This doesn't even include costs attributable to lost productivity and premature death. And Dr. Harris points out that this number is conservative, considering that the U.S.surgeon general indicates that 69 percent of U.S. deaths are diet-related. An excise tax on each purchase of meat, poultry, and fish could change all that. The only two documented researchers in human history who have successfully reversed heart disease, by far America's biggest killer, have included an exclusively vegetarian diet as a part of their programs.
Vegetarianism is an automatic cholesterol-cutter.
Dietary cholesterol, which causes heart disease, is found only in animal products. No one has ever died of a heart attack with a cholesterol level below 150, and the average vegan has a cholesterol level of 128. Up to 90 percent of federally inspected poultry is infected with bacteria like salmonella and campylobacter, which cause sometimes-fatal vomiting and diarrhea. On the average, they outlive other people by about six years now.