Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg An employee rings up a customer while others prepare orders at a Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. restaurant in Hollywood, California on Tuesday, July 16, 2013.

The American hunger for meat, especially beef, is abating for the first time in living memory. Now vegetables are claiming more space in an unexpected place: the fast food counter, with White Castle and Chipotle heavily promoting new vegan entrees.

The new options come as Washington and the United Nations are pushing plant-based diets to save the environment and lower health care costs. The restaurant chains, however, say theyre just answering consumer demand with new products, not letting bureaucrats lead them by the nose. White Castle introduced its vegan slider, made by Dr. Praegers Sensible Foods, on December 30. The product was trial tested over the summer in New York and New Jersey, White Castles second largest market after the Chicago area. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. is promoting its new vegan organic tofu Sofrita burritos on Monday, January 26, by offering customers who buy it a free meal when they return with their receipts over the next month.

This is what we heard from customers, especially Millennial customers and potential customers, 18 to 24 years old,said Jamie Richardson, vice president of government and shareholder relations at White Castle System, Inc. They might have a range of reasons for wanting a vegan option, and they might not be vegan but have friends who are.

Food experts summoned by the Obama administration are wooing the same demographic. The committee charged with drafting the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (and the accompanying food pyramid graph recently redesigned as a plate) for the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to include a blurb about the environmental costs (and therefore future food security impact) of meat consumption. As reported by Science, the food sustainability and safety subcommittee chair, Tufts University professor of nutrition Miriam Nelson, PhD said, "Research shows that, with young adults, a green message can be a real motivating factor....It could be used as another messaging tool."

Congress balked at this new environmentalist inroad and demanded in its late December budget package that the Dietary Guidelines stick strictly to nutrition. The UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in November that eating less meat could slow global climate change, confirming earlier findings published in peer-reviewed science journals. Those papers prompted pronouncements against meat overindulgence by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

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The UN has a tough row to hoe. Where wealth increases, as in China and even India, meat consumption tends to follow. In many nations, agriculture is a bigger contributor to climate change than even transportation. The U.S. is, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the second largest per capita meat eating nation after Luxembourg. That said, Per capita meat consumption in the U.S. has stagnated in recent years and may be declining, noted Emily Cassidy, research analyst with the Environmental Working Group. Thats because omnivores have shifted to eating more vegetables. Vegetarians, who eat eggs and dairy but not meat, make up just 5% of the U.S. population, according to a 2012 Gallup poll, flat or slightly down from 1999. About 2% of Americans say theyre vegan, abstaining from all animal products.

Over 9 billion farm animals are slaughtered each year for meat, according to the Human Society. Americans eat nearly 271 pounds of meat per person annually, with chicken now surpassing beef for the first time in a century. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations fisheries division reported in October that U.S. operators landed 9.9 billion pounds of fish and shellfish in a year, up 245 million pounds from just two years before.

If all Americans forego meat and dairy for one day a week, thats the equivalent of taking 7.6 million cars off the road for the year, said Cassidy of the Environmental Working Group. From 2001 to 2011, all agricultural greenhouse gas emissions were up 14%. Globally, livestock accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. Going vegan isnt the only way to reduce emissions -- the U.S. has already reduced its carbon footprint by eating chicken instead of beef.

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Vegan Options Invade Fast Food As Beef Consumption Sinks

There are three constants in lifedeath, taxes, and that everyone's shit stinks. Or does it? Though smelly poo has always seemed like a non-negotiable, there's a chance that it may be more about diet than digestion.

And theres no shortage of fad meal plans that promise to change your life. Most promote weight loss, heightened energy, and even better skin. Raw foodists and paleo practitioners believe their diets put them more in tune with natural eating patterns. Vegans have all the ethical and environmental arguments against eating animal products on their side. Though choosing a new diet is often more about health or weight loss than consideration for the person who uses the toilet after you, what if you could alter the odor of your poo by changing the way you eat?

What if you could alter the odor of your poo by changing the way you eat?

In the list of health claims I've heard vegans make, the most memorable is that eliminating animal products has an odor-canceling side effect on their morning constitutionals. Or as one ex-vegan said in an interview, "I could definitely brag about how my poop didnt smell, or that my urine was crystal clear!" Though no scientific studies have looked into this very important question, there are two main theories that explain the phenomenon.

One has to do with a compound traced to animal products and the other is all psychology.

"People have strongly held beliefs that dont always hold up to the scrutiny of real science," says Dr. Drew Schembre, a gastroenterologist at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. "Theyre prone to a special type of magic thinking." In short, if you think your diet is somehow more pure than others, youll find evidence to support it. Dr. Schembre, whose city is very close to Portlandia, is all too familiar with the phenomenon. "Virtually everyone here is celiac-sensitive and pseudo-vegan, except for bacon," he says.

Yet others believe there could be something to the claim, believing that smelly stool is caused by an organic compound called a mercaptan. "Plant-based diets create less smelly flatulence and stool because theyre low in mercaptans," says Dr. Anish Sheth, author of Whats Your Poo Telling You? These compounds are almost exclusively found in animal products and produce an odor that can only be described as a cross between boiled cabbage, sulfur, and garlic. If Dr. Sheth is right and you know someone on the paleo diet, watch out. Not only is the diet tough on your gut, its likely to be high in meats and therefore smelly mercaptans too. According to Heather Rasmussen of Rush University Medical Center, "The logic of paleo is a little misplaced." Without whole grains or beans, its hard to get enough fiber, much less the recommended 25 grams a day.

"Everything else that causes foul-smelling stool is based on eating something your body is unable to digest," Dr. Sheth says. People who have celiac disease or are lactose intolerant are excellent examples. One of the classic signals that you might be gluten intolerant is unusually putrid poo.

The idea that meat causes smells and sensations that are somehow unnatural has been around for 30 years, according to Dr. Schembre. "Its largely not true." On its way to the final destination, meat behaves like any other protein traveling through the gut. There are studies that link cancer, obesity, and other diseases to high animal fat diets, Dr. Schembre says. "But thats a function of the variation of things youre eating, not the absolute exclusion or inclusion of one type of food component."

If changing your diet to experience odor-free poo is important to you, dont expect your stool to smell like roses overnight. Your gut is typically only used to five grams of fiber per day, so suddenly revving up to the recommended 25 is a good way to throw your stomach off balance. "When people first introduce fiber they have side effects like gas and bloating and changes in stool," says Rasmussen. "That doesnt mean its a bad thing. It means youre giving your stomach bacteria something to eat."

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The Poop Diet Wars