Hey,

I've been a vegetarian for five years and I'm never going back! For me, I stopped eating meat because I wanted to save the animals, but over the years I found many more reasons to do it. For example, the meat industry harms the environment more than the car industry! And, if you do it properly and make sure you get enough protein, iron and vitamin B12, it's one of the healthiest 'diets' you could ever be on!

I actually did an essay on the pros and cons! It's long but if you're really interested you can read it, lol:

Vegetarianism is a diet that excludes all animal flesh. Vegetarians, by definition, choose not to eat beef, chicken, pork, and fish for reasons including religion, personal morals, or health. The first known group of people to practice a vegetarian diet are the Hindu people in India. In 1847, the first Vegetarian Society was founded in England and the International Vegetarian Union was formed in 1908. The popularity of the vegetarian diet has grown in North America during the 20th century but of the people who still eat meat, they are consuming it at a faster rate than ever before. There are pros and cons to both a vegetarian diet and to an omnivore diet, which I will be discussing throughout my essay.

There are many reasons for which people continue to eat meat. The most common reason is because it tastes good and it’s filling. Eating meat is an easy way to consume enough protein and iron every day. The main health concern for a vegetarian is getting enough of the vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is important because it helps convert food into energy. Vegetarians who do not get enough vitamin B12 often report a lack of energy, a feeling of weakness, and difficulty concentrating. These are all symptoms of Anemia. To avoid Anemia it is necessary to consume foods with high levels of vitamin B12 or take vitamin B12 supplements. Other difficulties that might be encountered when practicing a vegetarian diet include criticism from non-vegetarian friends and family, anxious dinner hosts, and having to ask many questions when going out for dinner. It can be hard for some people to get enough protein, iron, and vitamin B12 when on a vegetarian diet because research has to be done to know what kinds of food to replace meat with. Trips to a dietician are often necessary and regular blood tests are recommended.

Some people believe that the benefits of a vegetarian diet outweigh the trouble of making sure you’re getting enough vitamins. The most common reason for being a vegetarian is to save the lives of animals. Most people in North America are against the killing of whales, dolphins, cats, and dogs for human consumption because they realize that they are intelligent mammals. Most people don’t like to think about the fact that pigs, cows, and chickens are intelligent beings that feel pain the same way cats, dogs, and humans do. For example, research shows that pigs are smarter than dogs. Animals care about their families and fear death and pain the same way humans do too. Hens and chickens communicate with each other and even with chicks that haven’t hatched from their eggs yet. Cows don’t only take care of their own calves; they also take turns babysitting for each other.

What many people don’t know is that there are many benefits to a vegetarian diet besides saving animals. If you make sure you’re getting enough of the right vitamins, vegetarianism is one of the healthiest diets in the world. On average, vegetarians and vegans live six to ten years longer than people who eat meat. A non-vegetarians likeliness of developing heart disease is 50% more than vegetarians because of the large amounts of fat and cholesterol found in meat. Vegetarians are also approximately 40% less likely to develop cancer, which can be caused my animal protein.

Being a vegetarian also benefits the environment. In North America, more than half of all the water that we consume goes to animals being raised for us to eat. It takes fifteen times more water to grow one gram of animal protein than it does plant protein, and plant protein is healthier than animal protein. Most people were taught to turn off the water tap when brushing their teeth from a young age, but not many people realize how much water they are wasting just by eating meat.

The meat industry also pollutes more water than all the other industries combined. This is where the waste of over 10 billion animals goes. When talking about ways to help the environment, carpooling and public transportation are often suggested, but it’s rarely mentioned that the meat industry is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the car industry. According to a UN report, the meat industry is responsible for more than 18% of the world's global warming emissions.

Because of the large amounts of food that go towards feeding the animals that we then consume, forests are being cut down at a rapid rate to make more room for farms whose food goes primarily to feeding animals that will soon be killed on meat farms.
These kinds of farms take up 30% of the Earth's unfrozen land surface. If that food was directly used for human consumption, instead of feeding animals so we can eat them, we would have enough food to solve world hunger.

Everyone wants to live in a healthy environment and a lot of people try to do their part in taking care of it. Some people use public transportation instead of a car, some turn off the lights when they leave a room, some plant trees and recycle, and some give up eating meat.

Banning people from eating animals all together would be an extreme measure. Just because something is bad for you doesn’t mean it should be illegal. That would mean banning tobacco, junk food, and alcohol too. People should have the right to make their own choices of what they eat but they should also have the right to know the consequences of what they’re eating. We could solve this by putting warning labels on meat similar to the ones found on cigarettes. Another easy way of creating a meat industry that is less damaging to the environment would be by taking better care of the animals that are being prepared for human consumption. Healthier diets for the animals would mean they would produce less methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. If Canada lowered the amount of methane produced by farm animals by fifty percent, there would be approximately 18 megatonnes less methane produced every year, which is already 10% of Canada's Kyoto reduction target.

In conclusion, I think the first step to creating a healthier environment for the whole world would be raising awareness about the harmful consequences of the meat industry. If people promoted vegetarianism as a way of reducing our ecological footprint half as much as they promote not using cars and recycling, I think we would be on the right track. Everyone cares about our planet and their own health, so vegetarianism should not be ignored when discussing ways of improving a person’s overall health.

Bibliography

http://lifestyle.ilovein...vegetarianism-3908.html

http://www.doityourself....ry/pros-cons-vegetarian

http://debatepedia.ideba...hp/Debate:Vegetarianism

http://www.idebate.org/d...c_details.php?topicID=6

http://hubpages.com/hub/...Harming-the-Environment

http://www.veganoutreach...yvegan/environment.html

We could solve world hunger if the whole world went veg. Plant farms produce so much more food per acre than animal farms, that there would be enough food to feed the world and power our cars with biofuel. But it's a personal choice. People need to decide for themselves what their morals are.

No one chooses to eat meat simply because they don't want domesticated animals to be freed and eventually naturally killed off, because they think plants also feel pain, because other animals eat other animals, because there's a correlation between meat-eating in humans and brain size, or because non-human animals are not nearly as intelligent as humans. The reason meat-eaters eat meat is because they have no emotional attachment to the animals they eat (hence why people typically don't eat other people or pets), it's acceptable and even customary to do so, and people care more for the taste and other enjoyable qualities of the meat than they feel bad for eating a slaughtered animal. Don't kid yourself into thinking it's any more than that.

Take me for instance: I agree with most of the pro-vegetarianism arguments found here, and I even hold pro-vegetarianism views, but I currently have hamburger on the BBQ and am not bothered that I'll soon be eating a slaughtered cow that contributed to greenhouse gas release, isn't the healthiest meal, that took up space that could have been used to grow plants that could have been used to feed many more people than the cow fed, that was smarter than an infant, that felt pain upon being slaughtered, and that is more likely than a plant to give me an illness. None of that bothers me, and this discussion is really just making me even hungrier.

I apologize. This thread fills up too quickly sometimes, and I don't have the time to read what they write as carefully as I should.

No, most farm animals are pretty stupid. And if farm animals were roaming city streets, they would be removed. If they were on highways, they would be removed. Some people may shoot them, etc.

A lot of dogs would die in the wild too. And so would two year old humans.

Are you kidding me? That's the fun part!

Whoa whoa, McDonald's treats its animals very well before being killed. Don't target us just because we're the biggest and best.



You realize plants also live and breathe right?



Wow, you're easily convinced if a washed-up rock star can be in a video and you believe everything that video says. Do you also believe in global warming and the new world order?



Source please.

I'm currenlty taking a year off between school and I've been living and traveling around Taiwan for the past 6 months. I came here as a vegetarian and let me tell you.. I've had to negotiate my morals atleast 2 times a week, in a country where pork isn't really considered meat. What a crazy experience!

Army101 said:
Yes, absolutely. My life is more important than an animal's. Look at all the good humans have done for the world and each other. What have animals done to better our planet? Nothing.

It is impossible to measure the value of one life against another; one may believe his or her life to be more valuable because of intelligence, wealth, athleticism, occupation, social standing, etc, however, nothing should be able to give that person the right (even though said person does have that right) to prematurely kill an animal for consumption or any other use, especially when it is not necessary for that person's survival. Vegetarians all over the world are living proof that humans do not need meat to survive. Also, it is highly debatable as to whether humans have done more good or caused more harm to the world (war, greenhouse gases, habitat destruction etc). Animals are part of the world, yet we kill them anyway, not just for meat, but sometimes for sport or because they are considered 'pests'. Animals have achieved something that humans may never be able to achieve. They have learned how to peacefully co-exist with other animals and the world around them; their lifestyles are sustainable and beautifully simple. (I am fully aware that animals kill other animals to survive, but some do not have other options for food like humans do). You have to be able to put yourself in the animal's shoes (figuratively of course). There are very few beings on the Earth that want to die or would be willing to die to feed another who is hungry. I'm sorry that you cannot see it from the animal's perspective.

TL;DR.

Eat some meat god damn it!