“ Which is more responsible for global warming: your BMW or your Big Mac? Believe it or not, it’s the burger.”
—Bryan Walsh, Time
Beef: up to 6 ounces a month
Sirloin, tenderloin, top round, or 90 or 95 percent lean ground beef
Greener: minimal packaging, all natural (no antibiotics or growth hormones), grass fed, local, and organic
Kobe beef (An ultra-luxe splurge. Considered the “foie gras” of beef because of its rich marbling of fat; to earn the Kobe beef designation, it must be slaughtered in Japan.)
Beef from Brazil or other tropical areas where cooling rainforests are burned to make way for burgers
High-fat cuts (including brisket and ribs)
Ground beef less than 90 percent lean or fast-food burgers
Processed deli/lunchmeats
Worst offenders: highly processed meats, meats with a high degree of packaging, meat flown in an airplane to reach you, meat raised in another part of the world
Now before we begin, I have a confession to make. As a dietitian, I hesitate to launch this section of the book with advice to “eat less” of something. For many people, that’s a cue to grab a voodoo doll of their dietitian and begin pricking away. After all, who wants to be told to eat less? Certainly none of my clients, and probably not you. Truth be told, if beef weren’t such a hot button, I definitely would have been tempted to bury this chapter further back in the book. But it is. So take a deep breath and read on.
First, the basics. In my experience, most Americans seem to drastically overestimate how much protein they actually need. How much is enough? Most adults need just under 1 gram of protein for every kilogram of body weight, or about 4 grams of protein for every 10 pounds of body weight (for the average 150-pound man, about 60 grams). That translates to about 15 percent of total calorie intake, and it’s worth pointing out that most Americans easily meet this requirement without even trying.
So you may be asking, If we’re getting enough already, why the push to protein-rich plant foods? Remember that protein comes not by itself, but bundled in a package along with many other nutrients. And that package makes all the difference.
Trust me. The goal of this chapter is not to turn you vegetarian (although if you want to, that’s fine, too). Rather, it is to welcome you to the world of the flexitarian, a critical key to leaner, greener living.
The term flexitarian was coined sometime in the ’90s, but it’s steadily finding its way into the mainstream. A “flexitarian” is someone who follows a primarily plant-based diet, with limited amounts of meat, fish, and chicken. Back in the day, your hippie cousin or younger sister may have called herself a “semi-vegetarian” or “almost vegetarian”; these essentially mean the same thing.
I like to use “flexitarian” because the idea is to keep it easy and flexible, for the inevitable bumps in the road that life will hand you. Clients like it because it doesn’t sound as restrictive to them, which makes it more doable. I also like it because, after all, you aren’t a vegetarian. You are a flexitarian, who can still have the occasional splurge of red meat—but you now recognize that it’s truly a splurge in every sense.
Eating lower on the food chain is a remarkably easy means to getting lean fast because, ounce per ounce, plant protein foods are significantly lower in fat and calories than animal protein foods. As a general rule of thumb, I suggest aiming for at least 60 percent of your protein to be coming from plant sources: This means incorporating more high-protein plant foods such as beans, legumes, tofu, and whole grains into your diet and thinking of animal proteins as weekly instead of daily additions.
And if you have wavered in your “staying power” in the past, take heed. Eating lower on the food chain may also be one of the best strategies to not only lose weight, but to keep it off. We’ll delve more into the slimming benefits of those La Luscious Legumes in Chapter 7, but a 2007 study found that people following a diet free of animal products lost almost three times as much weight as those following a conventional low-fat diet, and they were able to maintain that advantage even 2 years later.1 While this research looked at people who excluded all animal products (vegans), when you become a flexitarian, when you eat lower down on the food chain more often, you will get closer to reaping these types of weight benefits.
Remember that packing your plate with plant foods is an easy way to keep volume high while trimming calories. What’s more, this type of eating pattern also improves your intake of disease-fighting phytonutrients and fiber (did you know that constipation is the number one gastrointestinal complaint to doctors in America?), as well as vitamins A, C, and E, selenium, and zinc.
So what’s to gain besides an easier means to weight loss? Plenty. A growing body of research continues to pump up the notion that plant proteins are also healthier for your body than animal proteins. A few highlights: People who eat less animal protein tend to be thinner, and they have lower rates of heart disease and colon cancer. What’s more, people who abstain from beef have lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels than those who eat it.2 And a National Cancer Institute study found that when men were asked to add 1½ cups of beans a day to their diets, they lost 10 pounds in the first month.3 Tastes great, and more filling.
Here’s another immediate bonus: A flexitarian diet is also cheaper. (Remember college, when you loaded up on rice and beans because it was cheaper than meat?) In fact, globally speaking, a meat-heavy diet is a rich person’s diet, and it’s linked directly to what health experts call diseases of affluence: heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure.
But we’re not the only rich ones anymore. As countries such as China become more affluent, they are clamoring for more meat in their diets, too. The question is: Heart health aside, what will the impact be as more countries demand to eat like Americans?
While I don’t know how it will exactly shake out with China per se, chew on this: Can you guess how long it would take before the Costa Rican rainforest would be completely gone if it were cleared to produce enough beef for Costa Ricans to eat as much beef, per person, as the people of the United States? One year. What about Indonesia? Three and a half years.4
I have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. Framing our consumption in these terms stops me in my tracks. I can’t help but shudder at the thought that if people around the world adopted an American eating style, what might the world look like for my kids? Who should be eating this way at all? Am I suddenly a socialist? No, I conclude. I’m just a mom who’s beginning to realize just how much food choices matter.
Clearly, focusing on the food chain matters. Take a look at “Focus on the Food Chain to Save Money, Calories, and Carbon” below and you’ll see three things. Number one, you can see how easy it is to reach your daily protein goals (and how a person can blow through his or her total daily needs with one good-size piece of meat at dinner). Number two, you can see how easy it is to shed hundreds of carbon-heavy calories from your weekly choices by swapping to plant proteins. And number three, as promised, you’ve also now freed up a bunch of money for your new lean and green lifestyle. Switching to plant-based proteins not only saves fossil fuel energy, but it’s also a means to cutting your grocery bill and one of the fundamental pillars to creating better health within yourself.
| PROTEIN SOURCE (4 OZ) |
COST PER POUND | CALORIES | GRAMS OF PROTEIN |
| 80 percent lean beef, cooked |
$3.69 | 288 | 26 |
| Porterhouse steak, broiled |
$9.99 | 388 | 24.7 |
| Firm tofu, raw | $2.26 | 94 | 10.1 |
| Lentils, cooked | $1.00 | 115 | 9 |
| Quinoa, cooked | $4.49 | 111 | 4 |
| Chickpeas | $0.80 | 143 | 6 |
Flexitarian living is also a powerful way to keep your cardiovascular system healthy. Why does that matter? Heart disease is the leading killer in America, accounting for almost 40 percent of total deaths a year.6 In fact, in the time it took you to read this chapter so far, one or two Americans have died from heart disease (about one every 34 seconds). And millions more are saddled with chronic heart disease that requires medications and lifestyle adjustments that eat away at their vitality and quality of life.
Of all the research that has examined the relationship between diet and health, one of the most consistent findings is that limiting red meat to a couple of times a month at most is the best strategy for optimal cardiovascular health.7 Comprehensive, groundbreaking studies such as the best-selling The China Study discovered consistent evidence that all pointed to the same finding: People who ate the most animal foods got the most chronic disease, and people who ate the most plant foods were the healthiest and more likely to avoid chronic disease.8 The research also points in the exact same direction when it comes to healthy aging, balanced energy, improved digestion, and reduced inflammation, one of the underlying mechanisms in many chronic diseases. My own personal experience has been the same; I’ve found that there’s a tremendous sense of energy and vitality that people often gain as they begin to move to a more plant-based diet. And that’s a wonderful plus, because “improved energy” is one of the things most people are looking for.
All of this, in short, is why so many of the leading health organizations recommend a diet based mostly on plants, with limited amounts of the right kinds of animal protein.
“I am a working single mother, so I have learned ways to eat the best on a budget—to shop for what is on sale and stock up on specials, to buy smaller portions of the more expensive products such as organic beef, and to serve it with more brown rice or sweet potatoes and larger portions of vegetables.
“But I have not learned to compromise. This is a priority of mine—to be healthy and to set a good example for my daughter. The outcome of this has been feeling and looking better as well. Everyone wins: the pocketbook, my waistline, and now, our planet.”
So rest assured, if you enjoy downing a good steak or burger once in a while, that is fine. In fact, if it’s truly “once in a while,” it’s perfect, because it’s now striking a much better balance and represents a more sustainable eating style on all fronts.
Now that you have a clear picture of the lean benefits, let’s moooove on to looking at the eco-costs of our heifer habit.
Let’s get right to it: Bovines are right up there with smokestacks as critical to the global warming crisis (otherwise, like I said, I’d have tucked this chapter deep in the back of the book).
“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,”9 according to a 2006 report by the United Nations. The report found that livestock account for 65 percent of human-produced nitrous oxide, a gas that has nearly 300 times the warming power of CO2. In fact, beef consumption is so important to your personal carbon footprint, in addition to your own long-term health, that if you change only one thing about your diet, let it be this: Eat less beef. A lot less. Starting right now.
The United States is the number one beef producer in the world; in 2005 Americans downed an average of 67 pounds per capita per year. As I’ve said, this aspect of our diet is part of what gives Americans the largest carbon feet in the world. If you choose foods lower on the food chain, it’s an instant way to go greener. “The Meat-Carbon Connnection” below helps put the exact carbon savings into context.
| HOW MUCH MEAT DO YOU EAT? |
CUT BACK BY THIS | AND SAVE THIS |
| Well below average | 2 oz/day | 819 lbs CO2/year |
| Below average | 4 oz/day | 1,637 lbs CO2/year |
| Average | 8 oz/day | 3,274 lbs CO2/year |
| Above average | 16 oz/day | 6,548 lbs CO2/year |
American meat eaters, on average, are responsible for a personal contribution of 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person than vegetarians each year;11 multiply that by the 290 million meat- eating Americans, and it’s a larger carbon output than many countries.12
Okay, so by now you get it. Too much beef, bad. Plants, good. Now let’s see how easy it is to move from knowledge into action without creating mutiny at the dinner table.
“Here we had been thinking about switching lightbulbs and walking to the bus stop as part of our New Year’s resolution to live a greener lifestyle, and I had no idea that shopping for food could be such a big part of our impact,” said Jennifer Waddell, a director with Timberland Corporation in New Hampshire. When her children were given homework from a “global warming” unit, the family decided that they would take steps to go greener. Among their many lifestyle changes, they’ve decided to skip their weekly steak-on-the-grill meals and have instead transformed their regular “make your own chili night” into a vegetarian feast, full of fun toppings the kids can pile on themselves. That’s an instant carbon-cutter. Fifty-two fewer beef-centered meals a year multiplied by a family of five. Simple. Powerful.
So now let’s get back to why that big burger is such a problem for global warming. According to researchers at the University of Stockholm, the average cheeseburger (including bun and the usual toppings) releases somewhere between ½ to 1 pound of carbon per burger, depending on various inputs (say, gas versus coal power, whether the cukes were grown in a greenhouse or not).13
While these figures are based on European metrics that don’t equate exactly to the United States, if you consider that the average American eats about three burgers a week, and that there are 300 million of us doing so, that translates to 75,000 to 150,000 tons of carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of this collective burger habit. This estimate doesn’t even include that “enteric formation” I was telling you about; add this into the equation, and the number climbs even higher.
Put another way, a 2008 study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan found that 2.2 pounds of beef (about eight quarter-pounders’ worth) creates the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles; that’s enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.14
I point out these facts not as a beef basher, but as your nutritionist. I understand that Americans love beef—truth be told, I love to eat beef from time to time. And I understand that a significant segment of America makes its living in the cattle industry. But I also understand that we are in an era of new realities and, like many sectors of our economy—automotive, energy, electronics—these new realities will require some industries to adapt to change. To me, this is an opportunity to insist on the highest quality of beef, to shower praise on beef companies with sustainable, ecofriendly practices, and to bring our consumption, at the very least, to levels that are compatible with the best health we can give ourselves and our children.
If you’re a die-hard beef fan and are still having trouble imagining life with fewer burgers, remember this. No matter what your current eating habits, you can have immediate, significant savings by just cutting back. So often people lose the chance to be good because they don’t think they can be great. I used to see this “black and white” thinking all the time when I was actively counseling clients in Boston.
It turns out that just about every step of conventional cattle production is warming to the planet. First, you have to grow their feed, which takes energy. It also takes pesticides and fertilizers, both of which are petroleum based. In addition, cattle need water (lots of water) and other agricultural “inputs” and management.
That’s just the input side. Then there is what can delicately be referred to as enteric formation. This is known more commonly on the street as burps and farts. Then there is what can delicately be referred to as the waste issue. This is known more commonly on the street as poop. Believe it or not, cow burps, farts, and poop are a significant contributor to global warming.
Pound for pound, beef is an inefficient way to deliver calories as compared with plants. Consider the following:
About 7 pounds of corn and 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of body weight on cattle
About 1,600 fossil fuel calories to produce 100 beef calories (compared to about 50 calories to make 100 plant calories, which is about 32 times more efficient)16
More than 200 gallons of fuel to raise a 1,200-pound steer on a feedlot17
About 5 times as much water to grow feed grains as it does to grow fruits and vegetables
33 million: the number of cars needed to produce the same level of global warming as is caused by the methane gas emitted by livestock and their manure in the United States18
Eating a low-meat diet uses 41 percent less energy and generates 37 percent less carbon than a typical diet.19
19 percent: the proportion of methane contributed by cows and other livestock (methane is 21 times more potent in global warming than carbon dioxide20)
In 2000, livestock in the United States produced about 3 trillion pounds of manure, which is about 10 times as much as people produced.21 Roughly half of all irrigation water in the United States goes toward livestock.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has a fun and easy tool to calculate your impact of eating animal products (available at www.cspinet. org/EatingGreen/calculator.html). You type in how many typical servings of different animal products you eat each week, and it gives you a yearly calculation of your personal impact. If you are an average American eating 64 pounds of beef per year, your personal impact is the following:
If you cut out just 3.5 ounces of beef (about 1 serving) per week, you’ll save more than 6 pounds of fertilizer and 1,500 pounds of manure.
So if you’re having trouble letting go, consider this: A great goal is to just cut your current meat habits in half; that would have a major carbon and health savings. So if you currently eat beef six times a week, trim it down to three or four and know you’ve done something good. According to one study, the substitution of 1 pound of bread for 1 pound of beef monthly throughout a year by US citizens would save energy equal to that contained in more than 120 million barrels of oil.23
And as you will soon learn, there are greener types of beef— organic, grass-fed beef is a different story for both your health and your carbon count. So while Americans definitely need to eat less, the good news is you can now put some of those newly freed-up dollars into the highest-quality, cleanest beef you can afford.
Ultimately, what you eat is your choice. But it turns out that the consequences of those choices run deeper than most of us have previously thought. So now that you know, will you shut your eyes but continue to open your mouth? Before you answer, let’s turn to two other major protein sources: chicken and pork.
1. G. Turner-McGrievy et al., “A Two-Year Randomized Weight Loss Trial Comparing a Vegan Diet to a More Moderate Low-Fat Diet,” Obesity (2007) 15:2276–81.
2. F. M. Sacks et al., “Effects of Ingestion of Meat on Plasma Cholesterol of Vegetarians,” JAMA (1981) 246:640–44; A. Ascherio et al., “Prospective Study Nutrition Factors, Blood Pressure and Hypertension among US Women,” Hypertension (1996) 27:1065–72; A. Chao et al., “Meat Consumption and Risk of Colorectal Cancer,” JAMA (2005) 293:172–82; T. Key and G. Davey, “Prevalence of Obesity Is Lower in People Who Do Not Eat Meat,” BMJ (1996) 313:816–17.
3. CSPI Nutrition Action Newsletter, “New Year’s Resolutions,” January/February (2007) 32(1):3–6.
4. Worldwatch Institute Web site. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/791. Accessed August 4, 2008.
5. USDA Calculator: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/index.html. Prices taken from Super Stop & Shop Supermarket, 37 Enon Street, Beverly, MA 01915, June 9, 2008, and Bob’s Red Mill Website: http://www.bobsredmill.com/ catalog/index.php?action=express. Accessed June 9, 2008.
6. American Heart Association.
7. See the research outlined in Walter Willett, MD, and the Harvard School of Public Health, Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), and Bradley J. Wilcox, Craig Wilcox, and Makoto Suzuki, The Okinawa Program (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001).
8. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2004).
9. “Rearing Cattle Produces More Greenhouse Gases Than Driving Cars, UN Report Warns,” UN News Centre, November 29, 2006.
10. http://www.greenprogress.com/carbon_footprint_calculator.php.
11. Eshel and Martin, 2006.
12. Results of a 2003 Vegetarian Resource Group Harris Interactive poll, http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2003issue3/vj2003issue3poll.htm.
13. A. Carlsson-Kanyma et al., Energy Use in the Food Sector (Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholm University, 2000).
14. O. Akifumi et al., “Evaluating Environmental Impacts of the Japanese Beef Cow-Calf System by the Life Cycle Assessment Method,” Animal Science Journal (2007) 78(4):424–32.
15. M. Jacobson, Six Arguments for a Greener Diet, (Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2006).
16. Eshel and Martin, 2006.
17. M. Nestle, What to Eat, p. 139.
18. M. Jacobson, Six Arguments for a Greener Diet.
19. I. Hoffman, “Ecological Impact of a High-Meat, Low-Meat and Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian Diet,” presentation, Fourth International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition, April 8–11, 2002, Loma Linda University, School of Public Health.
20. US Dept. of Energy, 2004b. “Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2003,” Report No. DEO/EIA-0573(2003), December 13, 2004.
21. M. Jacobson, Six Arguments, p. 83.
22. http://www.cspinet.org/EatingGreen/calculator.html
23. Mayer and Rawitscher, 1979.