Veganism Solves Some World Problems

[strawberryriddick]

Hi everyone, not sure where I was supposed to put this but General Discussion seemed to be appropriate. I'm a student and my biology professor requires that we give a presentation at the end of the semester. A group of us got together and decided to do our separate presentations under the header "Heal the World" or some such, and then we'd talk about issues important to us that we feel would help fix some problems we're having in the world today (environmentally-speaking).

 

Naturally, I chose veganism. Now, I'm not asking you to write my presentation or anything...I'm just fine with that. It's just that I know many of us, myself included, have some "go-to" sources/topics. For example, I love to cite the Harvard Nurses Study of Osteoporosis both online and IRL to show how shitty milk is for us. I have a site bookmarked on my computer so I can link people as needed. I'm just curious what your "go-to" items are so I can make a more well-rounded presentation. The only sources that I'm going to use are non-animal-rights and non-vegan sources because I am giving this presentation to non-vegans (and non-vegetarians) and want to be as persuasive as possible. Basically, I want them to say, "Wow, meat really is bad...maybe I should start cutting back."

 

What I want to touch on:

MEAT

-How it affects the environment in terms of methane, water use, amount of pesticides used on feed corn, amount of space taken up by feed corn that could be replaced by food for humans, and amount of emissions during transportation

-How it affects the body and therefore the economy, especially in the face of national health care (I'm in the US, we're still discussing this...if any of you have figures for countries that already have nationalized health care, please share). This would also play into amount of days missed from work due to issues associated with eating meat (would want percentage that, say, heart attack goes up if someone consumes X pounds of meat in Y time)

 

DAIRY/EGG

-This would essentially follow up with the meat, which would basically be to explain why vegan instead of just vegetarian

-How dairy/egg affects the body and therefore economy

 

I'm pretty solid on the "But what would happen to all the cows/chickens/pigs?" question, but if you have any of your own solutions, I'm open to hearing about them.

 

 

Like I said, I'm not asking anyone to write anything for me, just to maybe shoot some links my way that would support these and to suggest other topics to make the presentation more well-rounded and therefore convincing.

[CollegeB]

You really should present on there not being any problems and suggest the folks who are better off for resources, as well as those who don't know any better just keep doing what they are doing because everything is fine.

[strawberryriddick]

You really should present on there not being any problems and suggest the folks who are better off for resources, as well as those who don't know any better just keep doing what they are doing because everything is fine.

A record time 30 second presentation!

[strawberryriddick]

The presentation went well. I had about 50 sources from non-animal sites, did not include any photos (except of fit vegans on the "Myth - 'Vegans Are Scrawny And Pale!'" slide), and did not talk about animal suffering. After all, it's an environmental class and with the attitudes most people have about veganism, I wanted to ensure that they couldn't argue with my sources or trying to garner sympathy or shock value from photos.

 

There were a few questions at the end, and they were answered well...at least, it seemed that way since the askers seemed satisfied. The professor works in the field as well, so I know the environment is a huge issue to him. After class, I asked him what he thought, and he said he was going to show my powerpoint presentation to his wife. Pretty cool.

[Northstar]

Great work!!!

[seitan_man]

Excellent, sounds like you really played a blinder!