One Cheeseburger At A Time

Blitz's meat calculator will tell you how many pigs and chickens and cows you eat every year based on weekly meat consumption, and will tell you how many animals you can "save" if you switch some of your meals to vegetarian.

According to the calculator, if you're an average American you'll eat two pigs, two-thirds of a cow, and 289 chickens in the next ten years. If you reduce your meat consumption by even ten percent, that adds up to half a pig, a calf, and 29 chickens.

For the environment, what matters more than the lives of the animals is the resources used to produce them, including petroleum, water, and antibiotics.

The difference between a vegetarian diet and a meat-eating one, over ten years, is 18,000 pounds of carbon dioxide and 238,810 gallons of water. Think about California droughts and wildfires in that context.

Plus, one cow releases somewhere between 70 and 120 kg of methane a year, and methane is 25 times as powerful in causing climate change than CO2. Reducing your impact doesn't have to mean going vegan; swapping out one cheeseburger a week for pasta primavera or even a chicken sandwich will make a difference.