Advantage vegetarianism!

Everybody knows about the advantages of being a vegetarian. A lot has been said and written about turning vegetarian and living healthy. I am certainly not getting into it. However, we now have a new reason to give up eating meat - global warming.

Did you know that every piece of beef you eat adds to global warming? This might sound strange but it is true. Going by the United Nations' estimates, rearing cows, processing beef and dairy products, packaging and transporting them to supermarkets and then to your kitchens accounts for 18 per cent of world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Be it feeding a cow or slaughtering it and everything in between needs fossil fuel. Therefore, the more the beef is eaten the more fossil fuels are burnt, which only means more global warming. Moreover, cows themselves pass gas, mostly methane, which is more harmful than carbon dioxide.

So, all you beef lovers, time to start loving cows when alive. For more on this, go to http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4845543&page=1