Holy Week also cleanses the environment

Many Filipinos view the abstinence from eating meat as a self-sacrifice necessary to cleanse the soul. At the very least, for one week every year, the country has a chance to catch up with its Asian neighbors insofar as the per capita consumption of vegetables is concerned. The country has the lowest annual per capita intake of vegetables in Asia, with only 39 kilograms, as compared to China’s 250 kg.

Members of the scientific community believe that it may not only be souls, going meatless cleanses. Abstinence from eating meat may also benefit health and the environment, as well.

Stanford University biochemist Patrick O. Brown, who has been a vegetarian for more than 30 years (and a vegan for more than five years), has been an advocate of the plant-based diet for reasons that include “putting an end to animal farming” because of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by such farms.

In 2009, Forbes Magazine featured Brown, who in the early 1990s invented the DNA microarray, a tool that measures how cells make use of their DNA; and one of the three scientists who launched in 2000 a free, online scientific journal called the Public Library of Science (PLOS) when he took a break from his normal scientific work to focus on changing the way the world farms and eats. Forbes wrote that Brown “wants to put an end to animal farming, or at least put a significant dent in our global hunger for cows, pigs and chickens.”

According to Brown, “while livestock accounts for only 9 percent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, it accounts for 37 percent of human-caused methane (most of it emanating from the animals’ digestive systems) and 65 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Both are far better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, meaning that cows, chickens and their ilk have a larger greenhouse effect than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world.”

Filipino neuroscientist Custer Deocaris is following Brown’s footsteps, or rather, carbon footprint, by studying the human brain in relation to plant-based nutrition, and the environment in relation to plant-based diet. As an advocacy, he founded and heads the Meatless Monday Philippines, convincing schools and mothers that a plant-based diet would improve the quality of their lives. Here are just three of many reasons a plant-based diet benefits humans and the planet.

1Prevents Alzheimer’s. Deocaris earlier revealed to Inquirer Health the link between intelligence and a plant-based diet. “A high intelligence quotient (IQ) helps contribute to a person’s ability to make smart choices. Conversely, vegetables, particularly the leafy greens, are an antiaging regimen for the brain. People who eat more veggies have less risk for Alzheimer’s disease. An elderly who consumes greater than two vegetable servings per day during midlife has a brain five years younger than a colleague who eats less vegetables and more meats.”

2The less demand for meat, the smaller the population of livestock. Livestock production has now been considered a key driver of climate change, as was first recognized in the United Nations-FAO report “Livestock’s Long Shadow in 2006”: The per capita greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) need to fall below 1 metric ton per year by 2050 to prevent a potentially catastrophic global surface temperature increase of 20°C as declared by the 2009 Copenhagen Convention; As of 2000, the livestock sector alone had already occupied 52 percent of humanity’s suggested safe operating space for anthropogenic GHG.

3Filipinos can prevent cardiovascular diseases and cancers with vegetables, and no meat. According to the WHO/FAO expert consultation report on diet, nutrition and prevention of chronic diseases, the recommended intake should be a minimum 400 grams of fruits and vegetables per day (or 69 kg per year). Approximately 1.7 million (2.8 percent) deaths worldwide are attributable to low fruit and vegetable consumption. Increasing intakes to at least five servings a day can help prevent 14 percent of gastrointestinal cancer deaths, 11 percent of ischemic heart disease deaths and 9 percent of stroke deaths.

Now, is going meatless really a sacrifice?

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