Our addiction to meat is disgusting.

By consuming copious amounts of products that are grown unsustainably, we are endangering our health, our pocketbooks and, most importantly, the environment that continues to support all carbon-based life forms.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating a total vegetarian diet. Meat is delicious and should be incorporated in our diet – but only in moderation.

So what is the cost of this meat that intoxicates us? Let’s start with the numbers.

Americans consume about 227 pounds of meat per person per year. And we are on our way to increasing the demand for meat by 25 percent by 2015, which is totally unsustainable.

So we have a demand problem. What other problems do we have?

Meat adversely affects our health as well.

Obviously, the U.S. is the nation with the largest average waistline, and this is not a coincidence. We are obese because the government has subsidized (to the tune of over $50 billion) the creation of a monoculture for cheap feed so we can satiate our desire for “corn-fed” beef. So not only is the government pouring a large amount of money into an unsustainable system, but we, the people, are paying the price too.

Obesity-related problems add about $147 billion to our medical bills. So much for our health care reform.

And since we are talking about health, I guess it would be good to mention another hidden price tag stemming from our dangerous consumption.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of antimicrobial drugs used in America are given to animals, not people.

Why are so many pharmaceuticals devoted to our livestock?

And, in case you were not aware, livestock is housed in dangerously close and toxic living quarters. We eliminate the possibility of disease by injecting them with large amounts of drugs, and this comes at a price, which is jacked up even higher due to the animals’ antibiotic resistances. Partially because of this, the Institute of Medicine estimated that Americans pay between $4 and 5 billion per year in “hidden fees.”

The next meat-related problem, the one I find to be the most important, is the perilous position we are putting our environment in.

Cows emit a large amount of methane through gas emission and manure production, and unfortunately, this is a large problem if we hope to continue to wage war against greenhouse gases.

So methane is a problem, but so is the large amount of waste.

A pig produces approximately four times the amount of waste a human does. Where does this waste go?

Well, due to the government’s lack of concern for our safety, most of the manure is put into open-air lagoons, which overflow into rivers and streams after heavy rains.

What consequence does this have? These streams drain into the Gulf of Mexico and create a dead zone 6,000 square miles in area. A dead zone is an area that does not support life, and the one in the Gulf of Mexico severely hurts Mexico’s fishing industry.

Also, through the use of monocultures, we have to use a large amount of fertilizer in the soil to maintain the health of our plants. In nature, there is no such thing as a monoculture. One of the problems with the utilization of a monoculture is we are assuming we know more than nature, when in reality, we hardly understand the ecology around us.

So what can you do?

If you are like me, you still enjoy meat. But I have taken a few steps to try to help solve the problems I describe.

I shop wiser, I purchase products that are grown organically (which now requires research because that term has been altered by large corporations), I consume meat that is not corn-fed and I don’t indulge in meat everyday.

We need to get back to our roots, and we must understand that meat was, and still is, a luxury; one we may not be able to buy for very much longer.