3 Water footprints:
Green water footprint is water from precipitation that is stored in the root zone of the soil and evaporated, transpired or incorporated by plants. It is particularly relevant for agricultural, horticultural and forestry products.
Blue water footprint is water that has been sourced from surface or groundwater resources and is either evaporated, incorporated into a product or taken from one body of water and returned to another, or returned at a different time.
Grey water footprint is the amount of fresh water required to assimilate pollutants to meet specific water quality standards. The grey water footprint considers point-source pollution discharged to a freshwater resource directly through a pipe or indirectly through runoff or leaching from the soil, impervious surfaces, or other diffuse sources.
Fruits and Legumes vs Meat Green, Blue and Grey Water Footprint Comparison
Water footprint per ton (m3 / ton) and per unit of nutritional value for fruits, pulses (legumes like beans, peanuts) and bovine meat*:
| Food |
Green Water
footprint per ton
(m3 / ton)
|
Blue Water
footprint per ton
(m3 / ton) |
Grey Water
footprint per ton
(m3 / ton)
|
Total Water |
Calorie
litre/kcal
|
Protein
litre/g
|
| Fruits |
726 |
147 |
89 |
962 |
2.09 |
180 |
| Legumes |
3 180 |
141 |
734 |
4 055 |
1.19 |
19 |
| Meat |
14 414 |
550 |
451 |
15 415 |
10.19 |
112 |
* This table made by the author of the site Fruitarians.net (Lena), based on THE GREEN, BLUE AND GREY WATER FOOTPRINT OF FARM ANIMALS AND ANIMAL PRODUCTS, VOLUME 1: MAIN REPORT, M.M. MEKONNEN, A.Y. HOEKSTRA, DECEMBER 2010, VALUE OF WATER RESEARCH REPORT SERIES NO. 48, the link to PDF is provided on the article page.
Study Conclusions
(UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education, 2010)
As a general picture we find that animal products have a larger water footprint per ton of product than crop products.
... The global average water footprint per ton of crop increases from sugar crops (roughly 200 m3 /ton) and vegetables (~300 m3 /ton) to pulses [legumes] (~4000 m3 /ton) and nuts (~9000 m3 /ton). For animal products, the water footprint increases from milk (~1000 m3 /ton) and egg (~3300 m3 /ton) to beef (~15400 m3 /ton).
Also when viewed from a caloric standpoint, the water footprint of animal products is larger than for crop products. The average water footprint per calorie for beef is twenty times larger than for cereals and starchy roots.
... The water footprint per gram of protein for milk, eggs and chicken meat is about 1.5 times larger than for pulses. For beef, the water footprint per gram of protein is 6 times larger than for pulses.
... The general conclusion is that from a freshwater resource perspective, it is more efficient to obtain calories, protein and fat through crop products than animal products.
... A vegetarian diet compared with the average current per capita food intake in the USA can reduce the water footprint of an individual by as much as 58%.
Read more ...
Comments
Just for reference, not to make you feel bad - today I went a straight 4K, 176 lengths, 88 "laps", in about 70 minutes.
You could go a lot faster and further in freestyle not breaststroke.
I could turn you into a 10K lake swimmer ! :-)
I prefer breaststroke for many reasons.
I wish I had a lake to swim :)
Pumpkin seeds, and fruit seeds in general, are not ethical fruitarians' food since there is no good ethic in general eating of fruits without any natural feedback to their species' life cycle, that is, without the release of those fruits' seeds into the environment; such a release would give chances for those seeds to grow into new plants of their kind. If the seeds from fruits are eaten and digested, those apparently cannot grow into new plants. Fruit seeds may be swallowed and even accidentally digested, but that does not make them regular food.
By “fruits” I mean fleshy fruits; and by “fruit seeds” I mean seeds from fleshy fruits, not seeds from pods, nor nuts, nor seeds in general.
This comment is about pumpkin seeds being mentioned in Amino Acids in Fruits and Seeds, and refers to ethics in fruitarianism discussed in Defining Fruitarianism and elsewhere on this site.
“From philosophical perspective, veganism is a subset of fruitarianism, because fruitarians take to consideration lives of other living organisms, which do not necessarily belong to animal kingdom (Animalia or Metazoa).”
From Defining Fruitarianism
Dear Lena,
Defining the topic of this article and mentioning “fruit flesh”, why do you generalize your arguments as about “plant seeds”, and why don't you make a distinction between seeds of fleshy fruits and seeds without flesh attached? In the case of the fleshy fruits, their flesh is already a source of nutrition for eaters; why digest their seeds, knowing that those are reproductive? Furthermore, those seeds don't have as attractive taste as their fruits' flesh; some fruit seeds have a disgusting taste; why manifest bad taste?
“... and even the unavoidable death would become a moral crime, because humans are 90% microbial organisms, and over 100 trillion microbes would die with each of us.”
– Digesting seeds of fruits is a matter of human choice, unlike death.
“A fertile male human ejaculates on average about a teaspoon of semen with over 200 million sperm. There is no way all of them will connect with ovum, the female reproductive cell, and develop into a toddler.” ... “The same with the plant seeds.”
– In the human reproduction process, the greater number of sperm cells serve as environment for fertilization of ovum. In the reproduction of seed plants, the seeds of the plants already are plant embryos and don't need further insemination. So, in matching seeds of plants to human nature, to count are just the sperms successfully connected with ovums, forming embryos. Your argument is thus irrelevant!
“And females cannot conceive a child every month, just because an egg cell was produced and possibly fused with a male cell.”
– If an egg cell was produced and then fused with a male cell, which made a female conceive a child, the body of this female would pause releasing egg cells during the following months of pregnancy. Otherwise, if the female did not conceive a child, she could do so the succeeding month. So, this sentence of yours is irrelevant and thus is not a valid argument to the topic!
“modern fruitarians, who are much better informed and more capable of critical thinking”
– As a modern fruitarian, are you well enough informed on human reproductive processes, as to use those as arguments about ethical fruitarianism? Are you capable of accepting criticism towards your own published thoughts?
“A tree can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds in one season, and less than 1% of them have any chance to sprout. It does not mean that the rest should rot (be consumed by bacteria and fungi) without any use by animals.”
– That rest of the seeds would rot or be otherwise used by animals as a RESULT of not being successful to sprout, whilst intentional digestion by humans would CAUSE absence of chance for germination to the seeds.
“Some seeds can survive ... and germination can begin.”
– The fruitarian diet, which you are discussing, comprises stuff that is swallowed and digested, and not stuff that is swallowed and released undigested. So the last three paragraphs of section 2 of your arguments are irrelevant to the topic.
“fruitarianism is about fruits is botanical sense”
How about ethical fruitarianism? Is it not the ethical approach, while making use of the flesh of the fruits, to allow for the botanical purpose of the seeds of the fleshy fruits to fulfill?
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