Save Water by Eating Less Beef

by Genevieve Lydia Jasper

Imagine you’ve just walked into a fancy restaurant. You order a steak. A big, juicy steak. A gigantic, humongous, filled-with-juices steak.

Well, there goes 1000 gallons. Of water. Yup. Out the door. Down the drain.

See, to raise all the meat that’s on your plate, water had to be used. A lot of water, in fact. Raising the cow’s food, giving the cow water, for as long as it lives- well, that’s not going to be a few cups.  Raising so many cows is really impacting the environment. For instance, California is in a drought. Basically that means that we are not getting rain or snow, and we are running out of water. Now we are using up all of groundwater- kind of like our backup stores. Soon we may have no water left… And that’s not even all of it. Cows release methane, which is a greenhouse gas, basically polluting our environment.  If we took beef out of our diets, we could really be helping our environment.

Beef actually uses 11 times more water than other animals. For instance, it takes 1,000 or more gallons of water to make a half-pound steak. Think of the gallons of milk you see at the grocery store- then multiply that by 1000. Still saying “yes” to beef? Well, you shouldn’t be. Beef is using more water than we have to use, what with the little snow and rainfall this year. Seriously though. We are in a DROUGHT, people! It’s save water or be without! And, to me, the latter is NOT an option!

Another reason is that cows release methane, which is a greenhouse gas. (Yes, I do mean by passing gas.) Animal agriculture is responsible for ⅕ of the gas emissions worldwide. And that is including factories, cars, everything. This is a problem. By raising so many cows we are polluting the earth and causing global warming. This is doing terrible things to our environment. It’s melting the ice caps and causing floods. All because of COWS! It is the time to reduce red meat consumption!

Some people might say that red meat is more filling than other foods, so we’re going to have to eat so many other foods that the water will be about the same. However, even if you account for calories, beef is still wasting water. A lot of water. Beans, tofu, and chicken are much better choices.

I’m not saying you need to go completely cold turkey on red meat. But try and cut back at least on beef and steak, don’t eat too many hamburgers or too much steak. Give yourself limits. Try things out. Try to work with it. Think how much water you’ll be saving! I really don’t like making people feel guilty or telling them how to live their life. But in this case it is an emergency! Give it a little thought, I beg you. Try and save our planet!