You may not realize it yet, but this summer your future on this planet changed.  When massive food providers Burger King and McDonald’s introduced plant based meats it signaled the turning point to saving our planet.  Even people who really want to protect farmed animals from abuse still could find it hard to grab a quick meal.  Committed vegetarians, like me, might order a month’s supply of Veestro, and even pack a suitcase full of plants to eat when traveling, but would end up in situations where the choices were to go hungry or eat something we know isn’t good for us or the planet.   That’s changed.

When people talk about climate change and protecting Mother Earth, most don’t want to venture into the emotionally charged topic of what we eat.  It’s too personal and too many people will get mad and walk away, rather than consider their own impact.  Some of you might be reaching for the DELETE button right now, just because I brought it up.  I respect the choices each of us make and have not managed to go strictly vegan.  But I find it motivates me to eat in a more planet sensitive way to repeat this thought to myself:

Imagine a world where nature is restored AND you don’t have to sacrifice anything to enjoy it.

Plant based meats, or clean meats, which are actual animal tissues that are produced in sterile conditions are available everywhere now.  They are better for you because they don’t contain all of the hormones and antibiotics that taint your past options.  The taste is already the same as what people expect in meat that is farmed in traditional and factory farmed methods.  The taste can be made even better, and the proteins made even more nutritious as that industry grows.  The prices will come down too, as demand expands and more traditional farmers turn their land into protein producing plants (pun intended) that feed everyone on the planet in a more sustainable way.

A study in 2000 shows that 37% of the planet is used for farming.  11% is for crops and the other 26% for grazing animals as food.  It can only be worse now, twenty years later.  As adoption of plant based meats and clean meats increases, that frees up at least 26% of our world’s best land for nature to recover.  It’s like someone just offered us a little planet within walking distance to help us reverse the damage we’ve done.  Some may argue that we will still manage to ruin that opportunity by overpopulating the planet, but people who are better nourished make better decisions.

According the the Urban Child Institute:  Children who do not get proper nutrition under the age of three:  Are 90% more likely to have fair or poor health.  They are 31% more likely to spend time in the hospital.  They are 76% more likely to have problems in cognitive, language, and behavioral development.  If all the plants we raise to feed the livestock, we currently depend on for protein, were made into proteins we like to taste, and were used to feed the hungry, we’d have a lot healthier, smarter population.

Wars are fought for food and water resources but if we all had access to both, what would there be left to fight about?

All of that land, that is recovered by nature, means more trees to provide the oxygen we need; more systems for filtering the water we need.  It means more places where wild animals can reclaim their rightful place.  If we just get out of their way, they will settle into the perfect harmony they’ve always experienced in our absence.  With the adoption of plant based meats by food providing giants, we just leaped light years ahead into this kind of a world…and not a moment too soon.

by Carole Baskin