Going vegan for a month - Day Twenty-three

Today I have a quiz for you. I don't expect you to know the answers but do have a guess. The answers are at the bottom of the post. Before the quiz, though, I'd like to ask my readers a question. Has anything you've read over the last three weeks made you think? Do you find it entertaining? Has it informed or surprised you? Has it changed you or made you wonder about taking the one month pledge yourself? I'm not here to convert. These are my thoughts. I'm expressing what this journey has meant for me. Please do comment. Let me know your thoughts.

Okay. Here is the quiz:

1. Approximately how many thousand vegans do you think there are in Britain? 
2. How many people do you think take the vegan pledge every month?
3. Which year do you think the first animal-free cookery book was published?
4. How many gallons of water does it take to produce one pound of beef?
5. How many pounds of grain do you think are needed to produce one pound of beef?
6. In the US 56 million acres of land are used to grow feed for animals. How many million acres are used to produce plants for humans to eat?
7. What percentage of food poisoning is due to infected meat?
8. How many animals does each vegan save a year?
9. Iron is important in any diet, more so for vegetarians and vegans. Which vitamin helps absorb iron?
10. In 2013 how many animals do you think were killed in British slaughterhouses?

Food today. At lunchtime I ate up the remaining lentil bake from yesterday. I was only going to have about half of it but I went back for seconds!

Dinner tonight was bought Falafels served with spaghetti and my home made spicy tomato sauce. I'm stuffed now! Shouldn't have had two helpings of food at lunchtime.

And now I am planning (shock, horror) for tomorrow's dinner. I want to make a vegetable stew with dumplings. Because I'm out at church in the morning I'm going to chop my veg tonight. I might even make the dumplings. In the morning I will put it all together (except the dumplings) and put it on a slow heat ready for when I come home, Then it's just a case of popping the dumplings in. That's the theory anyway, Check back tomorrow and see if I managed it!

And now for the answers to the quiz.

1. There are 542,000 vegans in Britain.
2. 1,000 people take the vegan pledge a month
3. The first animal-free cook book was published in 1849 by William Horsell of London. The first time the word vegan was used in the title of a cook book was in 1946.
4. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. It only takes 244 gallons to produce one pound of Tofu.
5. It takes 10 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.
6. Only 4 million acres are used to produce plants for humans to eat.
7. 80% of of food poisoning is caused by infected meat.
8. Each vegan saves 200 animals a year.
9. Vitamin C absorbs iron. It's recommended drinking orange juice before meals and leave drinking tea for approximately one hour after a meal.
10. Over one billion animals are slaughtered per year in the UK. This includes 9.8m pigs, nearly 15m sheep, 18m turkeys, 14m ducks, over 945m chickens and 2.6m cattle. Add to that 4.5 billion fish, 2.6 billion shellfish and you have 8 billion animals killed in the UK each year. This equates to 22 million animals slaughtered daily, 919,000 an hour, 15,000 per minute and 256 ever second.

Thanks to Viva.org.uk, The Vegan Society and Vbetweenthelines.com for the above information.