Making A Big Replacement With Your Diet With A Vegetarian Diet
Not too long ago, a famous pop star caused a minor stir when he suggested that one step everyone could take towards helping the environment would be to abstain from meat for one day a week. That’s all he asked – that we adopt a low fat vegetarian diet for a single day out of the week. A few papers took him seriously, but most of them just laughed.
With very few exceptions, the media completely failed to take his suggestion seriously and look at the facts. Had they done so, they would have discovered that people give up meat eating for very good reasons. Why not give vegetarians a chance and listen to their point of view for a change?
You might wonder what giving up meat has to do with the environment. There are whole books devoted to facts about the meat processing industry. One of the points made is that raising beef is a terribly inefficient use of arable land. The same amount of land that it takes to satisfy America’s voracious appetite for meat could be put to far better use producing soy products, for instance.
If you have a very strong stomach, pay a visit to a meat processing plant. These are all located far away from large populations for a reason. They smell so bad, they literally make people sick. Those who are unfortunate enough to have to work in the plants or live nearby them have a higher than average incidence of a number of health complaints.
If you do manage to get inside and see what beef processing involves, you literally may end up having nightmares. There is nothing remotely humane about the mass slaughter of these animals. OK, technically this is not an environmental concern, but it is certainly an ethical one. Those pretty packages of beef you see on the supermarket shelf won’t look the same to you after you have seen how they were made to get that way. You won’t be laughing about a vegetarian diet any more, that’s for sure!
The meat industry will tell you that beef makes you strong and healthy. They will talk about a protein-packed meat diet as if a high intake of meat is essential for health. What they won’t tell you is that you are consuming far more meat than you could possibly need for good health. They will also not tell you that your predominantly meat diet contributes to cancer, heart disease and other life-threatening illnesses.
Those who have given up meat and taken up a high protein vegetarian diet rarely feel the need to go back to eating meat. While some do go back to occasional servings of meat, they almost never go back to consuming it in large quantities. Why should they? They feel healthier and happier than they did before.
Something that a lot of people overlook is the fact that all of the major religions advocate abstaining from meat, at least periodically. This includes the Catholic Church, Judaism and the Muslim faith. While these religions do not advocate total abstinence, both Hinduism and Buddhism do advocate a strictly vegetarian diet. The only “religion” that advocates meat eating is the cattle industry!
Don’t be so quick to laugh along with the media the next time a superstar takes a stand for a low fat vegetarian diet. That would be a good start to a vegetarian diet meal plan.
