Chew On This

by J. Lynne on June 21, 2008

in Facts of Life

I picked up the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook at Whole Foods the other day. I’ve been a little fascinated by the occasional sidebar and thought I’d share some.

  • In a lifetime, according to the authors of The Animal Rights Handbook, the average meat-eating American will consume 1 calf, 3 lamb, 11 cattle, 23 hogs, 45 turkeys, 1,097chickens, and 15,665 chicken eggs.
  • Of the 127 million overweight adults in the U.S., 60 million are obese and 9 million are severely obese.
  • The number of calories from fat in a typical meal from the U.S. government’s school lunch program is a whopping 38%.
  • Soybeans contain more protein than beef, more calcium than milk, more lecithin than eggs, and more iron than beef.
  • There are approximately 2.1 million farms in the U.S. Of those, 0.2 % are organic.
  • Corn is used in more than 800 different processed foods.
  • About 80% of vegetarians are women.
  • Vegetarian meals are the most commonly requested special meal on airplanes.
  • If Americans abandoned their meat-centered diets, 200 million acres could be reforested.
  • Vegetarians tend to have lower blood pressure than non-vegetarians.

{ 4 comments }

neca June 23, 2008 at 9:40 am

I recently began eating a primarily vegan diet. People say “I couldn’t do that – I’d be starving.” What they don’t realize is how much more food they can eat when its fiber and nutrient rich as opposed to calorie “rich.”

btw, I still read your old recipes online for ideas!

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neca June 23, 2008 at 10:32 am

I wanted to let you know that I am still enjoying your recipe web site!

necas last blog post..

J. Lynne June 24, 2008 at 2:21 pm

I have some new recipes to post over there. I just need to sit down long enough to do it. ;)

If you’re enjoying vegan cooking, I highly recommend Robin Robertson’s “The Vegetarian’s Meat and Potatoes Cookbook”. I just picked it up last week and I’ve found it full of a lot of good recipes plus she has a whole section on “meat” which is about setein, tvp, tempeh, tofu, and other meat substitutes. I usually don’t cook with some of those because they’re hard to find and I didn’t know what they actually were, but she does a really good job of explaining the basics for newbies as well as discussing how to use them in recipes. I feel much more confident and inspired.

neca July 10, 2008 at 10:02 am

oooh – let me know when you post them! Thx!

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