Veggie vs. Meat

A vegetarian diet can save your life and the planet. People become vegetarians for many reasons: including to avoid pesticides and pollutants in meat; to support animal rights; and to reduce the chance of heart disease and cancer. There are also strong environmental arguments in favor of vegetarianism because raising animal uses more natural resources than cultivating vegetables and grains.


Living a vegetarian diet-lifestyle will help people fight diseases, be healthier, and protect our environment. It is not that hard to find the protein and calcium intakes one needs to keep a healthy diet.


When it comes to fighting many chronic diseases, a vegetarian diet can provide potent dietary ammunition. Numerous research studies have shown that a diet rich in plant foods, specifically, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, such as dried peas and beans — the staples of a vegetarian diet — can help lower the risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, a specific type of diabetes, and certain cancers.
'Vegetarians have excellent health. Protein is not a limiting factor.' Says the US Government.


On the other side, a daily diet of only rice and vegetables may be "vegetarian" but far from a healthy and balanced diet. When meat, fish, poultry, dairy foods, and eggs are missing in the diet, several important nutrients could also be missing in action. All vegetarians need to make sure that they are consuming adequate amounts of protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12, calcium, and vitamins A and D.

Consequently, keeping a healthy vegetarian diet may be hard. It is easy to go into the not healthy vegetarian diet by eating everything that is “not meat”, specially eating junk food. This diet will not help against diseases; it will expose one to more.


Also becoming a vegetarian is looking after animal welfare. About 7 billion farm animals die or are slaughtered each year in the U.S. for the production of meat. There are no laws against cruelty to animals raised for food in the U.S. The Animal Welfare Act, which governs the treatment of animals, excludes animals intended for food consumption.


Therefore, the slaughtering process is inhumane. When the animals are stunned before they are slaughtered, it is not always reliable and the animals are in pain while dying.


Also, a lot more water is required in animal agriculture than in plant agriculture. It takes only about 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat and around 390 gallons to produce just one pound of beef.
Likewise, animal production requires a lot of fossil fuels. Fuels are needed to transport animal feed, to heat their housing, and to take the animals to slaughter, meat packing factories and grocery stores. The burning of these fuels is one of the causes of global warming.


In addition, meat and dairy products contain 14 as much times of pollutants than plants do. There are 15 million pounds of antibiotics that are used in animal production every year. These antibiotics end up in your body. In the American diet, 95-99% of pollutants come from animal resources.
Finally, vegetarianism may even help to stop world hunger. Sixty million people will starve to death this year. They could be adequately fed by the grain saved if Americans reduced their intake of meat by ten percent.

Sources:
Vegetarianism: Get the facts!
Yahoo!
gURL.com