03/20/13 Meatout 2013
With the beginning of spring Animal Friends encourages a tasty and healthy diet with food of plant origin
- March 20, 2013: vegan meal cook workshop on Trg bana Jelacica
With the oncoming spring, the whole world is about to celebrate Meatout for the twenty eighth consecutive year. This important date symbolizes the revival and renewal of nature, and it encourages consumers to eat a healthy, ethical and ecological diet based on vegetables, fruit, grains and pulses.
Animal Friends, in collaboration with the American non-profit organization Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), is going to join over thirty countries throughout the world on the March 20 when good intentioned individuals will invite their friends, family members and communities they live in to kick their meat-eating habits and explore a healthy and compassionate diet.
In a kitchen specially set up for this occasion, Animal Friends will organize a cooking workshop of delicious vegetable-based meals on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 on Trg bana Jelacica in Zagreb, from 11 A.M. Next to the open kitchen workshop there will be an information stall where people will be able to sign a petition for introducing vegetarian meals into public institutions such as schools and kindergartens, where there are vegetarians and vegans whose right to a suitable meal is being ignored.
Meatout reminds us of many reasons why it is a good idea to change our eating habits:
- For the environment and our planet: The share of greenhouse gas emission caused by massive livestock farming is larger than the share of total traffic on earth. The farmed animal population produces 550 tons of excrement every second and pollutes water and soil.
- For health: Fruit, vegetables, seeds, pulses and grains are the best choice for children and adults. Vegetable-based diets protect us from the most common diseases and causes of death in the western countries, such as heart and blood vessel diseases, diabetes, obesity and cancer. Research has shown that vegetarians, and even more so vegans, have a 20% lower mortality rate from all diseases, live longer and get sick less often.
- For hunger in the world: Massive amounts of grains and water are needed for meat production. Rain forests are being cut down and agricultural land is being used that can be used instead for feeding people.
- For saving lives: Taking other creatures' lives and supporting suffering disappears when we stop buying meat and other ingredients of animal origin.
- For culinary delight: A vegan diet is very tasty and opens new culinary horizons.
Two days later (March 22) is World Water Day which is being marked because of the urgent problem concerning the survival of mankind, and United Nations has declared the period from year 2005 to 2015 a water decade. Huge amounts of drinking water are being used for the production of animal origin ingredients and water streams are suffering from enormous pollution.
The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) published an alarming study last year where it warns that due to the rise in world population and growing drought, there will not be sufficient water in the world that will enable the production of meat for food that would be sufficient to feed nine billion people, which is the expected population by year 2050. Also, the study undertaken by the Institute of Mechanical Engineering in the UK points out that 20 to 50 times more water is being used for meat production as compared to the same amount of vegetable production, and demand for water in food production could reach from 10 to 13 billion cubic meters by year 2050.
Animal Friends invites everyone to mark Meatout and World Water Day by making dishes from vegetable-based ingredients. Let the beginning of spring be an incentive to change to a vegan diet, which will enable each individual to save their own health, many lives and the planet that depends on us changing out habits, and will contribute to one's own vitality and contentment. Even a small attempt at a non-meat diet because of its many benefits can quickly grow into a constant and new life habit for everyone, which symbolizes the awakening of new human beings in an ever larger community of compassionate people.