A Delicate Balance: The Truth Page #8

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as we depleted the oceans

and it's a serious threat.

Canthaxanthin

This artificial chemical

pigment is used in salmon

to give them nice pink color

when they are bred in captivity.

Without it, salmon would

be a pale gray color.

Salmon farmers can choose the depth

of the color they want in their fish.

The chemical pigment was banned

and withdrawn from the market,

as a sunless tanning pill, because

it was linked to retinal eye damage.

It is very difficult to find a fish

that has not been exposed

to some contamination.

All these toxins end up on

your table and in your body.

In practical terms, for

the rest of your life.

What Should We Be Eating?

Are fruits, vegetables and grains

going to give me all the protein

and nutrients my body needs?

Many people in the western world today

believe that humans have

always eaten flesh from animals.

This is not so.

The structure of our teeth and

digestive system speaks to the contrary.

The eating of animal based

products is a recent phenomenum.

Plutarc, a Greek priest and philosopher,

who lived some 2,000 years ago,

pointed out that men has no curved beak,

no sharp talons, no claws, no

pointed teeth. On the contrary,

by the smoothness of his teeth,

the small capacity of his mouth,

the softness of his tongue and the

sluggishness of his digestive apparatus,

(?) nature ??? forbids

him to feed on flesh.

All animals that feed on the flesh of

others have very short digestive systems,

about three times the

lenght of their bodies.

This enables speedy

removal of decaying flesh

which can poison their

body if it stays too long.

They also have very acidic

saliva and their stomachs produce

large amounts of hydochloric acid,

which is necessary to digest flesh.

The human digestive system is about

twelve times the lenght of our body.

This is necessary in order to

digest plants and vegetables,

which take a lot longer to digest

because of the fiber they contain.

Meat has no fiber at all and so the

nutrients can be extracted a lot faster.

Because of our long digestive

tract, the meat we eat putrefies.

Can this putrefication, with

the resulting release of toxins

and proliferation of

bacteria, be good for us?

Our saliva is alcaline and

contains a special enzime

which is necessary to pre-digest grain.

Ouir canine teeth are

canine only in name.

Compared to carnivores animals, our

canine teeth are not sharp enough

or strong enough to tear

cooked, let alone raw flesh.

Environment

50% of the total US land

area is used to produce food.

At present, the US livestock population

consumes more than 7 times as much grain

as is consumed directly by

the entire American population.

There is a consequence, not just in

our health, but also on what it means

to the environment, in order

to farm all these animals.

It should not surprise you that the

price in environmental destruction

and consequences is beyond

anything that the people who began

large scale industrialized animal

agriculture 80 years ago envisioned.

Deforestation

The first step in animal agriculture

is that native forest have to be cleared

for growth of crops to feed the animals

as well as to allow sufficient

pastures to house and grow them.

Professor Pimentel is Professor

Emeritus from Cornell University.

We feed 280 million metric

tons of grain to our livestock.

That's enough grain to feed 800

million people as vegetarians.

Did you know The World

Health Organization

(?) reports that 3.7 billion people

out of 6.5 billion total ???,

nearly 60% of the world

population are now malnourished.

The largest number of malnourished

people ever in the history of the Earth.

It may not seem that

important to cut native forest,

trees will grow again, you might say.

What is the big deal

about cutting trees?

Getting rid of forests is a huge

deal for the following reasons:

Natural forests catch water

from rain and snow melt.

This not only prevents the water

from running off causing soil erosion,

the water held by the dense forest floor

replenishes underground reserves

and evaporates to form clouds.

Clouds not only bring more

rain, recycling water naturally,

they also prevent heating

of the Earth by the sun.

Professor Tom Lyons

holds an established chair

within The School of Enviromental Science

at Murdoch University, in Australia.

His interests concentrated on

the lowest 200m of the atmosphere

where we all live and is directed towards

the solution of enviromental problems.

When you change an agriculture

surface or a native vegetation surface

you're actually changing

the climate of the region.

Professor Lyons and his colleagues

have obvserved that if an area

of more than 20 by 20 kilometers

of natural vegetation is removed

and replaced by agricultural land,

cloud formation slows down or stops.

This has a profound effect on

climate of the entire region.

The cooler temperatures prevent drying.

Higher temperatures leads to extremes

of climate and, specifically, droughts.

By catching water naturally, forests also

prevent major and catastrophic flooding.

Natural forests take 200 years and more

to reach significant maturity to

act as efficient catchers of water.

They also make soil, as a result

of the dead leaves and branches

falling to the forest floor.

These decompose to

form natural fertilizer

and, eventually, nutrient rich soil.

And it takes 500 years to

replace 1 inch of top soil.

And, so, you can't wait for that.

So, it's a terribly serious problem.

Methane

According to Tim Flannery, when

measured over a century long time scale,

methane is 60 times more potent at

capturing heat energy than carbondioxide,

but it lasts only 8

years in the atmosphere.

The animals we raise for food

produce huge amounts of manure

that these industrial animal factories

that, primarily, use to raise animals

for food in the developed world,

need to store these feces in huge...

acres and acres of cesspool which

they euphemisticaly call lagoons,

these, of course, foul the air

around them, but also release

large amounts of methane and also

huge amounts of nitrous oxide.

These are released not just

from the lagoons themselves,

but also when these feces are spread

over the huge amounts of crop land

that must be used to raise

plants to feed the animals.

Nitrous oxide is about 300 times

more powerful than carbondioxide.

(?) When it comes to methane,

about 37% of the world's methane ???

(?) come from animal agriculture and

about 70% of the world's nitrous oxide ???

come from animal agriculture.

These gases, which are produced in

smaller quantities than carbondioxide,

but are far more powerful, have a huge

effect and, because of their power,

and because they come mostly

from animal agriculture,

makes this sector of the

economy important to target

in any effort to address

the serious global crisis.

The average meat

consumption in the 1950's

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