Healthy on The Net

There are as many reasons for becoming vegetarian as there are vegetarians; it’s a highly personal and individual decision to make. But in a survey conducted on behalf of The Vegetarian Society the majority of people said that they gave up meat and fish because they did not morally approve of killing animals, or because they objected to the ways in which animals are kept, treated and killed for food.

With the growing awareness of the importance of healthy food, many people are also becoming vegetarian because it matches the kind of low fat, high fibre diet recommended by dieticians and doctors. Concern about the environment is another factor as people become more aware of the effect raising animals for their meat is having on the environment. Or you may be concerned about wasting world food resources by using land to raise animals for meat instead of growing crops that can feed more people directly.

Being vegetarian presents currently a big difficulty:

Since vegetarian diet is the most suitable human being, it ought to be pleasant, easy and joyful for us. However, people who try to transit to vegetarianism experience big difficulties instead. Several days of strict vegetarian diet would surely wake up a hungry beast of prey within you.

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. 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. There are millions of cases of food poisoning recorded every year. The vast majority are caused by eating meat. Meat contains absolutely nothing – no proteins, vitamins or minerals – that the human body cannot obtain perfectly happily from a vegetarian diet.

Consider the reasons for becoming vegetarian. These might include moral or ethical reasons, religious reasons, health reasons, environmental reasons or a combination of any of these. Get some vegetarian cookbooks and find some vegetarian recipes that interest you. Take a look around supermarkets, food stores and health food shops and see the variety of vegetarian food that is available. Do some research. Read up on vegetarian nutrition and vegetarianism in general. There is plenty of information on the internet and in books. Tell parents or a significant other about your choice. Make sure you have some solid research to back you up, as some people are very resistant to the idea of vegetarianism because of misunderstandings related to health, evolution or religion. When informing your family of your dietary choice, stay calm and polite, even if they find it difficult to accept.

Being Vegetarian – For whatever reason you are becoming veggie, you can’t call yourself vegetarian if you eat any kind of fish or if you eat cheese with animal rennet.

In fact, ethically minded vegetarians don’t buy leather. (Remember, leather came from an animal that once had a pulse and a pair of eyes!) However, as a vegetarian it may be argued that you could buy 2nd hand goods that contain leather.

Vegetarianism is the practice of not consuming the flesh of any animal (including sea animals) with or without also eschewing other animal derivatives. This includes other food such as dairy products or eggs. Some vegetarians may choose to also refrain from wearing all clothing that has involved the death of animals. This includes items such as leather, silk and fur. Veganism, sometimes called “strict vegetarianism”, excludes all animal products from clothing and food, whether or not their production has involved the actual death of an animal (dairy, eggs, honey, wool, silk and down feathers). Vegetarians have varied motivations including religious, cultural, ethical, environmental, social, economic, and health concerns.

Vegetarianism may have been common in the Indian subcontinent as early as the 2nd millennium BC. Hinduism preaches that it is the ideal diet for spiritual progress all its followers need to be vegetarian.

Vegetarians in Europe used to be called “Pythagoreans”,after the philosopher Pythagoras and his followers, who abstained from meat in the 6th century BC. They followed a vegetarian diet for nutritional and ethical reasons.

Vegetarianism in the 19th century was associated with many cultural reform movements, such as temperance and anti-vivisection. Many “new women” feminists at the end of the century were vegetarians

Most vegetarians claim that they became a vegetarian for one of three reasons.

The first reason, which most vegetarians claim, is that they have ethical problems with eating meat. Most disagree with how chickens are debeaked, forced to live in small cages, and are then slaughtered when they do not produce eggs fast enough.

Most vegetarians also disagree with the crowded and stressful environments animals are forced to endure; and the hormone-laden feed utilized to make them grow faster and produce more.

People who become vegetarians for this purpose often draw ethical boundaries in different spots, depending on their personal beliefs. For instance, some staunch vegans will not consume yeast, wear wool, or even eat certain vegetables, such as carrots, that require killing the

plant to harvest.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, some vegetarians–sometimes referred to as pseudo-vegetarians–will actually eat fish and chicken on a regular basis.

The second biggest reason vegetarians claim for not eating meat is that it conflicts with their dietary preferences. Some of these vegetarians simply do not like the texture and taste of meat; others do not eat it because it is high in cholesterol and often contains high concentrations of hormones and preservatives.

The third and smallest group of vegetarians cite environmental reasons for not consuming meat. They complain that consumption of meat causes farmers to continually deforest land to create grazing land for cattle.

In addition to these three major groups, there are a number of other smaller groups of vegetarians who stopped eating meat for entirely different reasons.

Description

Many nonvegetarians ponder what drives vegetarians to give up meat and adopt an entirely different lifestyle. There is no single answer to this question. Nonvegetarians become vegetarians for a number of different reasons – some even for multiple reasons.