Giving up meat makes sense — for the health of people and the planet

Giving up meat and even seafood was easy for me.

After an illness a couple of years ago, these things just didn’t appeal to me any longer. I still eat an occasional piece of cheese, cream in my coffee and eggs from our backyard hens. And the rest of my family continues to consume meat, though not a great deal.

According to worldwide estimates, we number some 7.5 billion people today, but that number will swell to 9 billion or more by 2050. Can we feed them? Probably, experts say, though with increases in flooding globally and more frequent, long droughts, the ecosystem is becoming stressed. Careful resource planning will be required, and food should be planned to use the space judiciously, which, of course, brings beef into the picture.