What are the good and bad points of being a vegitarian?!
What are the good and bad points of being a vegitarian?
Answers:
good:
helps reduce animal cruelty and death
longer life
more healthy
great variety of imaginative food
Better for the environment
bad:
having to put up with ignorant meat-eater comments
being associated (wrongly ) with PETA and animal rights groups ( veggie is a DIET )
Being subject to more assumptions that you can shake a stick at.
note all the bad points are to do with other people, not the diet.
Bad Point -- no more BBQ's!!
Good points:
saving animals
veggies are mostly healthier
finding out about food that you've never heard of (my fave is Quorn, tastes just like ground beef, but is vegetarian and is good for you.)
getting an excuse for a meal all of your own when everyone else wants meat
people telling you how much they admire you and that they'd be vegetarians if they could resist hamburgers
Bad points:
NO MEAT!
it's always a hassle to get another meal for yourself
less choice with food; many things just have a sauce or flavorings that have meat in them
having to watch what you eat more to make sure that you get enough protein and fibre
when you go to a BBQ and can't have anything but the mashed potatoes and the corn on the cob, so you either have to bring a frozen veggie burger and clean the grill to get rid of the meat fat or just eating a sandwich
Good Points:
-All your nutritional needs can be met.
-Food sources are plentiful and self-sustaining.
-No suffering/dying for the cows and pigs and chickens.
-Most restaurants have expanded their menus to accomodate vegetarians.
Bad Points:
-Feeling of guilt when punching sides of beef while training for a big boxing match.
-Can't eat the Census Taker's liver (only the fava beans and the Chianti).
-When performing high school play version of "Carrie", bucket of pig's blood replaced by bucket of V-8. Looks fake as hell.
-You can't even give away all that zucchini.
=
good point is u cant loss weight very fast and vegitarian cant eat meat so they have to eat vegitable and it good fo your skin, and the bad point about being a vegitarian is there are tons and tons of good food in the world that involve with meat but you cant eat it
The good: No guilt in having an innocent animal die for
your dining pleasure. Long term health benefits from
substantially reduced harmful fat intake. Better digestion
and elimination. Superior assilimation of vitamins and
minerals throught the body. Shinier hair, better skin.
The bad: Having to learn a new way of eating. Finding
recipes that are as satisfying to the pallet as non-vegitarian
fare. Making sure your diet includes the B vitamins
associated with meat, etc. Difficulty ordering in restaurants
that may not comply with veggie cuisine.
All in all, if you are a vegitarian, you can probably look
forward to a much longer life than your bone-cleaning
buddies.
The good: Everything. No guilt over killing animals for pleasure. Less chance of diabetes, various cancers, heart disease, and tons of other illnesses. No smell of charred flesh in your home. Less chance of obesity.
The bad: It can be hard to eat when travelling. You can't just pull off at the local McDonalds and get a cheeseburger. And in foreign countries, it's often harder to find pure vegetarian items (no lard, no beef demi-glace, no chicken stock, no bacon fat, etc).
Bad
Weight loss, halitosys, wind, loss of concentration, unsightly hair growth, bigoted veiws of non vege, preaching and a false belief that you are actually making a difference.
Good
More meat for me
firstly and the most important,your health will improve greatly,the fibre in vegetables cleanse our intestine,with a healthy intestine,more it can absorb the digested food to provide energy for the body,to save the environment because less deforestation to plant food to feed the animals,with less animals there will be less toxic gases getting into the atmosphere,less global warming,to get a kilo of meat you need 12 kilos of wheat,with 12 kilos of wheat you can feed 12 people,less hungry people on this planet.............the list goes on and on.................with no bad points,please take a minute to go to a website the meat seller do not want you to see-http://www.meat.org/tell a friend
find out some of the world greatest sport men,gold medallist who are vegetarian in 'SEED'at http://www.moonpointer.com/bvf.php...
Best of luck to a healthier you
The good:
There's quite a few more types of vegetable than there are meats in your local grocery store. So,while most omnivores whine that there's no variety... ^_- they just aren't looking hard enough
Feeling better and treating your body far better than most.
The food is cheaper by far,and your medical bills won't be obscene when you get older because of all the rot that's passed through your body over the years (along with all of those hormones they stuff into Mr. Chicken).
You're saving thousands of your fellow animals' lives per year.
You have a far less chance of being poisoned by ecoli,mad cow or bird flu,amongst dozens of other diseases.
You don't need to worry about your carrots sitting out on the stove and going bad-you DO have to worry if it's a slab of dead animal.
Bad:
Go look at everything in your local 'fast food' shop. Or your local restaurants. 9 times out of 10,if I walk into a sit down mexican restaurant,they're stunned that all I want is beans and rice. Living in the US,a meat-obsessed society,it's very hard to find things to eat when I'm out.
Dealing with morons. I constantly get 'LOLZ U R A VEGETARIAN? O GOOD MORE MEAT 4 ME'. My usual response? 'Okay. Eat yourself to death. Have fun.' But it's still annoying.
So,all in all,it's harder to eat out... but you have far more variety if you stay at home and eat,too. Yeah,I get sick of salads when we go out... but when I look at a steak after 6 years of being a vegetarian (this year in July)? I'm utterly disgusted.
good- live longer, and spare a animal or 2, save money on food
bad- hard to keep up, need to be smart to figure it out how it is done, if no smart, will fail
There are no bad points unless you don't eat a well balanced diet. I don't understand why the first poster said No more BBQ's. I BBQ all the time. I BBQ veggie kabobs (lots of ways to make these), veggie dogs, Boca burgers etc.
good points:
1. better skin
2. better sleep
3. more energy
4. better conscience
5. better selection because of ethnic cuisine,
American variations, etc.
6. No dioxin, less or no growth hormones,
antibiotics, chemicals, etc.
bad points:
1 .more fiber may mean more trips
to the bathroom.
2. Overdoing beans can give you gas
3. Having to explain that you don't eat
flesh
4. Unless you live in a major Veg city
(L.A., Chicago, N.Y city) it may be
hard to find things you like to eat.
5. Being stereotyped.
good points:
-more humane diet- no tortured, slaughtered animals on your plate
-healthier diet- lower cholesterol, less fat, lower risk of cancer (red meat has been connected to cancer), less risk of being obese, less risk of having a heart attack or stroke
-better for the environment- tons of water and land goes into raising animals for food
bad points:
-being made fun of
-going to restaurants or eating at someone's house where meat is commonly served
but in my opinion totally worth it!!! =)
There is little useful purpose is being a vegetarian because vegetarians are vegetarians in name only. Vegans enjoy considerable health benefits due to lack of cholesterol, antibiotics and factory animal farming chemicals in their diet. Vegans have very low serum cholesterol levels. No one in the 30+ year long Framingham Heart Study with very low cholestrol levels (below 150 - I think - at least at vegan level) has died of congestive heart failure - no one!
If a vegetarian diet is very carefully planned, and that may require either fortified foods or supplements, it can be AS healthy as a good meat eating diet. I think there are a couple of benefits, but they come from eating a wide range of fruit and veg and being health conscious as vegans have to be, not omitting meat, and thus those benefits can be go without actually going veggie. Needless to say a uncarefully planned vegetarian, or especially vegan, diet can lack many essential nutrients and be very bad for your health.
There are many benefits to a diet containing meat. Many vegetarians claim that meat is unhealthy. This is a blatant fallacy.
It is well established that eating meat improves the quality of nutrition, strengthens the immune system, promotes normal growth and development, is beneficial for day-to-day health, energy and well-being, and helps ensure optimal learning and academic performance.
A long term study found that children who eat more meat are less likely to have deficiencies than those who eat little or no meat. Kids who don’t eat meat ― and especially if they restrict other foods, as many girls are doing ― are more likely to feel tired, apathetic, unable to concentrate, are sick more often, more frequently depressed, and are the most likely to be malnourished and have stunted growth. Meat and other animal-source foods are the building blocks of healthy growth that have made America’s and Europe's youngsters the tallest, strongest and healthiest in the world.
Meat is an important source of quality nutrients, heme iron, protein, zinc and B-complex vitamins. It provides high-quality protein important for kids’ healthy growth and development.
The iron in meat (heme iron) is of high quality and well absorbed by the body, unlike nonheme iron from plants which is not well absorbed. More than 90 percent of iron consumed may be wasted when taken without some heme iron from animal sources. Substances found to inhibit nonheme iron absorption include phytates in cereals, nuts and legumes, and polyphenolics in vegetables. Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, headache, irritability and decreased work performance. For young children, it can lead to impairment in general intelligence, language, motor performance and school readiness. Girls especially need iron after puberty due to blood losses, or if pregnant. Yet studies show 75 percent of teenage girls get less iron than recommended.
Meat, poultry and eggs are also good sources of absorbable zinc, a trace mineral vital for strengthening the immune system and normal growth. Deficiencies link to decreased attention, poorer problem solving and short-term memory, weakened immune system, and the inability to fight infection. While nuts and legumes contain zinc, plant fibre contains phytates that bind it into a nonabsorbable compound.
Found almost exclusively in animal products, Vitamin B12 is necessary for forming new cells. A deficiency can cause anaemia and permanent nerve damage and paralysis. The Vitimin B12 in plants isn't even bioavailable, meaning our body can't use it.
Why not buy food supplements to replace missing vitamins and minerals? Some people believe they can fill those gaps with pills, but they may be fooling themselves. Research consistently shows that real foods in a balanced diet are far superior to trying to make up deficiencies with supplements.
Lets not forget either that protein, while it is found in plants, is better quality in animal products.
Some people claim that meat is unhealthy because it contains saturated fat. So does margarine and olive oil, and they're vegan suitable (in fact the hydrogenated fats in Marge can be very bad, but that's another story). Besides, any excess calories in your diet, any excess sugar, starch or carbohydrates are stored in your body for later use. This is done by turning them into saturated fats.
Cholesterol too. Your body on average creates four to five times more cholesterol than the average person consumes, and compensates by creating more when less is consumed. Cholesterol isn't evil, it is essential; it makes up the waterproof linings of all our cells and without it we would die. Too much can be bad, but as with saturated fats there are more healthy ways of disposing of it, like regular exercise. Anyway, it isn't so much how much cholesterol you eat, but how well yur body handles it. A person who eats loads of dietary cholesterol and leads an unhealthy lifestyle can still have low cholesterol, and vice versa. Most people's bodies are able to take a large amount of cholesterol without getting atherosclerosis. For this reason that eating meat gives you heart disease is very misleading, and for the most part untrue. Of course, if you do have a problem eating loads isn't a good idea, but for most people there is nothing at all to worry about.
Yes, there are things in meat that there is some evidence can cause cancer in some people, but there are as many in plants too. Soy especially has some very potent carcinogens. Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines.
Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women. Also they are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.
Soy is bad for numerous other reasons, but that isn't the point, I'm just using it as a quick example relating to cancer not being exclusive to some animal products. The evidence that claims meat does cause cancer is patchy anyway.
No sensible vegans can contest that we were deigned to eat meat. Even most vegan scientists agree that human's are designed to eat meat, that is not in question.
That we do not have claws, talons, or incisors to hunt proves nothing. When early hominids ate meat they scavenged it, as vultures do, using their fingers to get the sinews and meat other animals couldn't. It was only after that that they began to hunt the meat themselves, and only much later they began to cook it. It is interesting that even now if someone was brought up eating raw meat he would have no problem with it.
The last few million years of human evolution have revolved completely around tools. We used advanced stone tools long before we began to hunt our own meat, and as such there was no need for evolution to bestow us with large claws or teeth to kill prey.
Simple research into human biology reveals how we are meant to eat meat. For one thing, our body produces hydrochloric acid and meat splitting enzymes that herbivores don't produce and are solely used for the digestion of meat. There are adaptations to our teeth (not incisors, rather the size of the jaw), stomach and intestines which have made a human being very adept at meat digestion. There is nothing wrong with the way our body digests meat, and we are so adept at eating it no scientists are of any doubt we've evolved to eat it.
In contrast, there are many reasons we aren't naturally herbivores. We cannot naturally get all the nutrients we need without animal products naturally. Vitamin B12 cannot be got, even now, without animal products or supplements, and a lack of it can cause anaemia and impending death. 60% of vegans even now have some level of B12 deficiency, as opposed to no meat eaters, which says something about how well adapted we are to a vegan diet.
All other nutriets can be got natually. That owes to that vegtables can now be sold all year round, even out of season, and can be flown into the country from all over the world. In bygone times people could only eat the relatively small range of plants that grew in their ecosytem, and only when they were in season. Thus many more nutrients would have been unavailable and still more unavaillable for most of he year. Until very recently it would have been impossible for a vegan human to live naturally without dying very quickly.
Now, meat makes up for all these lost nutrients very nicely, and it really shows how we aren't naturally vegans, as until very recently it was impossible to live like that.
The fact is Humans are omnivores, with the ability to eat nearly everything. By preference, prehistoric people ate a high-protein, high-mineral diet based on meat and animal sources, whenever available. Their foods came mainly from three of the five food groups: meat, vegetables and fruits. As a result, big game mammoth hunters were tall and strong with massive bones. They grew six inches taller than their farming descendants in Europe, who ate mostly plant foods, and only in recent times regained most of this height upon again eating more meat, eggs and dairy foods. We are adapted to eat meat, and it is just as natural as eating plants.
Some also claim that the digestion of meat releases harmful byproducts into our system. This is true, however such are our adaptations to eating meat that our bodies are quite able to dispose of said products without any adverse effects.
So, in summary: it isn't healthier to avoid meat. You can be healthy without meat, but likely not as healthy as if you did, assuming you kept things like the wide range of fruit and veg that a veggie diet usually entails. Too much meat can be bad, but normal amounts are no problem at all. Any health benefits that come from a veggie diet come from a wide range of fruit and veg, and being health conscious, as veggies often are; that doesn't require you to not eat meat."
I don't think a vegeterian diet benefits anyone in any way better than a better meat eating diet could at all. If you have no ethical qualms, it's quite pointless. PETA will tell you otherwise, but they have very strong ethical opinions, and mould their 'evidence' around it. There is, for example, some evidence that vegans live longer and are at less risk from cancer and heart disease; however those studies show only a very marginal and insignificant difference and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable.
It's not good for animals: for a start the meat industry is booming at the moment; secondly if enough people went veggie to actually affect the industry at all, and the demand for meat decreased, it would mean animals which were surplus to requirement. You're kidding yourself if you think that would mean they'd live happily ever after, as they couldn't be sold no one would want to keep them, and they'd still be slaughtered.
Think about it, the second farmers couldn't sell their livestock, the second they couldn't make a profit, they wouldn't keep them any more. Keeping animals isn't cheap, and to keep them, without profit, would be hugely expensive to any farmer. How many do you reckon would be prepared to make that kind of loss?
Now, what'd happen then? Maybe a few wild pigs or goats would stay alive, but for the most part it would be impossible to release them into the wild. The vast majority would have to be slaughtered.
I quote "If no one were allowed to farm animals, farms would grow crops instead. The first thing to go would be all the animals. Once the rural landscape were rid of cattle, sheep, and the like, fields would get larger, for the convenience of the combine harvesters, and hedgerows would go. Wild animals like rabbits would now be a more major pest. No farmer would want animals eating the plants, and so the war on such animals would intensify. Grown in the fields would be domesticate species of food crops, and so the number of plant species would decline."
Domestication is one of the best things that can happen to animals. If the golden eagle tasted any good you can bet your life it wouldn't be nearly extinct.
I quote "In the wild, a sheep would have to look for food, compete for it, jockey for position in the herd, look out for predators, guard its offspring, and it one day would die because of some accident, perhaps a fall, some nasty illness, or it would become weak and have its throat ripped out by the local predators. By striking contrast, the life of a farmed sheep is rather different. A farmed sheep has complete protection from predators; all the food of exactly its favourite kind at its feet all day every day, for which it does not have to compete; no competition for mates; no need to guard offspring; free health care; free haircuts; it is very unlikely to die in childbirth, and unlikely to die a nasty death. True, half a ewe’s offspring are taken away and killed. However, in the wild, a ewe would lose most of its offspring anyway, and in nastier circumstances. By the standards of the natural wild, a sheep’s life is about as cushy as a life could possibly be."
This is true, animals in the wild invariably die violent deaths. the closest an animal will get to dying of old age is being picked by a predator because it it old and therefore an easier to target. Farmed animals invariably lead happier, healthier, less stressful lives than those in the wild.
bad:you gain weight fast
good: you are a animal lover
Good
? help animals
? good for the environment
? healthy
Bad
? People might wave meat in your face