Top 10 Reasons to go Veg

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Top Ten Reasons To Go Vegetarian

By Bruce Friedrich, AlterNet

Posted on May 19, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/85828/

Gone are the days when vegetarians were served up a plate of iceberg

lettuce and a dull-as-dishwater baked potato. With the growing

variety of vegetarian faux-meats like bacon and sausages and an ever-

expanding variety of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants,

vegetarianism has taken the world by storm.

 

With World Vegetarian Week here, without further ado, are the Top 10

reasons to give vegetarian eating a try, starting now!

 

 

1. Helping Animals Also Helps the Global Poor While there is ample

and justified moral indignation about the diversion of 100 million

tons of grain for biofuels, more than seven times as much (760

million tons) is fed to farmed animals so that people can eat meat.

Is the diversion of crops to our cars a moral issue? Yes, but it's

about one-eighth the issue that meat-eating is. Care about global

poverty? Try vegetarianism.

 

2. Eating Meat Supports Cruelty to Animals The green pastures and

idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On

today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into

filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other

confinement systems. These animals will never raise families, root

in the soil, build nests, or do anything else that is natural and

important to them. They won't even get to feel the warmth of the sun

on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded

onto trucks bound for slaughter.

 

3. Eating Meat Is Bad for the Environment A recent United Nations

report entitled Livestock's Long Shadow concludes that eating meat

is " one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious

environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. " In

just one example, eating meat causes almost 40 percent more

greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, and planes in

the world combined. The report concludes that the meat

industry " should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems

of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water

shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. "

 

4. Avoid Bird Flu

 

The World Health Organization says that if the avian flu virus

mutates, it could be caught simply by eating undercooked chicken

flesh or eggs, eating food prepared on the same cutting board as

infected meat or eggs, or even touching eggshells contaminated with

the disease. Other problems with factory farming -- from foot-and-

mouth to SARS -- can be avoided with a general shift to a vegetarian

diet.

 

 

5. If You Wouldn't Eat a Dog, You Shouldn't Eat a Chicken Several

recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals who are

able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry

about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats and dogs and even

do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than

primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and

communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, " As a

trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without

mentioning chickens and people think I'm talking about monkeys. "

 

6. Heart Disease: Our Number One Killer Healthy vegetarian diets

support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against

numerous diseases, including the United States' three biggest

killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes. Drs. Dean Ornish and

Caldwell Esselstyn -- two doctors with 100 percent success in

preventing and reversing heart disease -- have used a vegan diet to

accomplish it, as chronicled most recently in Dr. Esselstyn's

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, which documents his 100 percent

success rate for unclogging people's arteries and reversing heart

disease.

 

7. Cancer: Our Number Two Killer Dr. T. Colin Campbell is one of the

world's foremost epidemiological scientists and the director of what

The New York Times called " the most comprehensive large study ever

undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of

developing disease. " Dr. Campbell's best-selling book, The China

Study, is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about cancer. To

summarize it, Dr. Campbell states, " No chemical carcinogen is nearly

so important in causing human cancer as animal protein. "

 

8. Fitting Into That Itty-Bitty Bikini Vegetarianism is also the

ultimate weight-loss diet, since vegetarians are one-third as likely

to be obese as meat-eaters are, and vegans are about one-tenth as

likely to be obese. Of course, there are overweight vegans, just as

there are skinny meat-eaters. But on average, vegans are 10 to 20

percent lighter than meat-eaters. A vegetarian diet is the only diet

that has passed peer review and taken weight off and kept it off.

 

9. Global Peace

 

Leo Tolstoy claimed that " vegetarianism is the taproot of

humanitarianism. " His point? For people who wish to sow the seeds of

peace, we should be eating as peaceful a diet as possible. Eating

meat supports killing animals, for no reason other than humans'

acquired taste for animals' flesh. Great humanitarians from Leo

Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi to Thich Nhat Hanh have argued that a

vegetarian diet is the only diet for people who want to make the

world a kinder place.

 

10. The Joy of Veggies

 

As the growing range of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants shows,

vegetarian foods rock. People report that when they adopt a

vegetarian diet, their range of foods explodes from a center-of-the-

plate meat item to a range of grains, legumes, fruits, and

vegetables that they didn't even know existed.

 

Sir Paul McCartney sums it all up, " If anyone wants to save the

planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the

single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you

think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one

shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. "

 

So are you ready to give it a try?

 

Check out VegCooking.com for recipes and meal plans and to take the

World Vegetarian Week 7-Day Pledge.

 

 

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/85828/