The plight of those with different dietary needs than the mainstream glut of American carnivorousness is a prolonged battle for understanding and acceptance at DU, ultimately helping our university provide sustainable vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free diets.
Recently precipitating in what was described as a battle of the grills, the struggle for sustainable vegetarian options on campus has gained traction.
With a great disconnect between perceived student opinion and documented student sentiment, we strive to educate others on restrictive diets and to accurately express student opinion.
In order to accurately project student opinion, we are organizing a massive survey: You can share your thoughts by emailing dufood@gmail.com or participate in person on campus.
Now, I am no animal rights hippie. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about animal rights. I think that before we start whining about chickens in small cages, or veal, we first need to end the murder of millions around the world. But that is exactly what vegetarianism does: eliminate needless deaths.
Vegetarianism eliminates wasteful agriculture, thus putting an end to mass starvation.
It’s murderous that a vegan diet isn’t available through Sodexho.
According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO), livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of climate change – more than all of the world’s transportation.
Livestock production consumes 77 percent of the world’s cereal crops and farm animals must be fed over six kilograms of cereal crops to produce one kilogram of meat, thus taking severely needed food and inefficiently using it to produce meat, causing the deaths of millions of starving people around the world.
The most effective way to eliminate this needless loss of life would be to go vegetarian. But in mainstream America, this would never happen.
Exercise your power to make change.
Change your daily habits. Change your over-consumption. I challenge you to eat one less hamburger a week. I dare you to opt for a salad instead of a second plate of lasagna. I summon you to educate your friends, family and even strangers on the impact of meat.
If, for just one day a week, everyone was a vegetarian, it would be equivalent to taking eight million cars off the road.
