Water - H2 whoa!

Water, its whats for dinner!  Truthfully I never have been much of a water drinker, that is up until recently.  I suppose I figured I got all the water I needed from the coffee and beer I drank every day.  What I have realized is that water is the single one thing that can help you lose and keep weight off and beer, definitely is not!  Water helps flush out your system and helps keep your body tuned up and running properly.  Currently I drink lots of water every day, up to a gallon or more, and I'm still a big coffee drinker too.  Living in the desert requires a little more water consumption then normal!  Very important to stay hydrated, most of the US population is under hydrated, by choice.  What I mean is we as a society don't consume enough water to keep us properly hydrated, thats the choice.

I learned a few facts about water that pretty much astounded me.  There seems to be growing concerns worldwide with our clean water supply.  One fact that I still can't wrap my mind around is the amount of water that is required to produce one pound of meat.  The number?  2400 gallons, wow!  I drink about a gallon of water a day, or 365 gallons a year.  That would be 6.57 years of me drinking a gallon of water a day to equal the 2400 gallons required to produce 1 pound of meat!  Now in all fairness it requires roughly 300 gallons of water a day to support a vegan diet.  On the same scale the 2400 gallons it takes for one pound of meat would support a pure vegan diet for 8 days.  Just for kicks and comparison the average meat eating diet requires 4000 gallons of water per day.

Another astonishing fact is HALF of the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food.             By looking at the US Census population clock it states there are over 310,000,000 people in the US.  Statistics estimate that 1% of the US population is Vegan.  So for the math let's just say there are 300,000,000 people on a meat based diet in the US.  Now I am not going to do the true calculations here because it is simply mind boggling, but just imagine if all the US population didn't eat meat for one just day how much of a water savings that would be for just one single day!  Its a staggering number of 900 billion gallons or something like that.  That is a lot of water!  For comparison, Lake Sunapee, the 5th largest lake in New Hampshire is said to hold 900 billion gallons of water.  Click to find out more on Lake Sunapee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Sunapee 

In one year on a vegan based diet I will save 1,350,500 gallons of water all by myself!  Assuming I live another 50 years ( that is kind of my goal) that will equate to somewhere in the neighborhood of 67,525,000 (67 million+) gallons of water I will have saved over the rest of my vegan life.  Add my wife in to the mix and we have a total of 135,050,000 (135 million+!) gallons of water saved!  That will hopefully help our grandchildren and their grandchildren to have clean water too!

Thanks for visiting my blog!
Until next time,
Kel