Interesting discussion on demographics. Of course, like most things, "it is a little more complicated than that..." Firstly, the 2011 estimated total fertility rates for Nigeria and the US are 4.73 and 2.06 per woman, respectively. The Nigerian birth rate has been dropping steadily, although it is still high. Considered year on year, the Nigerian birth rate is estimated to have dropped from 44/1000 pop to 39/1000 pop just in the single year between 2008 and 2009. The overall death rate in Nigeria is around 17/1000 pop, with an infant mortality rate at around 98/1000 live births. In the US the birth rate is around 13/1000 pop, with an overall death rate of 8/1000 pop, and an infant mortality rate of around 6/1000 live births. Nigerian life expectancy at birth is currently 51, with US life expectancy at birth is currently 78.

This indicates that there are a couple of statements made in this thread, that might have been made with a bit more caution.
1) A child who will not survive infancy will have little impact on the ecology.
2) A female child who will not survive infancy will not add to the populaton.
3) An adult who will live to 51 will have less impact on the environment than an adult who lives to 78.
4) Although the world's cereal based human diets are certainly environment/resource destroying, our diets are not the biggest impact on the environment that any individual human being can have.
5) A human who uses not only calories, but heat, energy, transport, technology, etc, will have more impact than a human who can barely scrape together the minimum in calories for survival.
6) Any calculation of population sustainability must take BOTH death rates and birth rates into account. Stable populations CAN exist either with high birth rates/high death rates (most of human agricultural history) OR low birth rates/low death rates (likely more typical of ancestral hunter/gatherer demographics). What is curently happening is an unstable coupling of still high birth rates (although with an ever decreasing trend worldwide), and unforeseeably low death rates.
7) It might be true that Africa depends currently on our western "leavings", but it is equally true that many of those leavings are the dregs of what the west originally stole, including the ax to native self-sufficiency that was colonialism.

Having said all this, I absolutely agree that, as evidence repeatedly has shown, empowering and educating women is the quickest shortcut to reducing the birth rate. Improving food security, by weaning a country off of western subsidised grains back onto native, sustainably grown, and local-economy-promoting foods will certainly help.
(Note - worth checking out, in this context, the work of Allan Savory, 2010 Buckminster Fuller Prize winner on reversing desertification, increasing herd size, crop quality and bio-diversity in Namibia with holistic grazing principles.)

Oh, and, the original post - fascinating and enlightening! I will definitely refer it on to anyone who brings out the "meat rotting in your gut" canard in future.

The thing is we HAVE created welfare states dependent on western food aid because it suits US and will go on suiting us - both Americans and Europeans WANT to dump our agricultural surpluses there, our countries WANT to dominate the trade relationships we have with those countries and run them to our advantage, we WANT to control the supplies of their precious minerals, petroleum and other scarce resources, whether by military threat or the corruption of their leaders, and we DO NOT WANT to permit them to be self-sufficient. Overpopulation is a (not immediately threatening, at least so long as our visa systems protect our borders) side-effect of this ongoing exploitation process, which our countries will continue to pursue so long as it remains to our (short-term) advantage.

For countries in Africa to become self-sufficient, we would have to become self-sufficient first, because it is we in the West that cannot continue to live as we do without a total reliance on the theft of their resources. Africans can only start living within their means, when we choose to STOP living within THEIR means.

I haven't heard the myth that meat rots in your intestines just because of eating meat, but I have heard that if you consume vegetables and meat in the same meal it takes longer to break down and makes the vegetables rot inside your intestines. Any thoughts?

Great information. I'm glad to see someone else cover this moronic vegan propaganda. Because I lost all of my intestines and saw the contents directly from the stomach via a jejunostomy, I know for a fact that humans digest meat much easier than vegetables. I wrote an article on the same subject based on my medical experience:

http://roarofwolverine.com/archives/412

I hope that this stupid myth will go the way of the Piltdown man. Keep up the good work J. Stanton, I enjoy your work.

Great article.

Being pedantic, I must add that there actually are cellulolytic microbita in human colon:

A strictly anaerobic cellulolytic strain designated 18P13T was isolated from human faecal sample. Cells of this organism were Gram-positive and non-motile cocci. Strain 18P13T was able to degrade microcrystalline celluloses but utilization of soluble sugars was restricted to cellobiose.

[...] more on how the human alimentary tract digests meat, J.Stanton has published a detailed breakdown here.  There is another excellent description found [...]

[...] seconds of searching will find that for you. Entering this Google search.... Got me this page: Does Meat Rot In Your Colon? No. What Does? Beans, Grains, and Vegetables! - GNOLLS.ORG Seriously. Look back on what I said in my original response to you, Mike. You need to ask [...]

Thank you
For writing so clearly about something that I have known for a long time.
I am always greatly disturbed by Vegan or Veg type people raising children on low protein diets.
It is taking away the chances of them ever having a strong and active life.
Thanks again
Sam

Help...I have great interest in this process and subject. I would like to find a project for computational chemistry that would allow me to make additional discovery related to the topic. Any suggestions?