into the meat that people eat.

A report by the United Nations in 2006 summarized the devastation caused by the meat industry. Raising animals for food, the report said, is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Livestock's contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale."

Growing all the crops to feed farmed animals requires massive amounts of water and land-in fact, nearly half of the water and 80 percent of the agricultural land in the United States are used to raise animals for food. Our taste for meat is also taking a toll on our supply of fuel and other nonrenewable resources-about one-third of the raw materials used in America each year is consumed by the farmed animal industry.

Farmed animals produce about 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the United States, and since factory farms don't have sewage treatment systems as our cities and towns do, this concentrated slop ends up polluting our water, destroying our topsoil, and contaminating our air. And meat-eaters are responsible for the production of 100 percent of this waste-about 86,000 pounds per second! Give up animal products, and you'll be responsible for none of it!

( Dennis Kucinich, Dick Gregory, Jane Goodall, Coretta Scott King, Julia Butterfly Hill, Allen Ginsberg, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato )

Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including our country's three biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

The American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have "lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease ... lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer" and that vegetarians are less likely than meat-eaters to be obese.

Well-planned vegetarian diets provide us with all the nutrients that we need, minus all the saturated fat, cholesterol, and contaminants found in animal flesh, eggs, and dairy products.

Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters. Plus, meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese than vegans are.

The consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products has also been strongly linked to osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, asthma, and male impotence. Scientists have also found that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than their meat-eating friends; this means that they are less susceptible to everyday illnesses like the flu. Vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters.

John McDougall, of the McDougal Health Center, wrote- "An important fact to remember is that all natural diets, including purely vegetarian diets without a hint of dairy products, contain amounts of calcium that are above the treshold for meeting your nutritional needs....In fact,calcium deficiency caused by an insufficient amount if calcium in the diet is not known to occur in humans."

A plant-based diet is the best diet for kids, too: Studies have shown that vegetarian kids grow taller and have higher IQs than their classmates, and they are at a reduced risk for heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other diseases in the long run.

Studies have shown that even older people who switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet can prevent and even reverse many chronic ailments.

Read the top nutrition tips for maximizing the health benefits of a vegetarian diet from GoVeg.com.

You can also request a free vegetarian starter kit from GoVeg today!

( Linda & Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Woody Harrelson, Sinéad O'Connor, Carrie Anne Moss, Moby, Nina Hagen, Jennifer Connelly, Alicia Silverstone, Joaquin Phoenix, Pink, Michael Franti, Demi Moore, Avril Lavigne, LaToya Jackson, Natalie Portman, Kate Bush, KD Lang, Benjamin Zephaniah, Pamela Anderson, Mr. Rogers-Koko's vegetarian, too! )

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
- Albert Einstein

"One of the greatest gifts you can give to the planet is to choose to become vegetarian, or even better a vegan."
- Julia Butterfly Hill

"Yeah, milk does a body good - if you are a calf."
- Woody Harrelson

"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."
- George Bernard Shaw

If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty."
- Sir Paul McCartney

"Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice. Please choose vegetarianism. Do it for the animals. Do it for the environment, and do it for your health."
- Alec Baldwin

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways and subdivision developments combined."
- Philip Fradkin (the National Audobon Society)

"If you could feel or see the suffering you wouldn't think twice. Give back life. Don't eat meat."
- Kim Basinger

"The meat industry spends humdreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their products. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for the animals."
- Chrissie Hnyde

"Imagine living in a cage in the dark, unable to move, day after day. The suffering of today's American farm animals is almost beyond belief. They don't have a choice, but you do, and their lives depend on it."
- Casey Affleck

"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life."
- Dick Gregory

"I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live. I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world - if we are superior to it."
- Mohandas Gandhi

"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Give peace a chance!"
- John Lennon

"It may take a while, but there will probably come a time when we look back and say- "Good Lord, do you believe that in the 20th century and early part of the 21st, people were still eating animals?"
-Mary Tyler Moore

"Eating meat and dairy products clogs your arteries and contributes to animal suffering. It takes 17 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. If we just eat the grain and leave the animals alone, we would feed the entire world and stop starvation."
-Russell Simmons

"Since I've gone vegetarian, my body has never felt better and my taste buds have been opened up to a world. It's one of the most rewarding choices I've ever made and I invite you to join me in living a healthy, cruelty-free lifestyle."
-Alicia Silverstone

"Men fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and arid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways."
-Voltaire

"Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own."
-Robert Louis Stevenson

"I became a vegetarian out of concern for animals, but I wasn't a vegetarian long before I realized there's something to that. I don't think I would have worked for the past five years probably were it not for my vegetarian diet."
-Bob Barker

"Right afterward I read Fast Food Nation. That book changed my life: It made me a vegetarian."
-Amber Tamblyn

"I turned down Prince William's invitation for me to sing at his birthday bash because he was spearing animals in Africa and bringing publicity to it, and I thought that was pretty disgusting!"
-Pink

"Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it's pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It's easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe and moo and walk around."
-Moby

"I have witnessed and tended to calves in rodeos who became paralyzed and whose tracheas were totally or partially severed. Slamming them to the ground has caused rupture of several internal organs leading to a slow and agonizing death."
-Dr. E.J. Finocchino

"If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero."
-Dr.Walter Willet

"Eating responsibly at McDonald's is like going to a strip club for the iced tea."
-Roger Ebert