One of the major aspects to sustainable eating is eating less meat. That doesn’t mean that everyone is going to go whole-hog (ha! ha!) and become a vegan, but it does mean that the less meat we eat, the healthier our planet will be.
REASON 1: Meat takes a lot of resources to grow.
Raising livestocks requires much more water, space, and energy than simply growing plants. Using Earth’s very limited resources in such a wasteful manner is simply unsustainable.
REASON 2: Meat is inefficient as a food source.
When we consider the challenge of feeding 6 billion people on Earth, efficiency has to be a consideration. For the amount of energy we put in, we get very little out of meat as a food source, and when we think of food globally, that’s a big problem.
REASON 3: As we increase the number of domestic animals, we decrease the biodiversity of the planet.
Biodiversity (the number of different species that exist) is hugely important to the overall health of the planet. As biodiversity decreases, we see a rise in viruses and other illnesses, and the populations that are left are less able to deal with environmental changes and adapt. Maintaining, and even increasing, the number of different species of life on Earth is an important goal and one that is made difficult to achieve when we raze forestlands to maintain livestock pens.