Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World (13 page)

KF:
What is the overall solution to prevent these dangerous pathogens and bacteria?

MG:
Over the last few decades new animal-to-human infectious diseases have emerged at an unprecedented rate. According to the World Health Organization, the increasing global demand for animal protein is a key underlying factor.

Swine flu is not the only deadly human disease traced to factory-farming practices. The meat industry took natural herbivores like cows and sheep and turned them into carnivores and cannibals by feeding them slaughterhouse waste, blood, and manure. Then they fed people “downer” animals—too sick to even walk. Now the world has mad cow disease.

In 2005 the world’s largest and deadliest outbreak of a pathogen called
Streptococcus suis
emerged, causing meningitis and deafness in people handling infected pork products. Experts blamed the emergence on factory-farming practices. Pig factories in Malaysia birthed the Nipah virus, one of the deadliest of human pathogens, a contagious respiratory disease that causes relapsing brain infections and kills 40 percent of people infected. Its emergence was likewise blamed squarely on factory farming.

The pork industry in the U.S. feeds pigs millions of pounds of human antibiotics every year just to promote growth in such a stressful, unhygienic environment, and now there are these multi-drug-resistant bacteria and we as physicians are running out of good antibiotic options. As the UK’s chief medical officer put it in his 2009 annual report: “Every inappropriate use of antibiotics in agriculture is a potential death warrant for a future patient.”

In the short term we need to put an end to the riskiest practices, such as extreme confinement—gestation crates and battery cages—and the nontherapeutic feeding of antibiotics. We have to follow the advice of the American Public Health Association to declare a moratorium on factory farms and eventually phase them out completely.

This was just mind-blowing to me, to hear how dangerous viruses are growing in meat and egg production facilities, and to know that animals are so dosed with antibiotics that resistant strains of bacteria are becoming out of control. It almost sounds like science fiction. Another excellent reason to shift toward a plant-based diet.

Did you know?

• You can satisfy your protein needs with an enormous variety of delicious vegetarian foods for just pennies per day.
  
• The annual costs of meat-based diseases in the U.S., direct and indirect, are on the order of $1 trillion, and climbing—costs that show up in the exorbitant price of health care. We can only hope that when we cut out meat and dairy, by decreasing the amount of disease, we will eventually see lower medical bills.
  
• According to the former World Bank economist Raj Patel, that “cheap” burger that costs you a few bucks at a restaurant actually costs over $200 to bring to your plate when all true resource costs are accounted for. Eating vegan also lightens your overall environmental debt.
  

As I talk to people about becoming a veganist, one common refrain I hear is that it’s too expensive. When funds are low, the cheap burger or basket of chicken can appear to be the best value—the greatest density of filling calories for the lowest price. We’ve been aggressively peddled the idea that a healthy diet is an expensive diet, something only for rich folks. And our experience seems to bear that out.

I understand the frustration. It doesn’t seem right that meat should be so cheap (it’s not, but more on that later) and fresh vegetables, especially organic ones, relatively expensive. But once you look into it, the true cost of eating animal protein is higher than you can imagine. And being veganist in your approach to food is not only healthier by every measure but it can be considerably cheaper as well. In fact, many staples of a vegan diet cost very little and can be found in any grocery store—not just in specialty markets. Whole grains like quinoa or barley or brown rice, legumes like chickpeas or soybeans, and other beans like black-eyed peas and black beans are very inexpensive—certainly cheaper than processed and packaged foods. Bought in bulk, whole grains and beans can cost just pennies per meal. And because they are full of fiber, they make you feel full and satisfied (put them into soups, stews, salads, burritos, etc.), without the dangerous saturated fat of animal protein. Fresh vegetables and fruits can be found at supermarkets and farmers’ markets for very reasonable prices (see money-saving tips at the end of this chapter). Organic and specialty stores are great, but it’s certainly not necessary to empty your wallet in order to eat healthy.

In the mid-1990s,
Vegetarian Times
magazine set out to determine the cost of being a vegetarian. Two friends—one vegetarian and one not—agreed to go shopping for a week’s worth of groceries to feed their respective families of four. They shopped at the same store and made similar purchases, although the vegetarian bought soy sausages and black beans instead of chicken cutlets and ground turkey. The bottom line was that the vegetarian spent 17 percent percent less than her meat-eating friend did, and most of that difference was due to the price of meat. When extrapolated out over an entire year, they estimated that the vegetarian family saved about $1,180 (in mid-1990s dollars) on their annual food bill.

Beans, grains, veggies—these are the staples of populations around the world. Think of Mexico and South America, where inexpensive rice and beans coupled with corn tortillas and avocados are part of every diet; or rural China, where tofu with vegetables and rice, and maybe a very small bit of meat, is the norm; or India where people eat dal (lentils) with rice and vegetables every day. Not only are these populations by no means uniformly wealthy, they don’t have the diseases of wealthy countries. The general populations who eat these simple diets may get waterborne illnesses and lung infections from bad environmental conditions, but they don’t have anywhere near the rates of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes that we have—until they are exposed to our Western diet, that is.

And that’s something to think about. Not only is a healthful plant-based diet less expensive at the grocery store (unless you go crazy for packaged convenience foods, of course), it saves you personally and saves us societally in health care and many other direct and indirect costs. If you think these don’t affect you so much, think again. On the individual level alone, consider that your health insurance never pays for everything: even the best of plans charge deductibles and disallow certain medications. Being sick is expensive. More than that, a huge part of our country’s annual budget is given over to health-care costs, paid for by your tax dollars. And indirect health-care costs due to lost productivity adversely affect you in the form of higher taxes, too.

On the health-care front, when you consider that meat and dairy foods clog our bodies with saturated fat, growth hormones, and antibiotics, things that have been conclusively linked to cancer, heart disease, and obesity, as well as a general “blah” feeling, it’s certainly a lot less expensive—and less painful—to
prevent
debilitating diseases through our food choices than it is to treat them later (through bypass surgery or angioplasty, for example, which can run up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills).

Remember in the last chapter where we looked at the link between diet and Alzheimer’s? Well Alzheimer’s doesn’t just steal one’s memory or personality (as if that weren’t enough), it also costs more than you can imagine. According to a report by the Alzheimer’s Association, “from 2010 to 2050, the cost of caring for Americans sixty-five and older with Alzheimer’s disease will increase more than six times, to $1.08 trillion. Currently, $172 billion a year is spent by the government, private insurance and individuals to care for people with the disease, the most common cause of dementia.”

What about other health conditions?

A 2010 study from Emory University in Atlanta shows that obesity-related health-care costs in the U.S. have hit $145 billion and are expected to top $340 billion by 2018. That will represent more than one-fifth of all health-care spending annually, and about half of it will be publicly financed. Indirect costs from lost productivity attributable to obesity will roughly double that figure.

Heart disease costs more than $500 billion annually, and the disease is almost totally preventable with a plant-based diet. And cancer? More than $225 billion. Diabetes? About $175 billion, with an indisputable link to diet.

Disease is expensive, both to the individuals and families dealing with it and to agencies like Medicare and Medicaid, which are ultimately funded by us, the taxpayers. When you look at the skyrocketing costs of treating heart disease, cancer, diabetes, as well as diseases like Alzheimer’s, it’s clear that it makes far more sense, both morally and monetarily, on both a personal and societal level, to take preventive measures such as changing the way we eat.

It just makes sense to factor in the true costs of a meat-based diet.

In short, at the very least, a fat-and calorie-filled meat-based diet makes us feel bad. It lowers our energy and keeps us from thriving, both physically and financially. A plant-based diet, on the other hand, gives us a feeling of lightness, clear-headedness, and energy. Over time, meat-based diets can cost us our health, whereas a vegan diet delivers healthy longevity.

Why
Is
Meat So Cheap?

Getting back to the wallet, why
is
meat so cheap?

Because it’s subsidized.

That’s right. Not only does the meat industry get away with not paying the full costs of its operations—costs to animal welfare, to our health, to the watershed, to the land—it also benefits from a steady blizzard of government subsidies.

Wait! Don’t turn the page.

If you’re like me, your eyes probably glaze over at a word like
subsidies.
But subsidies are actually pretty interesting business—and not at all hard to understand.

A government subsidy is a form of financial assistance paid to an industry to help prevent that industry’s decline. The U.S. government provides all kinds of subsidies—to cover housing, water, etc.—using taxpayer money. When it comes to agricultural subsidies, our tax dollars literally keep the meat industry afloat.

Here’s how it works: With help from government subsidies, many farmers are able to sell their corn and soybeans for far less than the cost of production. The subsidies—paid for with our tax dollars—compensate them for the difference. As a result of these artificially cheap prices, owners of factory farms are able to then purchase at bargain-basement prices the grain they need to feed their chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows. This gives them an enormous advantage over foreign competitors (not to mention a huge leg up over small organic ranchers who wouldn’t think of feeding conventional [often genetically modified] feed to their animals, but that’s another story).

One lucky recipient of such subsidies is Tyson Foods, the world’s largest poultry company. Like many other meat companies, Tyson has collected billions of dollars worth of government subsidies in the last decade alone. Why does Tyson get such heavy subsidies, but companies that make healthy plant-based foods don’t? It seems so wrong. And yet from 1997 through 2005, Tyson Foods effectively collected government subsidies worth $2.59 billion.

Subsidies have given these industries such a boost that others naturally want to get in on the action. Half the fish consumed worldwide now comes from fish farms, which are lining up for their share of government subsidies. And government officials want to expand the U.S. aquaculture industry to five times its current size. It seems we have to get ready to open our wallets yet again.

These fish farms are already beneficiaries of government aid. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Small Business Innovation Research program has given away millions of dollars in grants to fish-farming companies. Even the much-maligned “stimulus” (officially, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) set aside $50 million for states to help compensate fish farmers for losses associated with the high cost of feed. These are forms of subsidies as well.

It seems that eating fish is not only a health and environmental hazard (PCBs, mercury, destruction of the aquatic food chain, antibiotics and other medicines necessary to aquaculture, etc.), but a fiscal hazard as well.

Okay, you say, so these industries get a little help. What’s so bad about that? For starters, that same public assistance is not available to fruit and vegetable growers! If it were, consumers—especially those in impoverished communities—wouldn’t feel that they had to choose between “cheap” burgers or “healthy” and “humane” fruits and veggies at the checkout line.

In other words, the prices are rigged, and those of us who want to eat the most healthy diet possible sometimes have to pay the price. That’s why it’s so important that we vote with our dollars.

We may not be able to direct large-scale government spending anytime soon, but one area where we do have control is in how we spend at the market. Every time we go to the grocery store or out to eat, we get a chance to vote against wasteful spending, simply by not buying meat, eggs, and dairy products. Eventually, these individual acts of ours
will
change the economics of agriculture, with vegetables and fruits and nuts and grains competing on a level playing field against animal agriculture.

The High Price of Poop

The government’s gross spending only gets grosser when we’re faced with this scary statistic: pound for pound, a pig produces four times as much waste as a person does. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, factory farms generate about 300 million tons of manure every year. That’s more than double the amount produced by the country’s entire human population!

Plus, densely stocked fish farms—the fastest growing form of agriculture in the world—also produce tremendous amounts of waste—everything from uneaten, chemical-laden fish feed to fish feces—that can wreak havoc on local ecosystems.

What does that have to do with you and me? All the waste produced on these farms has to go somewhere. And guess who pays for the cleanup? It’s not the factory farmers…

Highly polluting factory farms are being prioritized for government funding, but no federal guidelines regulate how factory farms spend that money to treat, store, and dispose of the one trillion pounds of animal excrement that they produce every year. Factory farms often pump animal waste into huge, putrid manure lagoons, or spray it over crops as fertilizer. Both of these disposal methods result in run-off that contaminates the soil and water and kills fish and other wildlife. There are numerous reports that humans who live near factory farms have become sick from the pollution—many suffer from respiratory ailments, neurological problems, and as suggested by a 2010 review in the
Journal of Animal Science
, the stench from these factory farms can cause sexual dysfunction: “Some odors may destroy normal positive pheromone responses resulting in impaired sexual function for people living in the vicinity of CAFO.” More hidden costs.

Americans eat, on average, some 200 pounds of meat, poultry, and fish (not to mention eggs and dairy products) per person per year. Part of the reason for this high consumption of animal protein is, of course, the low cost.

Corporate welfare in the form of agricultural subsidies, as well as cost-cutting practices on factory farms that include crowding animals together by the thousands in filthy warehouses and grinding up the scraps from dead animals and feeding them back to the survivors, have made meat cheap and readily available. What all this means is that the true and unacceptably high “cost” of meat—to our health, to the welfare of animals, to our precious ecosystem—is hidden behind a wall of price manipulations and other illusions. And even so, it can be cheaper not to eat meat at all.