Why We Became Vegetarians (This post is a bit long)

When I first meet people, if they are not already vegetarians, they ask me what prompted me to become vegetarian. So, here is that answer.

Succinctly, we became a vegetarian family because animals have just as much rights as we do to live long, happy lives; eating plant-based foods is one significant way to help save the planet; and since humans were not designed to eat meat, and chemicals are added to most meat, following a vegetarian diet leads to a healthier lifestyle. Following are more details of the above reasons:

The majority of the animals raised for human consumption live short, substandard lives. They are crammed into pens, mutilated to keep them from maiming each other, and are fed things that made me gag just thinking about it. (There is a neat little video of cartoon animals on a Matrix-like adventure at www.themeatrix.com, as well as a second installment, The Meatrix II: Revolting.) Animals should not live like that just so humans can have another option for dinner. (According to the Animal Rights Handbook, the average American will consume 1 calf, 3 lambs, 11 cows, 23 hogs, 45 turkeys, and 1,097 chickens in a lifetime.1)

Human beings are designed to eat plant foods, not meat. “Our closest living relatives from the animal world, apes, are vegetarians....The structure of our skin, teeth, stomach, and bowels, and the length of our digestive system, are all typically vegetarian.”2

“Livestock consume 70 percent of U.S. grain production. Twenty million people die each year as a result of malnutrition and starvation. Americans could feed 100,000,000 people by reducing their intake of meat by just 10 percent. One acre of prime land can produce many pounds of edible product. Here are a few examples: 30,000 pounds of apples, 40,000 pounds of potatoes, 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, or 250 pounds of beef.”3

“U.S. livestock produce 230,000 pounds of excrement per second.... The amount of waste created by a 10,000-head feed lot is equal to the waste of a city of 110,000 people. World livestock production is now a significant factor in the emission of two of the four global warming gasses: carbon dioxide and methane. Every steak we eat has the same effect as a 25-mile drive in a typical American car....It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one edible pound of beef. It takes 49 gallons of water to produce one edible pound of apples.”4

“Eighty percent of the meat produced in the United States contains drugs that are passed on to you when you eat it....Animal products contain large quantities of saturated fat and cholesterol and have no dietary fiber. The U.S. Surgeon General has stated that 68 percent of all diseases are diet related. A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and grains (and free from animal products) can prevent, improve, and sometimes cure breast cancer, osteoporosis, prostate cancer, impotence, and obesity....Seventy-five percent of federal poultry inspectors say they would not eat chicken.”5

“The only thing milk is designed to do is to turn a fifty-pound calf into a three-hundred-pound cow in six months. If cows don’t drink milk, why should we? Think of how strange it would be to drink something like orangutan’s milk? Yet, it would make more sense for us to drink orangutan milk because we are closer to them as a species than we are to cows. Humans were never meant to consume anything other than human breast milk, and that only while we’re infants. We are the only animals that drink milk of another animal. Milk is a food of convenience, and in our quest for convenience, we have made ourselves one of the sickest animals on the face of the earth.”6

“If the true cost to society of producing animal products for human consumption were passed on to consumers, few of us could afford to put these foods on the dinner table. At least we wouldn’t be able to afford the amount that we presently consume. Fortunately for those who have a hankering for ham and eggs, the government subsidizes many of these foods to keep producers in business and consumers satisfied.”7

When we first became vegetarian the meat and milk were easy enough to eliminate. We switched to drinking Silk Vanilla and Very Vanilla Soy Milk and replaced most of our meat-centered meals with meals that have a great deal of cheese, such as cheese pizza, pasta with cheese, Mexican meals with lots of shredded cheese, etc. Eliminating cheese would be darn near impossible for us right now. I have been reviewing my vegetarian cook books as well and have found that many of the recipes in these books use eggs and cheese. (Aghhhhh! What’s a vegan wannabe to do? Especially a picky one!) We have found acceptable vegetable and soybean-based substitutes for chicken patties, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and hot dogs, (Morningstar Farms has excellent products which Target sells at reasonable prices, my favorite is the Spicy Black Bean Burger) but to extend our menus beyond those meals without resorting to cheese will take more investigative work. I do know that our ultimate goal is to live an almost vegan lifestyle. (Have you ever noticed just how many prepackaged foods have eggs or cheese in them? And dining out isn’t easy as someone who eats NO animal products or bi-products.) We weren’t able to grow our own vegetables this year, but we will be building raised beds this fall to have ready by spring. Currently our menu options are limited since we live far from any of the large specialty/nutritional stores that carry a grand variety of vegetarian foods. But, we’re doing what we can with what’s available and that’s more than most Americans are willing to do.

1. Raymond, Carole, Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook. Three Rivers Press,
2003, p. xvi

2. Henner, Marilu, Healthy Life Kitchen. Regan Books, 2000, p.12

3. Raymond, Carole, Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook. Three Rivers Press,
2003, p. xxiii

4. Raymond, Carole, ibid. p. xxiv

5. Raymond, Carole, ibid. p. xxiv

6. Henner, Marilu, Healthy Life Kitchen. Regan Books, 2000, p.15-16

7. Havala, Suzanne, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian.
Alpha Books, 1999, p.21