After I discovered my ecological footprint one glaring issue was clear. My eating habits produce nearly 160% more kilograms of CO2 than the average Californian. This is incredibly disappointing because I eat healthy and try to eat organic foods. So I did some research and quickly discovered that the main issue involved meat consumption. I certainly consume an above-average amount of meat; however, I never thought that this had such a negative effect on the environment. According to Eliza Barclay in her article "A Nation Of Meat Eaters: See How It All Adds Up" for NPR, a simple quarter pound hamburger out of a cow requires 52.8 gallons of water. On top of that the cow needs 74.5 square feet of grazing land to produce that quarter pound of beef. These numbers are astounding and truly opened my eyes to the energy required to produce meat. It also highlights the massive amount of energy lost as heat while energy transfers through different trophic levels. 6.7 pounds of grain could be consumed by a human, but instead that food goes to a cow to produce a quarter pound of beef.  Fortunately, the same article informs the reader that the average meat on a cow continues to rise and has reached 784 pounds. This increase provides hope that perhaps the meat industry could raise efficiency. Ultimately, these facts about the incredible cost of meat have encouraged me to reduce my personal meat consumption as an effective way of reducing my ecological footprint.

Its astounding the amount of food that Americans consume compared to the people of other modern nations.