reduce oil use, of a daily activity, by 90%, with almost no effort required

how...

animal foods require 27 times more oil to produce the same amount of calories, as plant foods do.

Animal foods use 47 calories for each calorie of food produced, and plant foods use 1.7 calories to produce a calorie.
Compared to the 47 calories of oil used for animal foods, plant foods use 45.3 less calories of oil... that's 90%+ less oil


The data is from Dr. David Pimentel at Cornell University, who does research as an agricultural ecologist.

http://collections.ic.gc.ca/highway/english/energy/live.html The data measures the kilocalories of fossil fuel required to produce kilocalories of food.

Figures on the webpages, with the ratio corrected.

Ratio = Fossil fuel energy used to produce food : energy provided by food (both in Kilocalories)

Oil Used : Food Produced

Range beef -- 10 : 1
Chicken ----- 16 : 1
Range lamb -- 16 : 1
Milk --------- 19 : 1
Eggs -------- 28 : 1
Beef -------- 35 : 1
Pork -------- 68 : 1
Lamb -------188 : 1

Corn --------- 0.4 : 1
Wheat ------- 0.46 : 1
Soy ---------- 0.24 : 1
Apple -------- 0.9 : 1
Potato ------- 0.72 : 1
Spinach ------ 5.0 : 1
Tomato ------ 1.6 : 1

Animal foods range from using 10-188 calories of fossil fuel, to create 1 calorie of food.
Plant foods range from using .24-5 calories of fossil fuel, to create 1 calorie of food.

The average animal food efficiency is 47(input):1(output)
The average plant food efficiency is 1.7(input):1(output)

So of the foods measured, plant foods require 27 times less fossil fuel energy than animal foods do, to produce the same number of calories of food.


also help reduce the 100+Billion pounds of manure generated each year that pollutes our groundwater, pollutes air quality, causes massive fishkills in streams and rivers, and creates huge amount of greenhouse methane..


more environmental aspects of diet, and how a more plant based diet helps (even 1 veggie meal a week)...
http://www.helpusall.com/foodandenvironment.html

 

You need to change Animal foods to factory animal foods.hunting and fishing meat uses much less oil then any type of farm. which is something allot of people do in my area.

or just make it more clear that you are only talking about farming food.

 

very good point

On my page I do state that
Note that hunted animals have different environmental impacts than farmed animals because there is no energy and resource-intensive process for growing and harvesting crops for them.

hunted animals, and garden grown plants, both belong in a different category than commercially grown animal and plant foods.

USDA figures (link to their page at http://www.helpusall.com/foodandanimals.html )
have that ~10 billion animals are killed each year on farms. I'm estimating that the number of animals hunted is very small... percent-wise. So I'm focusing my statement on the big majority of what affects us all. I think that is what will help us the most.

When it comes to the manure, oil use, water pollution, water depletion, etc that affects us all.. people learning about the effects of farmed animal foods, seems like the best focus to have the greatest help to us all. So that's the focus on the page

 

Unfortunately most people drive a car to pick up their veggies.

 

... and drive their car to pick up animal foods.


Plant foods are not free of any environmental harms (except in home gardens or even small farms). But commercial plant foods involve a great deal less harms to our environment, and our environmental health, than commercial animal foods do.

'Perfect sometimes is not an option.... but Improvement almost always is'

 

yea sorry I never had time to read the entire page only what you posted here.

what about info on oil consumed by commercial fisheries, do you have any of that?

I know those commercial boats suck up alot of fuel but they also get alot of food.

 

That's interesting I'd never thought of the fishing... i guess i got blinders from thinking "factory farm"

I searched for a while already, and just found one okay source of info, and hopefully a guidance to more sourced info..
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2005/12/29/ns-fishing-oil20051229.html
A new study suggests fisheries around the world are consuming as much fuel as the entire Netherlands, the world's 18th largest consumer of oil.

Peter Tyedmers of Dalhousie University led the study, which looked at the industry in 2000 and was published in Ambio, a journal of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

His research team found that fisheries burned 50 billion litres of fuel to catch 80 million tonnes of fish.


http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20030812/fish_stocks_030812?s_name=&no_ads=
In a study, Tyedmers found that fishing boats use about 10 to 20 times more energy than they produce with the food they net.


an overall look at fishing, would need to include fishery declines and trawling harms, etc. So it's a big project, but now i've got some leads now... thanks for the idea..

 

Thanks for posting this jonjan! There's some great info here!

There are lots of environmental benefits to eating a plant-based diet, and even more health benefits. It takes more water, soil, energy, and oil to produce meat than to grow plants. Eating farter up the food chain also allows toxins to multiply - it's called biomagnification. So any pollution you're eating in a plant is going to be much less concentrated than pollution in an animal. Since animals eat polluted plants (and sometimes other animals), pollutants build up in their tissues. This is why larger & carnivorous fish have higher levels of mercury than smaller or plant-eating fish.

I don't see how people can eat a meat-based diet and call themselves environmentalists or animal lovers....

If anyone would like info on going veg feel free to send me a message. It's really not hard, and even cutting down on your meat consumption helps a lot.

 

thanks for the comment megan... i appreciate it

You are so right, even if someone doesn't feel they can be a "vegetarian", eating 1 meatless meal a week is pretty easy and will help in very real ways. I think exploring mock-meats and other plants foods, is another easy way to 'push out' some of the meat usually eaten.