As I think everyone here knows by now, Americans eat a ton of meat, more than we need or than is healthy for us. The Environmental Defense Fund recently put together some simple, clear statistics on this matter as well as a few others and I thought I’d share them here. Check ’em out (& feel free to tweet the stats you think are particularly interesting or worth sharing).
3,200
Average American’s calories per day, roughly 1,000 more than we need to stay healthy
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1,600
Chemicals used in food production that have never been tested for safety
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60-80%
West’s water consumed buy agriculture
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65%
American’s daily protein from animals
30%
Rest of the world’s daily protein from animals
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168 lb
U.S. average annual per capita meat consumption in 1970
185 lb
U.S. average annual per capita meat consumption in 2005
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1 million
Broiler chickens raised, killed and prepared in this country per hour
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Photo Credit: …-Wink-… via flickr (CC license)