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Earth Day 2010: To Celebrate, Don’t Send a Card… Just Eat Your Veggies!

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By Stacey Terry

Earth Day 2010How do you demonstrate your appreciation for the world that you live in?  My love affair with the earth has taken many forms over the years.  When I was young, I was mesmerized by nature… spending time under trees, watching sunsets, enjoying the first breath of air upon summer arrivals at ‘the lake’, walking with my parents down tree and wild-flower lined gravel roads…  it all made an impact.  The earth is a beautiful, living place.

At different points in my life I’ve relied upon that appreciation to move me into action.  I belonged to 4-H growing up and always participated in highway clean-up projects.  When I hit my university days, I signed up for an environmental ethics class.  That lead me to reading The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki.  It helped me see the world and my reality differently, and I’m learning that those sorts of experiences are the most helpful in life.  My change in perspective resulted in my first, albeit brief, attempt at becoming vegetarian (an extremely radical shift for me at that point).  While that particular effort didn’t go far, I didn’t give up and decided to take a less extreme  approach.  I looked around to see what I could do.  The university I attended did not, at the time, have any sort of recycling program.  So, I took it upon myself to fix that.

I consulted with the head of maitenance at the university and submitted a proposal.  I put up posters and gathered volunteers.  I started talking to people.  We raised some money to buy bins, and we just started.  It wasn’t fancy… it didn’t work perfectly in the beginning, but we started.  All it took was a decision, a decision backed by love and appreciation.  The action came easily then.  And my efforts to make an improvement kicked back all sorts of benefits in terms of the skills and relationships I developed by taking on that project.

The same has held true now that I’ve become a vegetarian and am working this year on being vegan.  Once again, the impact of a new and different perspective finally helped me to shift my thinking.  This time it was a combination of reading  The China Study and The Food Revolution that helped me decide that shifting my diet would not only be of benefit to my health, but also to the health of the planet.

It’s hard to wrap your head around reality sometimes, but I actually appreciate having my eyes opened.  I have a bookmarked page in The Food Revolution.  Whenever I need to remind myself of why the changes I’m slowly trying to make are important, I turn to this page which lists the amount of water required to produce 1 pound of California foods (according to the Soil and Water specialists, University of California Agricultural Extension, working with livestock farm advisors).

  • 1 pound of lettuce: 23 gallons
  • 1 pound of tomatoes: 23 gallons
  • 1 pound of potatoes: 24 gallons
  • 1 pound of wheat: 25 gallons
  • 1 pound of carrots: 33 gallons
  • 1 pound of apples: 49 gallons
  • 1 pound of chicken: 815 gallons
  • 1 pound of pork: 1 630 gallons
  • 1 pound of beef:  5 214 gallons

The author, John Robbins, goes on to make this a little more relative.  He notes that, “In California today, you may save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for six entire months.”  And while people can make points about particular geographical locations requiring less water to raise beef, you can’t convince me that the savings can approach that of eating a plant-based diet.

So I made the decision to change my diet from SAD to vegetarian, and now vegan with the goal of always including more raw food.  Once again… it isn’t always perfect.  I’m not always successful in making the most healthy and environmentally sound choices, but I’m learning as I go.  And I’m fueled by the appreciation I have for my body and the earth that I live upon.

Earth Day for me is not only a celebration of the earth, but a celebration of my ability to change and adapt to my world.

What does it mean to you?