Every Day Is Special: October 1 – World Vegetarian Day and Vegan Baking Day

Posted October 1, 2017

There are entire cuisines that revolve around meat and / or fish. Traditional Kazakh cuisine, for example, revolves around lamb and horse meat. Sami cuisine focuses on meat, fish, and more meat - trout, ducks, moose, cod, and more. The cornerstone of Norwegian foods is fish, smoked fish, fish soup, and pickled fish.

And then there are some people from every nation who choose to eat no meat and zero fish!

Vegetarians may skip meat because of health concerns, or because of their religion, or because they do not like how animals are raised and butchered to produce meat. But a huge reason for many modern vegetarians to "eat low on the food chain" is to help make the environment better!

Did you know...?

Raising animals for food creates more greenhouse gas than the emissions of all of the world's cars, planes, and other forms of transportation combined.

Remember, when we raise animals for food, we also have to use land to raise crops to feed those animals. The result is that raising animals for food uses almost ONE THIRD of all of the Earth's land mass!

Getting enough land to graze cattle has caused an enormous amount of deforestation - which leads to more climate change and other bad consequences.

If most of us skipped meat most of the time, we could feed a lot more people. To produce one pound of animal protein, vs. one pound of soy protein:

We use 12 times as much land...

We use 13 times as much fossil fuel...

We use 15 times as much water!

Remember, if you are not skipping meat and fish for health or religious reasons, you can still have the occasional hamburger or salmon steak. Every meal you choose to make vegetarian helps!

What about vegans?

Some vegetarians will not eat eggs or milk or other dairy products. Yes, that means no ice cream or cheese pizza (although there are soy ice creams and soy cheeses, of course - you might like them just as well as the milk-based versions)!