SDA "Health Message" could save the world in '08

The Seventh-day Adventist Church emerged from a period of religious reform. Adventist pioneers played a significant role in the reformations of the mid-to-late 1800's. The 19th Century Adventist reform movements particularly stressed the connection between healthful diet and lifestyle and longevity and improved quality of life and even pointed out the connection between physical and spiritual well-being. While modern science has substantiated much of the Adventist reformers' message (something that Adventists are quick to point out), the teachings were novel in their day.

Out of the Adventist health reform movement, whose champions included John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg's Corn Flakes fame, grew the Adventist health message, which stressed holistic health practices and mind-body-spirit interconnectedness. Adventists also railed against alcohol and tobacco use, the latter being given credence with increasingly strict laws prohibiting smoking in public and now even private locations.

The Adventist Church established sanitariums to provide cutting edge health care and training in healthful living. To this day, health care remains a vital part of the Seventh-day Adventist mission in countries around the world.

A key tenet of the Adventist health message has been (and still is) advocacy of a vegetarian diet. Adventist pioneer and author Ellen White, herself a longtime meat eater, advocated vegetarianism as the healthiest dietary practice, most notably in her book Counsels on Diet and Foods. Though meat has (perhaps erroneously) been considered by many a necessary part of a balanced diet, vegetarianism is clearly linked to longevity according to a study of 34,000 California Adventists. National Geographic featured the research in a special article on longevity and it's causes.

Bucking Vegetarianism?

Despite scientific and anecdotal evidence that a vegetarian diet promotes better overall health and longevity, trends among Adventists today lean increasingly toward meat consumption. Perhaps the trends reflect cultural norms, perhaps in part a pushback against legalistic emphasis on the morality of vegetarianism, or perhaps the rapid increase of food service industries in the last fifty years. Whatever the case may be, Adventists in 2008 are becoming more comfortable with meat-eating.

However, according to a 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report on the environmental impact of livestock, meat consumption is more environmentally devastating than the emissions from motor vehicles! The livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.

The bottom line?
McDonald's has a more severe negative impact on our earth than Chevy trucks do!

The FAO report demonstrates that meat eating does more damage to our earth than cars do! According to the FAO:

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

The implications of the FAO findings are hard to overestimate: meat consumption has severe impacts on our earth in terms of climate change and land, water, and air pollution and degradation.

Acclaimed author John Robbins, the son of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream co-founder Irv Robbins, has written extensively on the ecological impact of livestock, poultry, and meat consumption. His books include The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life And Our World and Diet for a New America: How Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth.

Robbins--whose books have garnered praise from Friends of the Earth, PETA, The Wasthington Post, triathlete hall-of-famers and many, many others--presents carefully researched data contrasted with the claims of poultry, livestock, and dairy industries. The extent to which industries falsify or exaggerate data in order to minimize negative publicity is appalling! Robbins suggests that following a vegan diet would even go farther in curbing climate change than would driving a hybrid vehicle - and he provides data to back it up!

While you probably won't hear Al Gore decrying meat consumption (his family has owned cattle ranches for several generations) the Web is full of sites promoting vegetarian and vegan diets, not only for their health benefits, but also for their ecological benefits.

Perhaps it is time that Adventists reclaim our health message and the promote its benefits for our health and our earth!


The UN FAO report on livestock can be viewed in its entirety here.
The National Geo interactive article featuring SDA's is well worth the time!

post script: Despite being ribbed often by non-sympathetic meat-eating friends, the author adheres to a vegan diet and enjoys excellent health, thank you.