Tag: Vegetarianism

You Don’t Have to Be a Vegan to Be a Climate-Friendly Eater

Last October, scientists convened by the United Nations issued a dire warning: Unless carbon emissions fall by about 45 percent by 2030, we will face a world of climate chaos—more frequent droughts and floods, decimated coral reefs, and cities swamped by rising seas. Soon after, the Trump administration quietly released a similarly terrifying report from US government scientists, who estimated climate chaos will cost the country more than $500 billion annually by the century’s end. The president’s response? “I don’t believe it.”

Frankly, all this news made me want to stress-eat a giant steak and succumb to a food coma. But a spate of new studies have argued that cutting back on meat—way back—can help our climate enormously. Americans now eat a staggering 216 pounds of meat annually per person, nearly triple the global average. Even our appetite for beef, which fell during the Great Recession, has crept back up, and we eat more of it per capita than almost any other country.

You Don’t Have to Be a Vegan to Be a Climate-Friendly Eater

The bizarre story of one of the world’s first modern vegetarians — and how his diet made him an outcast from society

Over two thousand years ago, there was a man who could walk on water and heal the sick. He was a man of inner serenity and great wisdom; he was even said to have died and then reincarnated. His name was Pythagoras.

Kids today learn about Pythagoras in school because of his theorem on right-angeled triangles: you may still recall the equation a² + b² = c². Pythagoras was also the first to suggest that Earth is round and that the light of the moon is reflected.

But there was more to his life’s work than math and astronomy—although walking on water was likely not among his real achievements, just the stuff of legends. People said Pythagoras looked striking: He was very tall and handsome. “God-like,” some said. There was even a rumor that he was actually the son of Apollo and the grandson of Zeus himself. What also made him stand out was the way he dressed: he wore white robes and pants, an unusual style, since practically no one in Greece of the sixth century BCE dressed in trousers. 

Yet his looks and his choice of fashion were not the reason why he became something of an outsider and a laughingstock for many comedy writers. The reason—or at least one of them—was his diet.

Business Insider