One ate coarse bread and vegetables, while the other ate fine bread, fat meat, and drank old wine. The one who ate fine food suffered harm, while the one who had coarse food escaped harm. Observe how simply animals live and how healthy they are as a result. Consumption of animal products is one of the primary causes of environmental devastation, including the misuse of natural resources, pollution, and the destruction of the rain forest. In every one of these ways, a vegetarian diet exerts less strain on our resources that does a carnivorous one.
Plant foods are far more energy efficient than animal products.
Poultry, lamb, eggs, and milk production each fall somewhere between these two. In this way, eating animal products clearly both wastes energy resources that were naturally formed over millions of years, and in the process spews pollution into the environment we live in. Animal agriculture also wastes water. In the U.S., more water is used to raise livestock than is consumed for all other uses put together. The amount of water needed to produce a pound of meat is fifty times that necessary to produce a pound of wheat.