Recently, a former superstar made the news by suggesting that people could help the environment if they adopted a vegetarian weight loss diet for as little as one day a week. Some media treated his suggestion with due respect. Other media outlets derided him, suggesting that the former rock star was living in his hippy past.
None of the media that covered the story did it in any depth. If they had taken him a little more seriously and considered the facts, they would have understood just how much sense he made. If you look at the issue square in the eye from a vegetarian’s standpoint, you will see why they so passionately believe in it.
Looking at the subject from an environmental standpoint, there are a number of reasons to turn away from eating meat on the scale most consume it, especially beef. Raising beef cattle requires enormous amounts of arable land that could produce far more nutritional food than the cattle can. This is a fact established by hard data that no one can truthfully deny.
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 beef industry goes to great lengths to promote the health benefits of meat eating. Aside from protein, there is very little to substantiate their claim that meat is an essential part of one’s diet. An argument might be made that an occasional small serving of meat may be in order, but so many eat phenomenal amounts of meat and it is a major contributor to numerous serious health problems, including heart disease and cancer.
Those who have given up meat and taken up a low carb 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.
The two largest religions in the world, Buddhism and Hinduism, both advocate a total abstinence from meat eating. Interestingly enough, all the other major religions, including Catholicism, Judaism, and the Muslim faith advocate abstinence from meat during certain religious holidays. Why is it that only the cattle industry advocates a strict meat eating diet?
The next time a superstar advocates a low carb vegetarian diet, don’t sneer. They are trying to do the world a service with the low carb vegetarian diet.
