Week 3-4 - Who will live longer ?

Topic: Who live longer vegetarians or meat eaters?”

“The Challenge of Going Vegan”:

From Bill Clinton to Ellen DeGeneres, celebrities are singing the benefits of a vegan diet. Books that advocate plant-based eating are best sellers. But is eliminating meat and dairy as simple as it sounds?

As countless aspiring vegans are discovering, the switch from omnivore to herbivore is fraught with physical, social and economic challenges — at least, for those who don’t have a personal chef. The struggle to give up favorite foods like cheese and butter can be made all the harder by harsh words and eye-rolling from unsympathetic friends and family members. Substitutes like almond milk and rice milk can shock the taste buds, and vegan specialty and convenience foods can cost two to three times what their meat and dairy equivalents do. And new vegans quickly discover that many foods in grocery stores and on restaurant menus have hidden animal ingredients.

“The dominant social-cultural norm in the West is meat consumption,” said Hanna Schösler, a researcher in the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije University in Amsterdam, who has studied consumer acceptance of meat substitutes. “The people who want to shift to a more vegetarian diet find they face physical constraints and mental constraints. It’s not very accepted in our society not to eat meat.”

Still, the numbers are substantial, according to according to a 2008 report in Vegetarian Times. Three percent of American adults, 7.3 million people, follow a vegetarian diet, and one million of them are vegans, who eat no animal products at all — no meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, even honey. (And 23 million say they rarely eat meat.)

Background Vocabulary: Read the entire article with your class, then answer the questions below. You may wish to introduce students to the following words or concepts before reading: vegetarian, vegan, herbivore, omnivore.

Questions | For reading comprehension and discussion:

1.       Why is becoming a vegetarian so difficult?

2.      According to a 2008 study, how many Americans are vegetarians?

3.      What does the author mean when she describes a “lack of social support” for new vegans or vegetarians?

4.      Why are dairy products particularly difficult to replace?

Activity | What does a balanced vegetarian diet look like? Divide students into groups, and instruct them to create a fictional character, specifying sex, age, height, weight and activity level. Groups then plan a full day of vegetarian (or vegan) meals and snacks for their character, like breakfast, lunch, an afternoon snack and dinner, including quantities

Post your opinion!
Watch this video and  based on this data, make up your mind about it!

 Who will live longer Vegans or meat eaters ? 

Debate about the following statements:

PRO	CONS
Pro 10 Vegetarians live longer. A Mar. 12, 2012 peer-reviewed study of 121,342 people found that eating red meat was associated with an increased risk of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease. A peer-reviewed 2003 study found that adherence to vegetarian diets or diets very low in meat for 20 years or more can increase life expectancy by 3.6 years. [A peer-reviewed July 9, 2001 study of Seventh-Day Adventists who were vegetarian (or ate very little meat) showed longevity increases of 7.28 years for men and 4.42 years for women. On June 3, 2013 a peer-reviewed study of 73,308 people found that a vegetarian diet is associated with a 12% reduction in all-cause mortality.	Con 10 Vegetarians do not live longer. This myth stems from the fact that vegetarians tend to be more health conscious overall, eating a more balanced diet, exercising more, and smoking less than the general population. When a peer-reviewed Apr. 11, 2005 study from the German Cancer Research Center compared health conscious meat eaters with vegetarians, there was no difference in overall mortality rates.
Pro 11 A vegetarian diet promotes a healthy weight. According to a peer-reviewed 2003 Oxford University study of 37,875 healthy men and women aged 20-97, 5.4% of meat eaters were obese compared to 3% of vegetarians. Meat eaters had an average Body Mass Index (BMI) 8.3% higher than vegetarians. Another 2006 meta-study that compiled data from 87 studies also found that vegetarian diets are associated with reduced body weight.	Con 11 US meat consumption does not significantly contribute to global deforestation, or loss of US forest land. In 2001 about 95% of animal products consumed in the United States were produced in the United States. Despite the US consumption of about 27 billion pounds of beef per year, the percentage of forested US land has remained steady at around 33% since 1907.