This careful examination of scientific studies finds that eating more plant foods and fewer fatty animal products can lead to extra years of healthy living. Happily, that same diet leads to much less food poisoning, water pollution, air pollution, and global warming. And, because fewer cows, pigs, and chickens would need to be raised, there would be less suffering on factory farms and in slaughterhouses.

“Six Arguments is a great description of the links between our diet and serious environmental and health problems. I hope that readers and policy makers will implement the book’s many recommendations.”
Walter Willett, M.D.
Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health

“While there are serious differences of opinion about issues relating to the animal foods component of the American diet, the provocative policy discussions in this book should be must reading for anyone interested in the future of food and agriculture.”
Dan Glickman
former Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture

“Six Arguments for a Greener Diet is a great guide to the powerful impact that our dietary choices—especially high meat consumption—have on our environmental footprint.”
Robert S. Lawrence, M.D.
Director, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health

Visit Six Arguments for a Greener Diet Download Page

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Six Arguments for a Greener Diet
How a More Plant-Based Diet Could Save Your Health and the Environment

Center for Science in the Public Interest
www.cspinet.org
1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, #300
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202-332-9110; fax: 202-265-4954

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Preface: Greener Diets for a Healthier World
The Context
The Fatted Steer
The Arguments
#1. Less Chronic Disease and Better Overall Health
#2. Less Foodborne Illness
#3. Better Soil
#4. More and Cleaner Water
#5. Cleaner Air
#6. Less Animal Suffering
Making Change
Changing Your Own Diet
Changing Government Policies

PREFACE
Greener Diets for a Healthier World

Americans eat what might be called an all-consuming diet. Together, we represent over 40 billion pounds of protoplasm that each day needs to be fed over 1 billion pounds and 1 trillion calories of food.

Our agricultural system consumes enormous quantities of fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides to produce the grains, meat and poultry, and fruits and vegetables that feed a nation of 300 million people. It consumes enormous tracts of land and quantities of water—not only for growing food for people, but also for producing food for livestock. And ultimately it consumes the consumer: Diet-related diseases account for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year. ...

ABOUT MICHAEL F. JACOBSON, PH.D.

Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., is co-founder and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the nonprofit health advocacy organization that publishes the world’s largest-circulation nutrition newsletter, Nutrition Action Healthletter.

CSPI advocates nutritious and safe diets and campaigns for policies to protect the public health and environment. It led the campaigns for laws requiring Nutrition Facts and trans-fat labeling on packaged foods, requiring health warnings on alcoholic beverages, and defining “organic” foods. It publishes attention-getting studies, including exposés of the nutritional quality of restaurant meals and movie theater popcorn.

Michael Jacobson is the author/co-author of Restaurant Confidential, Marketing Madness, What Are We Feeding Our Kids?, and The Fast-Food Guide.

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