Vegetarianism is a diet many people choose to follow. Approximately 375 million people in the world, in fact. Yes, they don’t eat meat, but what is vegetarianism? There are many different kinds of vegetarian diets, although I’m mainly going to focus on a big three. Lacto Vegetarian, Ovo Vegetarian, and Lacto-ovo Vegetarian. A lacto vegetarian does not eat eggs or any other type of meat, but does eat dairy, an ovo vegetarian does not eat meat or dairy, but does eat eggs, and a lacto-ovo vegetarian doesn’t eat any meat, but will consume dairy products and eggs. The most common type of diet is the lacto-ovo diet.
Why would you want to become a vegetarian? There are a lot of reasons, such as, environmental concerns, health benefits, and many do it purley for food preference. According to Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit that promotes the ethical treatment of farm animals “In the U.S., animals raised on large-scale farms generate more than 1 million tons of manure each day, three times the amount generated by the U.S. population.” That is a huge concern because all of that waste will end up going into and polluting the soil and could end up polluting water sources. Also, 15 percent of our man-made greenhouse gasses come from our livestock. A United Nation report published in 2006 found that “raising cattle generates more greenhouse gases… than driving cars do.”
Eating less meat, can also be way healthier for you… Maybe you’re someone who struggles with heart issues and has very high cholesterol levels, going on a vegetarian diet could really help you, meat is filled with saturated fatty acids which just will raise your cholesterol levels, if you have too much. Because of this, vegetarians suffer fewer heart attacks than meat eaters. Although a lot of vegetarians end up being deficient in B12, because it is a vitamin mostly found in meat, but they are able to get these nutrients from supplements. Also, if you eat a more plant based diet, you will naturally get more antioxidants than those who have a diet heavily focused on meat. Also, eating a vegetarian diet can help digestion. Fruits, vegetables, and seeds can easily pass through your digestive system because they have more fiber and digestive enzymes. Salads are also helpful with digestion, because they contain a fiber that has these little hooks on it that grabs onto our intestines and secretes this mucus like substance that acts as lube.
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Animal cruelty is a huge driving force as well. Over 56 billion farm animals are killed each year, which is insane. That doesn’t even account for any other living foods we eat, like fish. Within animal cruelty comes a debate which is whether or not it is morally okay to raise and kill animals to eat. A lot of vegetarians believe it morally wrong to kill animals to eat, just as you could think killing a human and eating them is morally wrong. Most common farm animals aren’t protected under animal protection laws. Us Americans love our chicken, almost 8.5 billion chickens are killed each year and 300 million are used for their eggs. If these animals were protected this wouldn’t be allowed.
On factory farms, they stuff chickens, cows, and whatever animals they desire into barns until they need them to kill or use. That is scary. Pigs are put under insane conditions as well. At three weeks old, pigs are put into big sheds with no windows or any outdoor access. The pens are way too small for any movement, and they have hard slatted floors that don’t even allow them to root. Rooting is when pigs bury their snouts into the ground, they absolutely love rooting. So, by putting them in pens in which they can’t even root is insane. Also, pigs are super curious animals so by putting them in such boring pens leaves them with a lot of frustration. This starts tail biting, which is when a pig will use his teeth to bite another pig’s tails, which is very unsanitary. Farmers will then cut off pig’s tails and pull out their teeth, without any painkillers.
Pigs aren’t the only farm animals treated poorly, when beef cattle are young they are sent to live in a crowded feedlot with thousands of other cows. They have no shelter or anything and a lot of the time the cows are forced to stand in ice, mud, and even their own waste. In these feedlots, they are also fed an unnatural grain diet in hopes to make them gain weight, because it is unnatural it causes illness, pain, and death on their bodies. Although other than that beef cattle are the only farm animals actually kept outside most of their lives, on clean pastures, but they are branded, castrated, and get their horns removed with no pain killers.
Turkeys are another animal not treated very fairly. They are treated a lot like chickens, kept in groups on the floors of huge sheds. If you were to make a time machine and get Abraham Lincoln in 2018 and took him to a factory farm and asked to see the turkeys, he may freak out a little bit. Turkeys today are way different from turkeys back then, and that’s thanks to genetic modification. After years and years of thanksgivings and turkey eating, us humans have decided we really like the breast the most on the turkey, so those scientists got on their white coats and got to work figuring out a way to genetically modify this turkey to have huge breasts, making humans happy. But you know who wasn’t happy? The turkeys, actually the turkeys are in a lot of pain, you see this fast and disproportionate growth causes turkeys pain and difficulty walking or even breathing. “Between 1965 and 2000, the weight of the average turkey raised for food in the U.S. increased by 57%.”
Yes there are many different reasons vegetarians are vegetarians, and for that matter many different reasons meat eaters eat meat, but it is important to understand the real situations a lot of farm animals are in and all the different reasons people choose to be vegetarians even. Everyone has something to say, it’s about giving people a chance to listen.
References
- Vegetarian Times
- United Nations Sustainable Consumption and Production
- PubMed: Vegetarian Diet and Mortality
- Nutrition Journal: Comparative analysis of plant-based diets
- An Official Journal of the Nutrition Society: Sustainable diets for the future: can we contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by eating a healthy diet?
- NHS: The vegetarian diet
