Feeding the World's Hungry: How Going Veg Would Help

It goes without saying that Jews are mandated to feed the hungry.

Programs to gather, prepare and distribute food to the poor are found at the majority of synagogues.

But did you know that the problem of global hunger and meat consumption are causally linked?

And that adopting a plant-based diet is one of the most significant things you can do to address global hunger?

The reason for this is simple, yet profound:

Meat-production is an inherently and grossly inefficient way to feed our increasingly crowded planet.

When you see a field of soy, corn or grains in the countryside, chances are those crops are not being grown for human consumption. The majority of grain in our country is fed to livestock, not people.

And in the feedlots where most cattle are kept, it takes 8 to 12 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.

Imagine if we were growing crops to feed people, rather than inefficiently processing crops through farm animals.

According to Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, an Iowa-based research group, grain fed to farm animals could feed five times the number of people it presently does if fed directly to humans. Just taking the grain fed to farm animals in the U.S. alone could free up enough food to feed 800 million people, Cornell ecologist David Pimentel has calculated.

Yes, we’re growing more than enough food to feed the entire global population, if only we weren’t diverting a huge percentage of that to farm animals.

Fortunately, we can all address this shameful and unsustainable situation through our own food choices.