"Eating Green" Calculators

"Two interactive online calculators let consumers gauge the health, environmental and animal-welfare impact of their diets.  They're available on the new Eating Green Web site...  The "Score Your Diet" calculator gives you a qualitative assessment of your diet on those three fronts. The "Eating Green" calculator provides a quantitative assessment of the environmental costs of the meat and other animal products in your diet, and shows how small dietary changes can help both an individual's health and the health of the planet.  For example, replacing just one serving of beef, one egg and one serving of cheese per day with fruit, vegetables or whole grains would spare the need for 1.8 acres of cropland, 40 pounds of fertilizer and 3 ounces of pesticides each year, according to the site. Consumers can also take an interactive tour of the food supply from the fertilizer factory to the feedlot to the dinner plate, and learn about problems associated with modern meat production..."

[From the article here... yet more reasons to go vegetarian (or, better yet, vegan)]

FROM:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/food/4161220.html

Sept. 5, 2006, 1:23PM

"Web site promotes a healthy you and a healthy planet

Associated Press

Two interactive online calculators let consumers gauge the health, environmental and animal-welfare impact of their diets.

They're available on the new Eating Green Web site, www.eatinggreen.org, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The "Score Your Diet" calculator gives you a qualitative assessment of your diet on those three fronts.

The "Eating Green" calculator provides a quantitative assessment of the environmental costs of the meat and other animal products in your diet, and shows how small dietary changes can help both an individual's health and the health of the planet.

For example, replacing just one serving of beef, one egg and one serving of cheese per day with fruit, vegetables or whole grains would spare the need for 1.8 acres of cropland, 40 pounds of fertilizer and 3 ounces of pesticides each year, according to the site. Consumers can also take an interactive tour of the food supply from the fertilizer factory to the feedlot to the dinner plate, and learn about problems associated with modern meat production.

The Web site is part of a new strategy for CSPI as it makes an environmental case for more plant-based diets.

CSPI's new book, Six Arguments for a Greener Diet ($15), discusses the links between animal-based foods and chronic and infectious diseases; environmental pollution; depletion of aquifers and soil erosion; and animal welfare."

Comments

[mindy toomay]

Thanks for the information about the green calculators. What a fantastic service! Now if only the non-green thinkers among us would use it and wake up...

Interesting blog. In the words of our iconic California gubernator, "I'll be back!"

http://mindycooks.blogspot.com