What do you think of this quote? True/not true?

Question

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~Albert Einstein

Answer 1

I agree with good old Albert....

billions of animals are raised and slaughtered for food every year, and more plant foods are raised to give to cattle and other livestock than are consumed by humans.  

If humans started growing the plants for themselves and stopped breeding animals in the billions there would be enough food to sustain the world's population and then some.

Humans get more energy by eating plants than by eating meat.....that's basic biology.

It won't be long before the world's population exceeds what can be fed using animals as food.....but plants?  There is a long way to go before humans could exceed their threshold for plant consumption.

Answer 2

I like the way “Fabulous, “Michael H”, “Windy”, and “♥ Hala ♥" answered. I’m not “smarter” enough to say that quote is “wrong”.

***This quote is not about “YOUR” lifespan, but the “WORLD”s  lifespan. "Nothing lasts forever." I think just about everyone would agree with that.

In fact, that YOU MAY NOT EVEN GET TO FINISH READING THIS SENTENCE before being either whisked away to glamorous Paradise or plunged into Eternal Damnation.

Common mistake in interpretation

1) The word "life" – people misunderstood as “lives”/ is not same.

2) The word "earth" - people misunderstood as "world”/ is not same

3) "Human Health" – liberated to physical health, moral health, emotional health and mental health.

4) "Survival of life on Earth" indicates for paradoxical by then -"end of the world". Extinction is the disappearance of an entire species; It could be human, animal, and/or plants.

Meat eating (Livestock industry) is totally inefficient for the “earth” at all times. (Other threats for the earth include biotechnology, nuclear war, open-burning, etc).

The world endangered biodiversity will cause extinction & exhaustion of all resources in the earth one day (of course). Nothing lasts forever!

Man eats plants (metaphytes), animals; and exploits everything that he could;

Metaphytes will not sustain forever by the overpopulated human/livestock (current ratio man/livestock is 1 to 4.5), and by human exploitation and deforestation.

Livestock extinct (or renounced by man, forcibly);

Man eats man for survival (then, what else?),

and finally “end of the world"!

5) In biology, the real meaning of “evolution” is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. According to the Albert Einstein belief, that even though the “vegetarian” revolution will not surely reverse the world, but at least could RESTORE and PROLONG “(increase) chances for survival of life on Earth”- for a few more years longer.

If the ECOSYSTEM is conserved naturally and BIODIVERSITY is preserved forever, the term Apocalypse and Armageddon would become obsession, especially when one considers that the entire Universe only has a scant ohh, fifteen, sixteen trillion years to expand beyond all conceivable reason before it runs out of steam & gas and starts collapsing back in on itself. Much like the current US economy. This peculiar obsession for humans to MEAT just like watching the clock when we should be enjoying the party has been going on for millennia. And despite an utterly abysmal historical record of failure upon failure and reality's willful refusal to call time-out, it's one that never seems to lose its dubious charm, or go - MERCIfully away.

Answer 3

Not everything Einstein said was purely driven by formula. He was also a bit of a philosopher. Human irresponsibility in their process of consuming meat is slowly driving us to our demise, as well as the demise of other animals.

So there is definitely validity to the statement.

Answer 4

I agree with Einstein's statement. The amount of resouces water, land, energy, fossil fuels, grains consumed by the animal agriculture industry is unsustainable on a global scale. The amounts of CO2, methane, other gases, solid waste, liquid waste and biological waste are all contributing to environmental degredation and pollution. One dairy cow alone produces approximately 28000L of waste water per cow per year and 500L of methane per cow per day. Agriculture is the leading cause of CO2, it produces more CO2 than all transport combined!. Grain production is also the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon. This level of animal product consumption and intensive faming is clearly ecologically unsustainable, I'm therefore inclined to agree with Einstien statement, the way to ensure humanities future survival is to protect the earth on which we live. Animal agriculture continues to do the exact opposite.

oil gas:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/0...

for an equivilant veggie meal, beef consumes 16 times more oil & produces 24 times more CO2

solid waste:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/0...

1 cow can produce 14.6 tonnes of solid waste per year

water:

http://www.chooseveg.com/images/WaterUsa...

1pd or beef requires 32 times more water than 1pd of wheat.

green house gasses/global warming:

http://earthtrends.wri.org/images/GHG_em...

agriculture produces more green house gases than transportation, that's not including the CO2 due to deforestation

deforestation:

http://www.mongabay.com/images/rainfores...

http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/a...

agriculture is the leading cause of rainforest deforestation.

Answer 5

not true

Answer 6

I agree with Einstein.

so all these jerks here are claiming to be smarter than him, uh? duuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh........

Answer 7

I can't see that as being "the" answer to survival, but maybe he was on to something, or else "on" something.

Answer 8

It depends really. If Einstein meant animals when he said "survival of life" then yes it's true. If he meant humans then probably not.

Unless he somehow saw into the future and saw how global warming is likely to kill us all, then its possible that it's true since the meat industry is one of the largest produces of greenhouse gases : /

But I doubt it

Answer 9

He should have stuck to physics.

EDIT: Maybe it would have been a solution in the times before weapons of mass destruction, but who was responsible for that little problem....................

Answer 10

You know I think Mr Einstein was a pretty smart guy so I think he very well could be right.

Answer 11

I agree with Albert! He was a genius!

Answer 12

Not true.  Population control will do more.

Edit  

Any time an absolute answer to a problem is proposed it plants doubts in my mind no matter how smart the person who states it.   IE "Nothing will".  The only true long term solution in my mind can be to stop the population explosion.

Answer 13

General science pretty much accepts that the amount of meat consumed by each person will have to reduce to sustain the population growth.

You will always find people who think they know better than scientific studies. They will get left behind so we've no need to worry about the "not true" people.

As a general statement about health, economy, earths resources and efficiency, then yes, Mr. E was about right.