Vegetarianism: Why and How?

In this series of articles, I am exploring the why and how of being a vegetarian from the perspective of one vegetarian (myself). In my prior article (see Part I of the series) I took a brief look at my moral and ethical stance on vegetarianism. In this section, I promised to look at the economic and distributive benefits of vegetarianism. These are the practical points that our supposedly pragmatic capitalist system seems to be so concerned with.

The bottom line of food distribution is nutritive energy, its quantity and quality. I begin with the assumption that feeding more people is better than feeding less, in order that world hunger can be eliminated. Given this assumption, how do we acquire the most distributable nutritive energy? The answer is mass vegetarianism. In order to feed the most people the most food, we must look to grow and distribute nutritive energy directly from the source of that energy, which is plant-life itself. Economically this makes sense, since many available farmlands that are used to feed the cattle that stock our meat could be used instead to feed three times that number through sustainable growth of grains, fruit, and vegetables.

From a distribution standpoint this makes sense as well, since grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables have much longer shelf lives than meat, are more easily transportable, and provide more variety of nutrition. By feeding cattle with arable land, we remove one layer of the energy available from that land. Instead of getting the full production of energy available, we instead tie up enormous amounts of energy in raising domesticated cattle to slaughter, and which will provide a quarter of the energy and nutrition the land is capable of producing.

This basic premise seems lost on our food economy, which pays homage to meat as a staple of the American diet, and whose industry represents the loudest agricultural contender for public and governmental support. Marketing would have us believe that meat is "manly," that to eat a fair portion of vegetables does damage to our ego, and that somehow without meat we will be less healthy and robust. Most research has found the very opposite is true. Meat from fast-food, and the marketing associated with it, has made eating fatty and unhealthy food a peculiarly American obsession, an obsession that is now exported to other more balanced food cultures.

The negative mythos that has surrounded vegetarianism must end. There are hundreds of extremely healthy vegetarians out there, some of whom perform extreme feats of athleticism and vigor. Contributing to the health of the meat industry does not contribute to the health of this nation, or to the millions of starving people who populate the world we live in. To buy into this market represents an individual act of economic ignorance and amorality that defies comprehension. I suppose it begs the question of what price we are all willing to pay for a tasty food. For me anyway, the price is too high.