In Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating by Mark Bittman, Bittman talks about how eating meat affects the world's environment. I don't get why...

Mark Bittman's argument in Food Mattersis that it takes much more energy to produce meat than to grow plants. In fact, on page 5 in the Introduction, he says that it requires ten times as much energy to create a meat product than it would to grow plants for food. On page 13, Bittman cites the statistic that we raise 60 billion animals a year for food, and this number is projected to rise...

Mark Bittman's argument in Food Matters is that it takes much more energy to produce meat than to grow plants. In fact, on page 5 in the Introduction, he says that it requires ten times as much energy to create a meat product than it would to grow plants for food. On page 13, Bittman cites the statistic that we raise 60 billion animals a year for food, and this number is projected to rise to 120 billion animals a year by 2050.

Animals raised in this way are generally grown in factories, and these animals use energy and resources (such as land) in their development process. These animals require drugs, pesticides, machinery (such as machinery to feed and slaughter them), water, and fuel for transportation. As Bittman says, the average steer requires 135 gallons of gasoline in its lifetime. It has to be shipped to its place of slaughter and then to markets, for example. Packaging and processing the animals for the market also consumes a great deal of energy. For example, if food is enclosed in plastic or styrofoam, additional energy is consumed making these products, and then these products are either discarded (or recycled) in a process that also consumes energy. According to Bittman, the food industry uses up 10% of the nation's energy (page 17). That is how Bittman comes to the conclusion that a steak dinner for a family of four consumes as much energy as driving around for 3 hours in an SUV while leaving the lights on at home (page 17).