How Many Gallons of Water to Produce a Pound of Beef

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What's the beef with water?

Don't have a cow man. Improve your wellness past reducing your water footprint.

Footprints tin exist seen in lots of places — in the sand, in the snow, on the moon, even in our water.

Wait, in our water?

That's right, though it's not exactly what you recollect. A water footprint is like an environmental or ecological footprint. A h2o footprint accounts for the water used in the agricultural, packaging and shipping processes used to produce the food you consume.

And since our employees at Denver Water eat, drink and breathe water (okay, probably just potable, but yous get the point) it'due south just natural that water footprints would exist a focus in our health program.

Denver Water's employee wellness plan includes voluntary challenges throughout the twelvemonth, each one typically lasting three weeks. The challenges have goals such as ditching fast nutrient, drinking more than water and getting more than practise.

Jessica Brody, general counsel for Denver Water, has been a vegetarian since childhood. Not only exercise vegetables contribute to a salubrious lifestyle, they have a relatively small h2o footprint. Photo credit: Denver H2o.

This month, employees are being challenged to endeavour a plant-based diet. It'due south a diet that emphasizes minimally processed foods from plants and includes healthy proteins like nuts, seeds, beans and tofu. It besides allows for modest amounts of animal products similar fish, lean meat and low-fatty dairy.

Limiting the consumption of animal products has many positive health impacts like lowering cholesterol and blood pressure and helping to prevent chronic diseases.

Merely here's where the water footprint comes in. Do you lot know what food has the largest global h2o footprint? Beef.

It takes approximately ane,847 gallons of water to produce i pound of beefiness — that'due south enough water to fill 39 bathtubs all the fashion to the pinnacle.

For only 1 pound of beef? How tin can that exist possible?

A beef cow eats thousands of pounds of grass, corn, grains and soybeans during her lifetime, and water is necessary to grow this diet. That's why the production of animal products like meat, dairy and eggs requires more than water than producing fruits (115 gallons of water per pound) and vegetables (39 gallons of water per pound).

So, when nosotros ask our employees to make healthier choices when eating, nosotros not only contribute to our employees' overall wellness, just we help reduce the global footprint of water. And since nosotros're a water utility dedicated to water conservation and efficiency, that's what we call a win-win situation.

Do you know how much water goes into producing your foods? Because of the water needed to sustain and feed animals over time before slaughter and the processing and packaging of these food products, animate being products like beef, pork, and chickens accept a larger h2o footprint than fruits and vegetables. Image credit: Denver Water.

If you'd like to join our employees this month in improving your health and decreasing your global water footprint, here are a few tips:

• Avert wasting food.
• Reduce the amount of processed foods in your diet.
• Limit the amount of animal products yous eat and give a plant-based meal a try.
• Choose pasture-raised animal products when you tin.

Of course, this isn't for everyone, and eating a burger or steak doesn't mean you're wasting water.

But if you want to reduce your global h2o footprint with the foods you lot eat, endeavour reducing your beefiness intake for a while. Y'all might find it to be a mooooo-ving experience!

And if you want to subtract your water footprint here in Colorado, there are enough of other things you lot can do to utilize h2o efficiently.

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Source: https://www.denverwater.org/tap/whats-beef-water#:~:text=Beef.,the%20way%20to%20the%20top.

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