More and more Americans are choosing a meatless diet. If you have ever thought of this alternative, please read on. This section contains some basic information and a general guide to additional resources available on the Net.

First, some definitions.

The vegan or total vegetarian diet contains only foods of plant origin: vegetables, fruits, legumes (dried beans and peas), grains, seeds and nuts.

The lactovegetarian diet includes the above plant foods plus cheese and other dairy products.

The ovo-lactovegetarian diet includes all of the above plus eggs.

There are several good reasons to follow a meatless diet.

Meat eating is wasteful - in many ways. Farm animals are fed about 70% of the US grain harvest, as is over 30% of the world's grain. Feeding plants to animals and eating the animals will in general waste 90% of the energy that would be obtained by simply eating the plants. For example, an acre of prime land can produce 40,000 lbs. of potatoes, 30,000 lbs. of carrots, 50,000 lbs. of tomatoes or 250 lbs. of beef (Soil & Water v.38, U of Cal. Cooperative Extension).

The negative environmental impacts of our meat-eating lifestyle are deep and long lasting. Few people realize the extent of pollution caused by modern, high-density industrial livestock and poultry operations. A recent study by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging Problem, Dec. 97) found that the amount of animal manure produced in the US is 130 times greater than the amount of human waste. According to the study -

• The 1,600 dairies in the Central Valley of California produce more waste than a city of 21 million people.
• On the Delmarva Peninsula outside of Washington, D.C., 600 million chickens a year produce over 3.2 billion pounds of raw waste each year -- as much nitrogen as from a city of almost 500,000.
• The manure from a 200-head dairy operation produces as much nitrogen as is in the sewage from a community of 5,000-10,000 people.
• The annual litter from a typical broiler house of 22,000 birds contains as much phosphorous as is in the sewage from a community of 6,000 people.
• A 50,000-acre swine operation under construction in Utah is designed to produce up to 2.5 million hogs per year -- with a potential waste output greater than that of the city of Los Angeles.

Animal waste in groundwater can contain pathogens like Salmonella, Listeria, and Cryptosporidium, among others, all of which are threatening to humans, especially to infants.

Then there is the horrific suffering, disease, and death of industrially farmed animals. A few examples:

In 1933, the average hen laid 70 eggs a year; as of 1993, it was 275. In order to boost productivity to these levels, hens are packed in cages, with about six tenths of a square foot per bird. The cages are stacked, which allows excrement to drop onto the animals below. Hens are "force-molted" or starved and kept without water in darkness for up to 18 days, in order to shock their bodies into repetitive egg-laying cycles. Some will die from the stress. Others will die in the act of laying their eggs; factory hens are genetically engineered to lay eggs that are unnaturally large. This may lead to "pro-lapse" of a hen's uterus, in which the uterus is expelled along with the egg, resulting in the animal's death. And male chicks - having no economic value to a factory operation - are simply suffocated, gassed, crushed alive, or decapitated.

The fates of veal calves are well-known; kept in tiny stalls, they are forced to stand or lie in their own excrement and fed an anemia-inducing synthetic diet made deliberately deficient in iron and fiber to keep their flesh pale and tender.

Cattle and other animals are killed in a variety of ways, all of which cause intense suffering. A pistol-like device may be set against the head and a metal bolt thrust into the brain. This can be difficult to do and the bolt often misses, causing enormous suffering. An electrical stunner can be used to produce a grand mal seizure, then the animal's throat is cut. In other methods of slaughter, animals are fully conscious when their jugular veins are cut. Some slaughterhouses shackle animals by the leg and hoist them upside down before cutting their throats, resulting in extreme trauma and suffering.

Finally, there are the numerous positive health effects. The risk of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and some forms of cancer may be reduced by diets without animal products. While children, pregnant and breast-feeding women, seniors, and persons with illnesses should proceed with caution when considering a meatless diet, it is also important to recognize that a healthy vegan or vegetarian diet is perfectly possible for many people. And remember that all persons should always consult their doctor or health care professional before starting any diet.

After much resistance, mainstream health organizations have begun to promote vegetarian and vegan diets. For many years, USDA's famous "Food Pyramid" portrayed meat and animal products as dietary necessities. But recently, researchers such as those at Cornell University have developed an alternative Vegetarian Diet Pyramid to guide persons exploring meatless alternatives. The American Heart Association also has information on the health benefits of vegetarian diets, as does the FDA. Some good resources about planning vegetarian diets are found in The Mayo Clinic Vegetarian Food Guide - what to emphasize and what to limit.

And check out the The Vegetarian Resource Group, another good source of general information.

College and university web sites are often good sources of information, since vegetarian and vegan diets are increasingly popular among younger people. The UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health Center web site has a good section entitled Everything you wanted to know about being a Vegetarian!

Persons wishing to investigate a vegan (completely meatless) diet may want to check out the numerous resources at Vegan Action as well as The Vegan Diet During Pregnancy and Lactation.

This is just a sample of the many vegetarian and vegan resources on the Net. While PAWS does not endorse the content of any external site, we do urge you to explore them in conjunction with advice given by your doctor or other health care professional.