Why go vegetarian?!
Why go vegetarian?
I just want to know peoples thoughts on why they went vegan/vegetarian and is there really a big difference in health once you go green? Thanks ahead of time!
Answers:
Well, I became a vegetarian when I was nine, so my reasoning wasn't that sophisticated, but it was because I wanted to stop cruelty to animals. The reasons I stay vegetarian though, are many!
1) of course, to end cruelty and suffering of animals
2) many health benefits: lower cancer rates, longer life
3) it is SO much more environmentally sound to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet. For example, one acre of land can feed 20 times the number of vegetarians as meat eaters.
It takes 100 times more water to raise a pound of meat than a pound of wheat.
I truly believe that the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle is the answer to much of the world's ills. Health, starvation (if we made crops for starving nations instead of cows to be eaten no one would go hungry!), destruction of the rainforests....
Source(s):
http://www.drstevebest.org/papers/phieco...
I was raised on meat and potatoes. Asked myself the same question. Since dropping red meat, eat small quantities of chicken and fish. Veggies are great and I feel better.
Try this veggie meal. Get asparagus tips in a can, drain. In a middle size bowl beat three eggs, add salt, pepper (to taste) cheese of your choice, breadcrumbs or brain.
In a large cast iron skillet heat olive oil, when it is very hot, pour the asparagus till the under size has a brown scale, turn over and do the same thing.
Serve with salad, beans or anything pickled. It is wonderful and healthy. This will give you the answer you are looking for.
To be healthy and fit.
I became a vegetarian because 1) I love animals and can't stand the thought of unethical treatment to them so that we can have our BigMacs and 2) I was never a real meat eater to begin with.. I'm not a professional on the subject, but a lot of times I'm really tired (probably because I don't eat anything except for pasta, lol)... but health benefits ? have you ever seen a fat vegetarian ? nope
I did it. and I became really sick after not eating meat. I dont know why I just felt like my body was misssing sometimes. really weird.
Go vegetarian because it can stop the death of animals, and cruelty. Most meat you eat is killed in a most violent way. If you stop buying meat at the stores, farmers won't get that money, and they will be like "Uh oh! Our meat is going bad, so we should kill less animals, that way, we won't waste money!" that is what they think, so they stop killing the cows, or chickens, or whatever, so they sell less meat, making more animals live. You want animals to live, so GO VEG! =] The only differance in your health would be that you wouldn't be getting the protein from meat. THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO GET PROTEIN, MEAT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY!!!! Beans, fish, soy, tofu, etc.
For me it was like one of the other answers...I couldn't stand the thought of eating animals, plus I never really enjoyed red meat anyway! Becoming a Vegetarian does help you eat more healthy in a way, but it's also true that you are not getting all the nutrition that your body requires from things like meat.
I have been a vegetarian for 11 years and it was hard at first because I was very tired and didn't have any energy at all. I started to take multi-vitamins which helped out a lot. Your body will get use to it.
There are so many different meals for you to eat as a Vegetarian - try looking on www.allrecipes.com
Also, eating more vegetables you will definitely see a difference in yourself, I lost weight because of this!
I went vegetarian for ethical and health reasons. I do feel better in many ways, less toxic, hard to explain. After a while, the thought of meat in my system seemed horrible, kind of the same way cigarette smoke seems horrible to reformed or non smokers, (not comparing the health risks btw).
I became vegetarian partly out of health reasons, partly because I can't stand the idea of eating cows and chickens and pigs. All that mad cow disease stuff scared me, also the avian flu stuff.
FACTORY FARMING!
(go to goveg.com if you aren't veg*n yourself)
It's a lot easier to lose weight but I'm not thin at all, (i'm overweight) some people say they lose body odor! but I don't! I guess that's because I'm 14 so... you know...
anyway, that's why, factory farming
I can think of two reasons. Firstly it is spiritual and the second reason is health. To my mind both reasons compliment each other. Spiritual because it extols compassion, non - injury to life and abstention from killing. Medical science has also proven that vegetarism promotes good health. Its from my own experience being a vegetarian for 27 years.
1 There are many subsidies to the meat industry, but the biggest break, by far, comes in the fact that the Animal Welfare Act does not apply to food animals. Consequently, what once at best might have been described as animal husbandry is now nothing more than factory production. With virtually no laws to protect them, cruelty and abuse of farm animals are institutional. If farmers were forced by law to give their animals spacious environments, clean surroundings, fresh air and sunlight--if it weren't legal to simply administer drugs to animals who would otherwise die from the conditions they live in--cheap fast food could never exist. Ultimately, low prices have kept demand high and allowed the industry to grow. Virtually all of the now over 8 billion animals slaughtered for food in the United States every year are the product of a swift-moving assembly-line system, incorporating dangerous, unprecedented and unsustainable methods of efficiency. Farming in the United States has been allowed over the last generation to grow into a grim corporate monstrosity, the scale of which is hard to comprehend or even to believe.
2 When the Clean Water Act went into effect in 1972, it was decided that agriculture, specifically, should be exempt. According to the EPA, of the 60 percent of rivers and streams considered "impaired," agricultural runoff is identified as the primary pollution source. Incredibly, five tons of solid manure--not including dead animals, used bedding and residual organic material--is produced annually for every U.S. citizen (see #22).
3 After reviewing 4,500 scientific studies and papers on the relationship between cancer and lifestyle, a team of 15 scientists sponsored by two leading cancer research institutions advised that those interested in reducing their risk of many types of cancer consume a diet that is mostly fruits, vegetables, cereals and legumes. They declared that up to 40 percent of cancers are preventable, with diet, physical activity and body weight appearing to have a measurable bearing on risk. In 1996 the American Cancer Society released similar guidelines, including the recommendation that red meat be excluded entirely from the diet.
4 More than 100 species of marine fish were listed by the World Conservation Union as threatened or endangered in 1996. Once-common species such as cod and halibut are being driven to commercial extinction. Fishers, using modern techniques such as sonar, drift nets, bottom-fishing super trawlers, longlines and floating refrigerated fish-packing factories are, ultimately, not only putting themselves out of business but rapidly destroying ocean ecosystems. The seemingly endless frontier that once was the ocean no longer exists. Early in 1998, 1,600 scientists from around the world declared that the oceans were in peril. They warned that swift action was imperative to prevent irreversible environmental degradation (see #92).
5 The Humane Slaughter Act (HSA) requires that animals be rendered unconscious with one swift application of a stunning device before slaughter. In today's slaughterhouse this requirement is often not adhered to. For poultry birds (not legally recognized as "animals"), it is never followed. In the case of large mammals, the HSA, for all intents and purposes, is not enforced by the USDA, so the law serves in no other way than to make people think that food animals are protected from cruelty. Conveyor lines are pushed to breakneck speeds, frequently causing cattle, pigs, horses and sheep to be shackled and throat-slit without first being stunned. Animals often are skinned, boiled and butchered alive.
6 The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group of 4,500 medical doctors, revealed in 1995 that annual health-care costs directly resulting from the nation's meat-centered diet are between $23.6 billion and $61.4 billion--comparable to costs associated with cigarette smoking.
7 It might be easy on your conscience to consume the flesh of a creature perceived to be stupid, dirty and brutish. It may be surprising to some, however, that pigs are highly intelligent. Ask Professor Stanley Curtis of Pennsylvania State University. He taught several pigs to understand complex relationships between actions and objects in order to play video games. Curtis, along with his colleagues, found pigs to be focused, creative and innovative, equal in intelligence to chimps.
8 The senseless waste of the world's growing meat-centered diet is illustrated by the following hypothetical statement: "If everyone adopted a vegetarian diet and no food were wasted, current [food] production would theoretically feed 10 billion people, more than the projected population for the year 2050," according to the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research group. Even today, 840 million people are malnourished and nearly 50,000 die of starvation every day.
9 In the United States, farm animals receive 30 times the antibiotics that people do--not so much to treat infection, but to make the animals grow faster on less feed. Though perfectly legal, the practice is, in effect, promoting the selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Some of these bacteria can cause human diseases that physicians are finding difficult to treat. The practice is adding to the general worldwide crisis of drug-resistant disease. Each year, 60,000 Americans die because their medications were ineffective in combating bacterial strains.
10 Every year, on average, each American becomes sick and 9,000 people die from something they ate. That something was probably of animal origin. The government's strategy in controlling dangerous bacteria is to inspect meat during processing--something it isn't doing very well lately (see #24). Except in rare instances, neither the USDA nor the FDA has any regulatory powers on farms where pathogens originate. With the exception of E. coli O157:H7, dangerous bacteria are legally considered "inherent" to raw meat. It's up to consumers to neutralize pathogens with cooking. Two of the "legal" ones--campylobacter and salmonella--account for 80 percent of illnesses and 75 percent of deaths from meat and poultry. One hamburger can contain the meat of 100 different cows from four different countries. One infected animal can contaminate 16 tons of beef.
http://abafna.googlepages.com/vegetarian...
i dont like killing animals, so i became a vegetarian. also ive had less acne since i became a vegetarian