Thinking of Trying a Vegetarian Diet?

If you have been thinking of trying a vegetarian diet, now is a great time. Years ago if you were a vegetarian, people looked at you like you were a kook. But now it is socially acceptable and even desirable to be a plant eater. Even Hollywood is filled with vegetarian and vegans, too. Some of our most popular stars have made the switch. Some made the choice for their own personal reasons, some belong to PETA, and some just decided to eat healthier food.

Health

So what are some good reasons for eating a plant-based diet? Health benefits are quite high. Lower heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Generally people who eat a vegetarian diet having lower body weight overall than non-vegetarians. Vegetables are lower in cost compared to meat products. Vegetables can be eaten raw in salads so uses less energy than cooking.And vegetables can be grown in your own garden saving you a lot of money at the grocery store.

Economy

Even if you don't have a large area for a garden some vegetables can be grown in containers and set on a back patio. Tomato cages for tomatoes and peppers fit nicely into medium to large size potting containers. They can also be planted in hanging baskets. Green onions can be planted in a window box along with some radishes. Different varieties of leaf lettuce can be grown in a cold box frame. I had some of these on my patio and they worked out just fine,and no weeding!

Ethics and my own reasons.

The main reason for switching to a vegetarian diet, or my reason for doing so, is that I don't agree with the practices of the food industry when it comes to meat processing. Anyone who has ever grown up on a farm knows that any animal on the farm can and will end up on the dinner table at some point. This is a fact of farm life. That isn't a bad reason of itself. In the old days farm families raised chickens for eggs and meat and cows for milk and meat also. But you take what you need to survive. A cow could last a family of 4 all winter long in the freezer cut and packaged. You would take the animal to a butcher who would cut and wrap the meat for you after slaughter. They would charge a small processing fee for their time spent. It wasn't a large scale production like it is now.

It takes a lot of grain and corn to feed these animals. And there's water consumption and another thought is, how are they disposing of all the animal waste? Those big pens hold a lot of cattle and that means a lot of waste that has to go somewhere. Yes it is manure, organic fertilizer but that much of it all in one area. Where does it go? And is that the reason that we keep getting bacteria in our food?

Mad Cow Disease, E coli, and a list of other types of bacteria end up in our food supply. Namely meat products. If these places are following sanitation guidelines then how does this happen? These places are regulated and inspected on a regular basis for safety, sanitation and ethical practices. So why are we getting sick, and where did swine flu come from? Swine Flu is related to pigs but was not originally passed from pigs to humans.And was also not common to be passed from human to human as in farm workers.Over time strains of bacteria change and mutate into entirely new strains of resistant bacteria. But the cases of Swine Flu that we are hearing about now are caused by a new strain of the same type of bacteria that caused the original swine flu.

I rented a movie from the library called Fast Food Nation, it represents the food industry and practices of meat processing and packaging plants. If you don't know or have never seen what goes on in slaughterhouses, you might want to watch this movie.

This just validated my reason for becoming a vegetarian. I have spent the afternoon looking up some good vegetarian recipes on the Internet. I didn't know there was so many things you could use as substitutes for meat. Like Mushrooms, Eggplant, Zucchini, and of course Tofu. I don't know if I can get used to Tofu, but the rest sounds OK. And I will feel good about myself knowing that even small changes mean a lot. Maybe if enough people did this, the food industry might be willing to change the way they do things. Yeah right, but we can always hope!

Informational Sources:
http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/updates/vegetarian_diets_health_benefits.php