Why vegetarians don't eat meat?!
Answers:
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
It depends on the individual; some think it's healthier, other's feel strongly about animal rights and don't want to eat them, others think it's better for the environment, others because of their religion, other because they were just raised that way, the list goes on...
Meat consumption is still very deep routed in society because we have relied on it for so long; for centuries it has been the most efficient source of protein and as a result we have made a system that makes it cheap and readily available for the masses, and a culture that sees meat rich diets as the default.
I personally don't eat meat because in the modern world there is now a choice whether or not to eat meat (as opposed to 100 years ago when alternatives weren't as easily available). It is easier than ever before not to eat meat, and you can live healthily and affordably either way…
After researching vegetarianism and trying it out for a few trial periods over a few years I concluded that the only reason I ate meat was because it tasted really really good.
However I couldn't ignore the feeling that it wasn't morally justifiable for humans to claim ownership of, in many cases treat very poorly, and then kill another living being purely because it tastes nice, when there are very good and readily available alternatives just a couple of shelves away in the shop…
Now after a year and a bit of vegetarianism my tastes have changed and meat no longer appeals to me; I find the smell and sight of it very off putting, so my only reason for eating meat has vanished…
To the people saying vegetarians/vegans don't eat me because it's unhealthy, you're wrong. Some do, but most, like me refuse to eat it because we support animal rights. Do you even know what they do to those animals? Doubt it. Look it up. It's horrible. Animals can't defend themselves, they can't cry for help, they can't do anything but take it and they shouldn't have to. I literally break down in tears if I even see an aspca or humane society commercial. If you're gonna eat meat or anything that comes from animals, you should atleast know what that animal had to go through first. It's just really f**ked up. So no, not all vegetarians/vegans refuse to eat meat just because it's unhealthy.
There are many reasons. Some don't eat animal flesh for just one reason, others (like me) for several reasons.
The main possibilities are:
- Health. *Generally* (note the emphasis) vegetarians are healthier than non-vegetarians. Not all are, of course, but most are.
- Religion. Some religious groups are more accommodating to the idea of vegetarianism than others. Hindus, Hare Krishnas, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Seventh Day Adventists. Some of these even encourage it.
- Karma. The concept that the way you treat others, including animals, in this life will impact on your next life (or even sometimes later in this current life).
- Tradition. The family has always been vegetarian.
- Animal welfare (or animal cruelty). A desire to not contribute directly/personally to the deaths (and prior ill-treatment) of animals in order for them to eat.
- Environment. It's ultimately better for the environment.
- Peer pressure. Friends are vegetarians, and they want to conform. Very rare.
- Rebellion. A desire to rebel against the authority of parents.
- Taste. Some people really do not like the taste of animal flesh, strange as that may seem.
- Weight loss. Sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, a belief that you can lose weight simply by virtue of being a vegetarian.
- Fad. Some people, mostly young teens, because it's fashionable or "cool" or because their favourite tv/music star is a vegetarian.
- Economical. Can't afford animal flesh.
- Availability. Animal flesh not available.
- Just to annoy Cliff, Deer Hunter, Daisy, Exsft, Ashley/Karina, F. Lopez, etc. ;)
There are probably a few reasons I've missed, but those would cover nearly everybody.
there are four reasons:
health- lots of research shows that meat consumption is linked to dietary cancers. For people who have family history of coclorectal cancer, aviding meat is the best way to reduce their risk of actually getting the disease.
animal welfare- animals must suffer to become meat. There is no avoiding it.
environmental- raising livestock is enormously wasteful; and destructive, particularly the use of large animals (aka megafauna) such as cattle since larger animal have higher energy requirements and hence require more food and water to produce them than they give to humans. With so many humans on the planet, livestock production is just unsustainable.
spiritual beliefs- some people extend the principles of compassion from religion to non-humans and humans alike. You don't have to believe in gods for this to apply to you, I'm an atheist and veganism is a big part of my spiritual beliefs.
Some people may be motivated by more than one of these reasons. For myself it began as spiritual and animal welfare reasons, but now is more about environmental concerns which are far more important given the circumstances we are facing right now.
vegan biologist
I can only speak for myself. I don't feel that eating meat is healthy, especially with the way it is raised, slaughtered and processed in the US. It is also enormously less efficient to raise animals for meat than to grow food. On an ethical level, it feels better to me not to take another creature's life to sustain my own. Primarily health, though.
Mostly for ethical reasons, from a Buddhist stand point that ALL life is precious, even worms, but for others, it could be from a point of view to maintain a more healthy lifestyle, as meat may have stigmas attached to them, that could be perceived as being unhealthy, like saturated fats, & cholesterol's. Either way, it boils down to personal choice.
This one of the best responses I ever read on this topic.
"My host, a new friend, asks if I'm drinking red or white. I tell him that depends on what's for dinner. Turns out, it's lamb.
"I'm so sorry," I say, feeling like a jerk for being a jerk, and also like a jerk for feeling like a jerk. "Didn't I mention that I'm a vegetarian?"
I hadn't. So we move on to the consolation.
"Don't worry about it!" my host (still friendly) chirps. "There's plenty of other stuff. I made a great Caesar salad."
"I hope this question won't be annoying, but is there any anchovy in the dressing?"
"You don't eat anchovy?"
"I'm afraid not," I say, as if it weren't a choice.
"Just a little bit in a dressing spoils the whole salad?"
"Spoils isn't the right word," I say. Although it is.
And now, the inevitable: "Why don't you eat this stuff?"
I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not a proselytizer. Going there can be extremely uncomfortable. I happen to care tremendously about the issue, but the closer I am to someone, the harder it is for me to speak up about it. Food isn't just what we put in our mouths to fill up. It's culture and identity -- it's Grandma's brisket and Dad's turkey burgers, it's the way we celebrate with friends and practice our religion, it's how we recover from illness and remember summer. It's who we are. Conversations about food are personal and, because of that, irrational.
No matter how quiet and unassuming a vegetarian you are, and no matter how relativistic and accepting, refraining from meat on ethical grounds comes across as a kind of accusation leveled against those who have chosen differently. Regardless of how I answer my friend's question, I fear (and suspect) he will hear, "Because I think it's wrong to obliterate the environment, make billions of innocent animals suffer, pillage rural communities, and mow Brazil."
But the truth is, I believe this. The average American will consume the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in the course of a lifetime. Try to wrap your head around that. Most of those animals will come from factory farms -- raised in enclosures, fed unnatural diets (often involving antibiotics and, for cattle, growth hormones), bred to suffer. As a practice, those animals are treated in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs or cats. Animal agriculture helps create global warming and is a larger contributor to it than transportation worldwide. It plays a role in such blights as air pollution, water pollution, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, swine and bird flu, foodborne illness, topsoil erosion, workplace injury, and more. Often praised for being inexpensive (simply because so many of the real costs have been externalized and are not readily visible), factory-farmed meat is the most expensive food America has ever produced. It is a monster trampling our world and the only thing we can do to stop it is to utter two words: No thanks.
So what am I supposed to do at the dinner party? Lie? Say I have food allergies? Just eat the stuff?"
http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/vegetarians-dilemma
for a few reasons
-some just dont like killing animals
-some do it for religious reasons
- some know that the meat is alot of the time diseased
- some do it for health reasons
- some do it just cause they felt like it, no other reason
Because I don't find it neccesary to kill animals against their will when i don't need to.
Well, I am not sure about anyone else but whenever I have eaten meat I always think of the animal.
For lots of reasons,mostly ethical and compassionate reasons
I don't simply because I don't like meat.
Because its tasty and healthy and cheap.
Because they hate plants.
Cos they hate plants a lot.
They feel it's not healthy.
because they dont believe in killing innocent animals and eating them, they take it like its murder.
i find this stupid. but thats just me.
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