20 Reasons for being Vegetarian

Vegetarianism is the fastest growing trend in the developed world. Here are 20 reasons why you should think about turning green too.

1 Avoiding meat is one of the best and simplest ways to cut down your fat consumption. Modern farm animals are deliberately fattened up to increase profits. Eating fatty meat increases your chances of having a heart attack or developing cancer.

2. Every minute of every working day, thousands of animals are killed in slaughter-houses. Pain and misery are common. In the US alone, 500,000 animals are killed for meat every hour.

3. There are millions of cases of food poisoning recorded every year. The vast majority are caused by eating meat.

4. Meat contains absolutely nothing - no proteins, vitamins or minerals - that the human body cannot obtain perfectly happily from a vegetarian diet.

5. African countries - where millions are starving to death - export grain to the developed world so that animals can be fattened for our dining tables.

6. 'Meat' can include the tail, head, feet, rectum and spinal cord of an animal.

7. A sausage can contain ground up intestines. How can anyone be sure that the intestines are empty when they are ground up? Do you really want to eat the content of a pig's intestines?

8. If we eat the plants we grow instead of feeding them to animals, the world's food shortage will disappear virtually overnight. Remember that 100 acres of land will produce enough beef for 20 people but enough wheat to feed 240 people.

9. Every day, tens of millions of one-day-old male chicks are killed because they will not be able to lay eggs. There are no rules about how this mass slaughter takes place. Some are crushed or suffocated to death. Many are used for fertiliser or fed to other animals.


10. Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane.

11. It's must easier to become (and stay) slim if you are a vegetarian. (By 'slim', I do not mean 'abnormally slender' or 'underweight' but rather, an absense of excess weight!)

12. Half the rainforests in the world have been destroyed to clear ground to graze cattle to make beefburgers. The burning of the forests contributes 20% of all green-house gases. Roughtly 1,000 species a year become extinct because of the destruction of the rainforests. Approximately 60 million people a year die of starvation. All those lives could be saved because those people could eat grain used to fatten cattle and other farm animals - if Americans ate 10% less meat.

13. The world's fresh water shortage is being made worse by animal farming. And meat producers are the biggest polluters of water. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. If the US meat industry wasn't supported by the taxpayer paying a large proportion of its water costs, then hamburger meat would cost $35 a pound.

14. If you eat meat, you are consuming hormones that were fed to the animals. No one knows what effect those hormones will have on your health. In some parts of the world, as many as one on four hamburgers contain growth hormones that were originally given to cattle.


15. The following diseases are commoner among meat eaters: anaemia, appendicitis, arthritis, breast cancer, cancer of the colon, cancer of the prostrate, constipation, diabetes, gallstones, gout, high blood pressure, indigestion, obesity, piles, strokes and varicose veins. Lifelong vegetarians visit hospital 22% less often than meat eaters and for shorter stays. Vegetarians have a 20% lower blood cholestrol level than meat eaters and this reduces heart attack and cancer risks considerably.

16. Some farmers use tranquillisers to keep animals calm. Other routinely use antibiotics to starve off infection. When you eat meat you are eating those drugs. In America, 55% of all antibiotics are fed to animals and the percentage of staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin went up from 14% in 1960 to 91% in 1988.

17. In a lifetime, the average meat eater will consumer 36 pigs, 36 sheep and 750 chickens and turkeys. Do you want that much carnage on your conscience?


18. Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. How would you like to spend your last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animal and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Anyone who eats meat condones and supports the way animals are treated.

19. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational - and capable of logical thought - than six week old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children. Eating dead animals is barbaric.

20. Vegetarians are fitter than meat eaters. many of the world's most successful athletes are vegetarian.

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great list! although i think it doesn't take into consideration those who eat meat that is free range, humanely killed, and hormone/antibiotic/tranquilizer free. i am a vegetarian, and i truly believe that eating meat is morally wrong... but that is for myself, and i cannot condemn those who do eat meat and do so with a conscience. it is, for everyone, a choice.

for those who are interested in the terrors of the meat industry, especially in the US, read the book "my year of meats" by ruth ozeki. it's quite informative, though written in a novel format, the information is true.

 

Ok =]
Well thanks for the complement. I really don't care if people bash me, cause I didn't come up with it... But I do enjoy it. I'm trying to kick meat for good. No more from now on

 

That's a really great list, thanks for posting it

 

made me think there.

i actually used to be vegetarian. It is incredibly hard.

i admire that kind of discipline.

 

really? i'm curious to see what you think was so hard about it. it is incredibly easy and natural for me, but i'm really interested in seeing other people's perspectives on this.

 

Wake up to the food chain of life...

 

I think that the most difficult part for most new vegetarians is learning how many items on the list of ingredients on most food products in the grocery store are not vegetarian. I found the transition to being a vegan easier than the initial plunge into the land of lacto-ovo vegetarianism.

 

eh. now i feel bad.

its hard because of temptation (i.e. old comfort foods and such) mostly


but honestly, every time i bite into a hamburger i think of heart attacks and clogged arteries.

 

I have only been a vegetarian for a month, and at I have at no point been missing meat. I think it is very different from person to person when you stop thinking of meat as a kind of food. It will happen, eventually. I think you should give it another try

 

It's the texture for me, and the fact that after two weeks of experimenting sans meat I threw up every bit of meat I tried. We naturally avoid that which we have vomited.

But I can digest dairy now, and I haven't been able to do that since puberty. WHEEE!!!! Alfredo sauce! Best I can figure, the Powers That Be never designed me for meat. I still have a craving or two, when I've been lax on the protein intake, and I may always love the smell of cooked meat, but the thought of the salnty stringiness in my throat. . . erg. I'm going to have to try my uncle-in-law's famous chicken dumplings for Christmas, just to have tried them, but I'm letting him know that if I get sick the dumplings were still good going down. This is not a comment on his cooking, and I am not diseased (physically, anyway). Meat is just a badness for me now.

Note: I went Veg for health reasons mostly, though animal rights and ecology were factors. I get free-range eggs through a local farmer in trade for old WalMart bags, and still eat animal rennet cheese because I just can't practically give that one up yet. Give me time, and get me off of a university cafeteria diet.

But you didn't say anything about the risks of diabetes getting halved by a vegetarian diet. That was what sold me.

 

another reason for being vegetarian is that it decreases osteoporosis dramtically

 

Lies. That is a silly generalization. I suppose we have very different definitions of fit. Most vegetarians I have met are very skinny. I wouldn't
classify that as fit.

Anaemia is more common amongst vegetarians than meat eaters. Anaemia is the absence of hemoglobin in red blood cells. To prevent it, one should consume red meat for the iron and b12. And several nurses and doctors have told me that the b12 and iron from red meat are better sources compares to supplements. Supplements should only be taken if it is a dire strait situation.


"Meat contains absolutely nothing - no proteins, vitamins or minerals"
LOL at this. Meat is the best source of protein and is readily available in abundant sources through meat. I eat meat because I need lots of protein in my diet and meat is the best way to get it. I wouldnt want to imagine how I would achieve my daily requirements without it

And many of practices you speak of regarding intestines and such are outdated methods that are no longer used. Atleast not in Canada. I'm unsure about the states.

I understand why some people are vegetarian as my girlfriend has been one for a long time and has help me come to understand the lifestyle. But some of those points you made are ridiculous.

 

This is one of the most disturbing things I've read.

Great list. I was veggie for four years and slid back into meat eating almost by accident. I think it's time I took that step again.

 

when i was little i did`nt like eaing meat,but as you grow up it`s "normal"to eat meat in a restaurant or where ever.my youngest daugther told me one day she dont like to eat meat because when she has it on her plate she must think about the animals.so i told her,well,then you not eating meat,thats ok.so i did a lot of research for being a vegetarian and how you get all your proteins etc.and by reading it all those years,preparing vegi-food,i`m and vegetarian my self now.i did not like the meat anymore and i dont miss it at all.my husband almost doesn`t eat meat anymore.my oldest daugther is a meat addict and says vegetarians suck and the food also...well,she is a mc donalds addict and she likes to shout on everything different then her self at the moment

but by not eating meat i feel much better about myself and the thought of eating meat again....nah,not for me

 

Thank you for posting this list!
I have been trying to find reasons to become a vegetarian, because although I love to eat meat, I know it's not the healthiest, and I constantly feel guilty.
So I'm looking up a lot of info on the topic, and this definately helps..
Thanks

 

I am an omnivore, BUT, I make a point of only eating meat that comes from an animal that I know has been treated well. I pool together with people and I go to a farm and I buy an entire sheep, not a lamb or an adolescent, a full grown sheep, that has been roaming and grazing free for it's entire lifetime. Normally used for wool production. (In the Klein Karoo, it is a blessing for the sheep to be sheared, as it is a semi-desert area.) This sheep is enough meat to sustain 5 or 6 people for an entire year. The sheep is killed in front of me, in a quick, kind manner. I also only use dairy that comes from free range cows, and I don't eat eggs, as I can't find free range eggs in my area.
Furthermore, I avoid beef, as I found that cows are treated worse on average compared to sheep.

I feel weather it is a plant or an animal, it has to die to give me life. I just don't condone cruelty.

 

im 3 days in no meat. I did it before for a month. My wife who is a vegetarian felt at that time i was depressed for not eating meat. im gonna not meat again. Im not really tempted to eat meat. meat wouldnt be good inless its cooked, seasoned, and sauced.