Many people ideally would like to be a vegetarian, but do not know where to begin to actually make the lifestyle change. Wailana has some practical, easy steps to help you make this change.
In this article we will present factual information about the effects of meat eating and meat production on the earth and your body.
The Environmental Perspective
For one thing, meat production is a very wasteful process. Nearly half of the water in the United States is used for raising livestock, along with a 80% of our farmland. Raising livestock is also one of the biggest causes of global warming; whereas cars account for 15% of the carbon dioxide that causes global warming, livestock are responsible for 18%.
What You Eat Affects Your Health
The second to consider is that meat can be very detrimental to your health. Several physicians have noted that the primary contributor to heart disease is the consumption of meat, but our culture still remains based around a meat diet. Even as heart disease has become the number one killer in our country, many people still do not revert to a healthier vegetarian diet. Studies have shown that a vegan diet can actually work towards reversing heart disease and helping to unclog arteries that were previously damaged from meat consumption. Wailana has more information on vegetarian diet.
Animals Have the Right to Life
Another thing to consider is the welfare of the animals that are eaten. One thing you may want to ask yourself is whether or not you would eat a dog. Surely you would be aghast at the thought, given that we are familiar with dogs as friends. That shows that meat-eating is more of a cultural attitude than a moral one. To that end, you should view all animals as equally deserving of life as your pets may be, and maintaining a vegetarian diet is the only way to ensure that you are not causing unecessary suffering and descruction to your own health, other living beings, and the planet.
Contaminated Meat
Many vegetarians choose to live life the way they do because of the possible contaminations that meat may contain.These days, with diseases such as foot and mouth disease and the H5N1 avian flu present in livestock, becoming a vegetarian may be a significant move when it comes to protecting your health. Mad cow disease is another concern that keeps many wary of the meat industry, especially considering that the disease was probably the result of cows being fed the remains of other cows in a form of species-related cannibalism. Most of the meat that is sold in stores in the United States today is contaminated in one way or another, with one study showing that a full ninety eight percent of broiler chicken carcasses contained levels of E.Coli which is indicative of feces contamination. Not too appetizing of a statistic, is it?
Reasses Your Situation
These facts may shock you, but they are important to consider the way your diet affects you and the world. Being ignorant to the facts is not an excuse to allow yourself to continuously live off of the suffering of other life on earth. Be kind to others. Going vegetarian is easy. Here are some easy helpful steps from Wai Lana on how to become a vegetarian.
