On Clean Water and Sanitation in the Developing World, What We Eat, and America’s Favorite Pastime
by Danny Fisher
In a post at the ONE blog, Regional Field Organizer Annisa Wanat aptly describes the mood in Chicago, IL, last Friday night:
- It was a beautiful Friday evening in Chicago with much of the town’s attention turned to their favorite baseball team in the first “cross-town rivalry” of the season…
That was exactly where my attention was, anyway, as I had just come from seeing the Cubs-White Sox game with my old and dear friend Phil. Chicago interleague games tend to be a lot of fun to watch, and last Friday’s was certainly no exception: it was a terrifically exciting game on an absolutely beautiful Chicago day. If you’re a baseball fan, it’s the kind of day you really relish.
Wanat continues, though:
- But ONE and World Vision supporters decided instead to show their support for more than one billion people in the world that don’t have access to clean water and sanitation.
In a rally held in front of the Alexander Calder’s “Flamingo” sculpture downtown, on the corner of Adams and Dearborn, the ONE Campaign and World Vision International (a Christian relief and development organization) hosted a range of speakers, distributed information, and gathered signatures for a petition calling on the United States government to earmark an additional $300 million to improve health standards for people in the developing world who do not have access to clean water and basic sanitation.
In one their handouts, the organizers write:
- Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a disease associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
- Of the 1 billion people lacking access to clean water, approximately 314 million live in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Everey $1 invested in water yields an economic return worth $8 in saved time, increased productivity and reduced healthcare costs.
Phil and I signed the petition and caught a couple of the speakers, who included Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Consul General for South Africa Yusuf Omar, World Vision water expert Emmanuel Oppong, and ONE volunteer Morgan Granata. (In this picture, which I took, you can see Omar speaking. Durbin is seated behind him to the left, and Granata to the right.)
If you would like to get involved with this campaign, I would encourage you to visit both the ONE Campaign and World Vision International online at http://www.one.org and http://www.wvi.org, respectively.
While we’re on the subject of what you can do… Phil brought up an interesting question as we left the rally: in all the talk about what one can do to help, where was the mention of vegetarianism?
I’ve been a vegetarian for almost ten years, and for eight of those years a vegan. At this point, I guess it doesn’t surprise me very much that the environmental benefits of vegetarianism are either played down or not mentioned at all in campaigns like this one: generally speaking, it’s not a popular subject. People don’t like to have it suggested that they ought to reconsider eating things that they like to eat, no matter how compelling the reason. It is also, as Phil put it, a “big responsibility” to be a vegetarian. Perhaps even more than meat-eaters, who also need to be mindful about what they eat, vegetarians have to make sure to eat specific, well-balanced meals to stay healthy. Vegetarians have to be quite careful, vigilant even. That can seem off-putting too. I get it.
The problem, though, is that we’re at a sort of breaking point. Consider the statistics above about the lack of access to clean water. Now consider a few more statistics. A Wikipedia entry on “environmental vegetarianism” excellently synthesizes and translates information from Marlow Vesterby and Kenneth S. Krupa’s Major Uses of Land in the United States, 1997, a report of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service:
- …Growing crops for farm animals requires nearly half of the U.S. water supply and 80% of its agricultural land. Animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90% of the soy crop, 80% of the corn crop, and 70% of its grain.
In their book Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment, authors Alan B. Durning and Holly B. Brough continue:
- In the United States…animals account for 70 percent of domestic grain use, while India and sub-Saharan Africa offer just 2 percent of their cereal harvest to livestock.
This is an enormous and alarming disparity. Taken with the statistics presented by the ONE Campaign and World Vision International, it all demonstrates that food preparation and diet must be discussed if we’re going to talk about environmental crises such as the lack of clean drinking water in the developing world. Phil is absolutely right. Indeed, as Henning Steinfeld, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vincent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, and Cees de Haan write in Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, last year’s report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations:
- [The raising of animals for food is] one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale…
Going vegetarian may sound like an abstract response, but it really is not. It’s estimated that 95 animal lives are saved each year by one vegetarian. With several million vegetarians in the United States alone, the meat industry has had no choice but to scale back on the slaughter. More vegetarians equals less animals killed equals less water and grain used to overfeed them.
Signing petitions, raising awareness, and lobbying will all help to address the the lack of clean water and basic sanitation in the developing world. There’s even more that we can all do, though. I believe that going vegetarian is one of them. For more information about taking this step, I recommend the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s Vegetarian Starter Kit, which you can download here.
Was there anything else…?
Oh!–returning to the wonderful world of frivolity for one last moment: In case you didn’t hear about the baseball game, it went to the good guys…
Phil and his wife Katy offer this response to the post:
You write that “Perhaps even more than meat-eaters, who also need to be mindful about what they eat, vegetarians have to make sure to eat specific, well-balanced meals to stay healthy….” We think this is misleading. Meat-eaters use up a certain amount of their caloric intake with food that offers little nutritional benefit. Therefore they have to be MORE careful than vegetarians to eat nutritionally beneficial foods with the calories they have left. Often, people think that it’s hard to be a vegetarian and get all of your required nutrients (e.g. “where do you get your protein?”). We think your blog comments reinforce this (false) notion that vegetarians have to be more careful than omnivores to get what they need from food. A
vegetarian diet (even better a vegan diet) provides ALL of the nutrients that a healthy boy or girl needs to grow up big and strong. Plus it’s not full of foods (meat) that have little positive benefits and lots of negatives (cholesterol and saturated
fats). So being a vegetarian, in our view, makes it easier to get what you need. Of course, this is not an endorsement of a potato chips and soda vegan
diet, but you get the idea. Being vegetarian, your plate can be full of fruits and vegetables, beans, and whole grains–all of which are good for you–and fewer foods that are just taking up space on your plate and making people sicker and fatter.
Perhaps I went too far in suggesting that a vegetarian/vegan had to be MORE careful than a meat-eater when it came to planning their diet. It was certainly not my intention to reinforce any bogus stereotypes that exist regarding vegetarianism.
It’s probably also going too far, though, to say that the reverse is true. EVERYBODY has to be careful about what they eat. As Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a New Jersey-based M.D. specializing in nutrition, has written:
A vegetarian whose diet is mainly refined grains, cold breakfast cereals, processed health food store products, vegetarian fast foods, white rice, and pasta will be worse off than a person who eats a little turkey, chicken, fish, or eggs but consumes large volumes of fruits, vegetables, and beans. That combination of little or no animal products with a higher consumption of fresh produce is the crucial factor that makes a vegetarian diet healthful…A strict vegetarian diet, then, may be the healthiest diet, but it also may not be. One can choose to be on a healthy vegetarian diet, with careful planning; and one can choose to be on a healthy omnivorous diet, with careful planning too. Both ways of eating still require knowledge about the most nutritious food to eat to assure excellent health and disease protection.
That said, Fuhrman also addresses the special concerns unique to a strict vegetarian diet.
A strict vegetarian or vegan diet is deficient in meeting the nutrient needs of most individuals for vitamin B12. If you choose to follow a complete vegetarian or vegan diet, it is essential you consume a multivitamin or consume a B12 source, such as fortified soymilk.
Vitamin D, often called the sunshine vitamin, is another common deficiency in those not drinking vitamin D fortified milk. Synthetic vitamin D is added to both cow’s milk and most brands of soy milk today.
Most of us work indoors and avoid the sun or wear sunscreens, which lowers our vitamin D exposure. Some of us live in northern climates, are not outdoors as much, don’t absorb it as well, or may just require more. It is important to assure your vitamin D requirements are met sufficiently.
It is a myth that a vegetarian diet, rich in green vegetables, beans, and whole grains would be likely to be low in calcium or protein. Plant food contains adequate levels of these nutrients. However, if a vegetarian diet is not carefully designed to include foods such as nuts, seeds, green vegetables, beans, and whole grains, then levels of calcium, iron, zinc, and protein could be low.
For example, iron deficiency anemia has been reported in some macrobiotic vegetarians who followed a very restrictive diet and consumed a diet with rice as their staple food. This would not have occurred if these individuals ate more green vegetables and beans which contain adequate iron.
It was these kinds of concerns I had in mind when I made my comments about carefulness. Again, though, I think I could have said things better.
Phil and Katy respond:
We don’t think we actually disagree much, it’s more a case of emphasis. When we suggested that a “potato chip and soda” vegan diet is not healthy, we’re making the same point that Joel Fuhrman makes in places that you quote. Some
specifics. Regarding vitamin D, it’s important to note that cow’s milk is not, by itself, rich in vitamin D. Fortified cow’s milk is. But so is vitamin D fortified soy milk. So there’s no advantage to the non-vegan diet in terms of vitamin D, since the stuff you pour on your cereal in the morning (whether or not you’re vegan), in order to be a good source of vitamin D, needs to be fortified.
On the last paragraph of your quotation from Joel Fuhrman, it’s certainly the case that a macrobiotic vegetarian diet may not be nutritionally complete. We don’t dispute that some vegetarian diets may not be good for you (all chocolate, all the time… mmmm…). But notice that the recommendation is for more green vegetables and beans. Here’s what’s at issue. Let’s say you’re going to eat 2000 calories a day. If 600 calories, say, of those 2000 are taken up with meat, then you’ve got 600 fewer calories for fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains (what many nutritionists refer to as the “four new food groups”). Now, you will get certain nutrients from the 600 calories of meat, but not as
many and not as good of nutrients as you would get from other food sources, plus you’ll get a lot of junk like excess saturated fats and cholesterol.
Our issue is that the burden of proof typically seems to be on the vegetarian: justify to me that you’re eating in a healthy way! If anything it should be turned around: justify that you can eat a healthy diet with much of the caloric space taken up with chicken-fried bacon, or whatever.
I think Phil and Katy are right, and that we don’t really disagree much, if at all really, and that this is more a case of emphasis. These are all vital points that Phil and Katy have raised. And I agree: it’s asinine that the burden of proof should be on vegetarians to justify the healthfulness of a properly-observed vegetarian diet. At the same time, as we and the authors we’ve referenced have said, a healthy vegetarian diet means a high consumption of fresh produce and an awareness of where essential vitamins and minerals come from. I think that’s where my emphasis is: on vegetarians being careful not to develop anemia or other health problems simply because they haven’t been careful to do these things. It happens, and I think it’s a damn shame that it does.
I think the how-to’s of healthy vegetarian eating are criticially important in that they will help our ranks stay steady and grow. I hate to see even one person’s participation in a movement so crucially important to solving certain environmental crises falter simply because of the kind of carelessness that leads to things like a soda and chips “vegetarian” diet.
Anyway, I appreciate Katy and Phil’s thoughtful responses on these important issues. Danke schön!
One quick note…
I neglected to include the link to Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s article about vegetarian diets in my comments. It is http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article5.aspx.
heheh you said bogus.
Correction to the names in your picture. Morgan Granata isn’t in the photo. That is Annisa Wanat, Field Organizer for ONE