Eating raw is said to be ecologically responsible. How is that?
Different foods take different amounts of natural resources and energy to produce. Eating lower on the food chain can make as effective a dent in carbon emissions as driving a hybrid car. The foods that compose a raw diet—fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds—are far and away more eco-friendly to produce than meat and dairy. To wit: The water required to raise and butcher 10 pounds of steak—irrigating fields, running slaughterhouses, powering both refrigeration units and sewage plants—is equivalent to a household’s average water consumption for a whole year. Then there’s the runoff from the fertilizer used to grow grain, 70 percent of which is fed to animals, after which cattle belch methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 20 times as potent as carbon. Throughout this process, billions of gallons of oil are needed to fuel tractors and to transport feed and livestock. In the end, a grilled steak leaves a carbon footprint of 10.5 pounds compared to one of less than .18 pound for vegetables. And th
