Meat, eggs, and dairy products make for bad macroeconomics and bad micro-economics. They are bad for the world economy, the national economy, and the family budget.

Animal foods are more expensive than plant-based foods. A family can easily cut its food bill in half by eating a plant-based diet. The cheapest and healthiest diet would include cooked or sprouted rice and other grains plus cooked or sprouted legumes plus raw and lightly cooked backyard greens, supplemented by nuts and fruits. ...

Dr. Dean Ornish wrote in 1990 that we were spending $7 billion a year on heart bypass surgeries and $78 billion on heart disease generally in the United States. To the extent that our population ate a plant-based diet, this cost could be greatly reduced. (Program for Reversing Heart Disease, p. 28.) ...

It is a scandal that we cut down trees to make paper. ... It is another scandal that we grow cotton to produce fiber for clothing. Hemp and flax make fine fabrics. ... Flax contains the hard-to-get antioxidant Omega-3 essential fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid. Gandhi encouraged the growing of flax and said that where ever flax was grown, people prospered and became healthier. ...

Farm corporations growing grains fed to animals — such as corn, soybeans, and sorghum—received $16 billion in federal price supports and subsidies in 1987. Although beef cattle producers receive no direct subsidies, they do receive indirect subsidies in the form of feed grains that are artificially low in cost due to government subsidies and low rent on grazing land in the West. Milk producers receive around $2 billion each year in price supports. (William Harris, M.D., The Scientific Basis of Vegetarianism, p. 80.) ...

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