Every day, millions of Americans make a choice that preserves forests, reduces fossil fuel consumption and enables them to live longer, healthier lives.

Their choice is simple: they refuse to eat meat.

There are many reasons to go vegetarian, not the least of which are our environment, our health and our sense of humanity.

The environment has paid a heavy toll for our meat-eating habits. Of all the agricultural land in the United States, 87 percent is used to raise animals for food. Livestock maintenance also consumes more than half of all the water used in the United States. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. Livestock in the United States produce 250,000 pounds of excrement every second compared to 12,000 produced per second by the entire U.S. human population and zero produced by vegetarian food sources.

Meat is an enormously wasteful food source. More than one-third of the fossil fuels used in the United States are used to raise animals for food. Producing a single hamburger patty requires energy equivalent to driving a small car 20 miles and enough water to take 17 showers. Think about that the next time you order a Big Mac (40 miles, 34 showers). In addition, more than 260 million acres of trees in the United States have been cleared to produce feed for animals raised for meat.

More than 80 percent of the corn we grow and 95 percent of the oats are consumed by animals raised for food. In fact, the world’s beef cattle alone consume the caloric equivalent of 8.7 billion people; theoretically, we could feed an entire other planet of humans with what we feed cows. In all, 90 percent of the protein, 99 percent of the carbohydrates and 100 percent of the dietary fiber from food fed to animals raised for meat is wasted and not returned to the consumer.

Though 20,000 pounds of potatoes could be raised on an acre of land, only 165 pounds of beef could be produced from the same. An additional fact to keep in mind is that potatoes do not produce 130 times the excrement of the average human. If these facts do not sway you, consider your wallet and the fact that hamburger meat would cost $35 per pound if it were not subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer.

With these facts in mind, it becomes obvious that people can’t eat meat and still call themselves environmentalists or seriously support ending world hunger.

An added bonus to saving the environment by abstaining from meat is vegetarians live longer, healthier lives. According to Dr. William Castelli of the Framingham Heart Study (the longest-running clinical study in medical history), vegetarians have, “the lowest rates of coronary disease … a fraction of the heart attack rate [of meat eaters] … and only 40 percent of the cancer rate.” Even reducing your consumption of meat by as little as 50 percent reduces your risk of heart attack by 45 percent.

Not only is the meat industry wasteful and unhealthy, it is remarkably malicious. Most people have no idea how much animals suffer all along the production chain. From chickens routinely having their beaks cut off to cattle having their throats cut and forced to bleed to death, eating meat is simply cruel. You can find out more about where your meat comes from www.MeetYourMeat.com. Be warned though; if you visit this Web site, you may never eat meat again!

If we really want to save the environment and produce a better world for ourselves and our progeny, we must eliminate, or at least cut back, our consumption of meat. It is a simple choice that makes a huge difference.

Dead things should be buried, not eaten.