When it comes to eating healthy foods, meat can become a real issue. The majority of Americans eat meat each and every day, and this has a number of implications for the environment, for your health, and for the lives of the animals that this meat comes from. Here is a quick guide to the ways in which meat affects the environment.

1) Feeding the Animals

When animals are raised for meat, they are generally kept in crowded conditions and are fed grains, corn and soy. This takes up a lot of space in order to grow the ingredients to feed the animals, often destroying areas such as woodland. This also means there is less space for grain to be grown for consumption by humans.

These animals also tend to develop a number of health problems, which is why antibiotics are routinely administered. However, this is what works towards producing ’super bugs’ that can affect humans. Instead, try eating healthy foods that don’t involve meat and you’ll avoid these implications.

2) Transportation of Animals

The animals will also need to be transported, as well as their feed and the resulting meat. Before it’s sold to you, the meat will have travelled many miles and created a large number of emissions.

3) Methane and Nitrous Oxide

These two greenhouse gases are emitted by the animals as they eat their unnatural grain diets.

Conclusion

Eating healthy foods should mean eating less meat. You don’t need to give up completely, but making changes to your diet can make a huge difference to the carbon footprint as well as the health implications of meat-eating.