Some good reasons, why eating less meat can save the world

To begin, I love meat in all kinds of forms and think it gives great flavour to any dish. I also think that it is part of our normal diet to eat meat and I also believe that meat is a good source of; protein, iron and B12. I wish myself and also learned how to butcher and have no ethical issues with that. So why would I be an ambassador of promoting eating less meat? 


This article could be a call to everyone to eat no meat, but for myself and the majority of people, I think the moderate approach will be more successful. Moderation is actually one key to the whole situation. If you think back one or two generations to the middle of the century meat was still considered a luxury which most people could simply not afford to put on the table every day. This has changed drastically in the times of industrialization, meat got cheaper and cheaper and the producing companies bigger and bigger. With the gain in their influence. They started promoting more and more a meat-based diet to successfully grow the demand. And this spiral started to turn faster and faster and is spinning now out of control. There are so many issues linked to the industrial production of meat that we will look to some of these factors over the next month.

Most people don’t even know the underlying problems, it is much more than the ethical debate whether or not we should kill an animal for consumption and we will not enter into this discussion for now. The things we are looking at will be mainly environmental issues, for example; meat production takes up a lot of our resources which are scarce – land, water, energy, food. Meat production is also a major contributor to greenhouse gases.


On the other hand, there are also some health issues related to eating meat. We will look at those which can be categorized into two fields; Firstly is that meat production is also linked to the overuse of antibiotics, hormones and other chemical contamination in meat. The second is that scientific studies have proved that too much meat is not healthy. People get obese, high cholesterol leads to heart diseases and many other coronary problems.


With the world population growing, we see a rise in starving people in poor countries which will get more dramatic in the coming decades if we don’t change. It is a simple fact that our plant will not be able to sustain such a high consumption of meat for the world population but a plant-based diet would. So even if you love eating meat it is time for a change. Being realistic most people would not be supportive of drastic change even if it would be the best thing to do. Therefore we are supporting a moderate approach and will support the initiative of “Meatless Monday” to introduce alternatives and to educate people about the benefits of eating meat in moderate amounts and from sustainable farming.

What is OutdoorUAE’s role? We are trying to help educate people by promoting Educational Institutes, Companies, and Restaurants who join the cause.
So the first question you should be asking yourself if you want to join us is; What am I eating next Monday that doesn’t have any meat in it? ■


Words by: Daniel Birkhofer