VegBlogger - a vegan / vegetarian blog

Chow Down Movie Review

Have you heard of the movie called "Chow Down" yet? Until yesterday I hadn't either! But let me tell you, this is a gem of a film and more people need to know about it.

I found it while at the library just looking over the movies. The title caught my interest and when I flipped it over to see the back I recognized one of the doctor's as being one that promotes plant based eating. Although there's no mention of plant based eating or veganism on the movie write-up, I figured I'd check it out.

Great movie! It goes into detail providing information about how a plant based diet can reverse heart disease and diabetes. It also sheds light on the corruption with our government in good nutrition information being put out to the public.

This is a must-see for everyone! I have already recommended it to people and plan to show it in February as an event with the Daytona Beach Vegetarian Society. It's the perfect movie to show for a February event, since that month is known as American Heart Month.

You can see the trailer for the movie below and learn more about it at their site here.

 

United Nations Report Supports Shift to Vegan Diet

Post written by VegBlogger. Follow me on Twitter.

This week a report from the United Nations Environmental Programme came out
(see it here). In the report they make it clear that the world needs to move away from consuming animal products. This is crucial in order to save our environment, world hunger, fuel poverty and climate change impacts.

Some key points they make in the report include: 

• Animal products, both meat and dairy, in general require more resources and cause higher emissions than plant-based alternatives. (page 81)

• As total food consumption and the share of animal calories increase with wealth, nutrition for rich countries tends to cause higher environmental impacts than for poor countries. (page 81)

• Compared to industrial processes, agricultural processes have an inherently low efficiency of resource use, which renders food, fibres and fuels from agriculture among the more polluting resources. This is true especially for animal products, where the metabolism of the animals is the limiting factor. Large proportions of the world’s crops are fed to animals and this is expected to increase to 40–50% of global cereal production in 2050.

• One significant driver for ecosystem degradation has been the expansion of the human population and changes in diet. Substantial habitat losses have arisen due to increased demand for land for agriculture and grazing, and significant declines in game and fish populations have resulted from overharvesting. (page 25)

• Food production is the most significant influence on land use and therefore habitat change, water use, overexploitation of fisheries and pollution with nitrogen and phosphorus. (page 79)

A strong environmental support for going vegan, or at least drastically reducing your meat and dairy consumption.

You can read additional articles on this here: UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet

Eating Animal Protein Linked to Women's Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Post written by VegBlogger. Follow me on Twitter.

Not that we needed yet another reason to abstain from the eating of animals, but a
new study out of France is offering one more. Their research suggests that eating animal protein is linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

According to the information:

Inflammatory bowel disease is a collective term for diseases characterized by severe inflammation in the digestive system such as ulcerative colitis, which typically only affects the colon, and Crohn's disease, which can attack the entire digestive tract. IBD, which affects about one in 500 people, has become much more common since World War II, Carbonnel and his colleagues note. The reasons behind the increase are still unclear.

Could it be that since WWII meat consumption has rapidly increased? In fact, according to the Humane Society of the United States, in 1950 the average person was eating around 144 pounds of meat per year. By 2007 that number had increased to 222 pounds per person, per year (see full report).

You can read the full article here.