The typical American diet adds significantly to pollution, water scarcity, land degradation and climate change, according to a United Nations report released [November 29]. Written by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),the report is the latest research linking meat-eating with environmental destruction. According to the FAO, the arm of the UN that works on worldwide hunger-defeating initiatives, animal farming presents a "major threat to the environment" with such "deep and wide-ranging" impacts that it should rank as a leading focus for environmental policy. The report calls the livestock sector a "major player" in affecting climate change through greenhouse-gas production.

As demand for meat grows, the report explains, so does the need for pasture and cropland, making deforestation an additional concern; currently, according to the report, the livestock sector occupies 30 percent of ice-free land on the planet. Despite such alarming findings, the FAO report stopped short of suggesting more people adopt plant-based diets; instead it advocated for technological solutions and changes in farming policies. Gidon Eshel, assistant professor of physical oceanography and climate [at] the University of Chicago report, [said] "It is probably not a bad idea to suggest unambiguously that if more people used less animal products in their diet than they do today, we [would] be able to sustain a larger number of people on earth for an indefinite period of time, or afford those who are here a better lifestyle."

The latest results from the most comprehensive study of diet's role in cancer risk ever undertaken suggest that getting plenty of vitamin C may lower risk for stomach cancer. The study also indicated that vitamin C may play an important role in protecting against the specific cancer risks associated with diets high in meat.

The study is called the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, or EPIC. A cohort study initiated in 1992, EPIC is currently tracking the diets and disease rates of an unprecedented 521,483 individuals in 10 different European countries. This new study offers further evidence that people concerned about cancer risk should consume a diet that is rich in a variety of fruits and vegetables and that is also low in red meat in general and in processed meats (hot dogs, cold cuts, sausage and bacon) in particular.

Children with a higher intelligence quotient at age 10 are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, according to a study published online [December 15] by the British Medical Journal. People with an IQ of 110 were two-and-a-half times more likely to avoid eating meat, the lead author of the study, Catherine Gale of the University of Southampton, said in a telephone interview. Researchers studied more than 8,000 men and women, and found vegetarians were more likely to be women, belong to a higher social class, and have higher educational degrees.

"If you are bright, you are more likely to understand health information, and more likely to act on it," Gale, a senior research fellow, said. The results backed up findings that intelligence is associated with lower rates of heart disease. While their intelligence may allow the vegetarian participants to be more health literate, some vegetarians act on purely ethical reasons when they give up meat, the study said. The researchers studied participants at age 10, and followed up 20 years later. About 4.5 percent of them said they were vegetarian.

In the rich agricultural region of Northern California, ranchers have been turning chickens too old to lay eggs into compost at a rate of a half-million hens a year. But some chickens not properly euthanized have been seen crawling out of the compost piles, earning them the name "zombie chickens" - and hatching a debate over what else might be done with them and other "spent hens."

A food bank proposed making sausage to feed the poor. A reptile enthusiast suggested using them as food for large exotic pets like pythons and alligators. And an industry group said in the future they could be used as fuel for power plants. [A new European technology turns dead cows into fuel to generate electricity.] But for now, according to egg farmers in Sonoma County, composting is the only affordable option. To kill the chickens, farmers suffocate them in sealed boxes filled with carbon dioxide, a practice that has drawn the ire of animal rights groups. Afterward, the hens are layered in mounds of sawdust.