I know what you're thinking: there is no way I could ever become a vegetarian. That is exactly how I felt until recently. I love meat. Chicken, hamburger, steak, turkey, or any other type of meat you can name, I enjoy eating it. I've never been the type of person who wants to take up a meat-free lifestyle just because they've never liked the taste. However, what I don’t like is every other aspect of meat industry -- and lately, these things have become too hard to over look.
1. Cruelty to animals
There is no denying that the way meat producing animals are treated is completely awful. I would love to go into detail for you about the terrible practices that are considered humane, but really I can't even bring myself to wrap my head around it. There are countless documentaries and videos that can shed a disturbing light onto how exactly that steak got from the "farm" into your kitchen.
2. Added Hormones
This was a huge deal for me, even before deciding to do a meat-free diet. These animals are pumped full of an unreal amount of hormones in order to speed up their growth. This is an extremely common practice in meat and dairy producing animals. According to a new study from the Union for Concerned Scientists, "Meat producers feed some 25 million pounds of antibiotics to chickens, pigs and cows for non-therapeutic purposes each year." That is about 70 percent of all antibiotics produced annually in the United States. There is a huge amount of controversy on what effects consuming these hormones and antibiotics can do to the human body, but the bottom line is: there is really no way they can benefit you.
3. It's Unnatural
A huge argument I've always heard for not accepting a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is that eating meat is the "natural way of life." I used to understand that, I loved animals and felt like killing them for food wasn't right, but also understood that it was a "the circle of life" kind of thing. But nothing about this process is natural anymore. All the products being injected into animals is not natural. Constantly keeping cows pregnant from the earliest possible age until death, is not natural. Keeping thousands of chickens in a tiny area, is not natural. Dairy cows used to live to be 17-20 years old, now with all the hormones and constant stress on their body they are lucky to make it to 5 years old -- and if they do, the cow is shipped off to the meat company. The animals are being forced to grow way faster than they naturally should, which effects their health greatly -- but nobody cares because they only need to live for a little while until they can slater them.
4. Environmental Benefits
It takes an insane amount of water to run a beef factory, especially compared to the little amount of water it takes to produce vegetables and fruits. Vast bodies of water, especially the Chesapeake Bay, are being depleted and becoming toxic sites. This is because the chicken and dairy farms are creating these sites into algae blooms. About 70 percent of our topsoil has been depleted as well, due to massive amounts of animal feed being produced. There is also a whole bunch of other effects the meat industry has on the environment that can be read about here.
5. 35 Percent Meat
Even though you would probably assume everything in your beef or other types of meat products are actually "meat," it's not. All types of meat, ground beef, chicken nuggets, taco filling etc. are only required to contain 35 percent "actual meat." The other 65 percent can be made up of any mixture of edible fillers and chemicals, including cornstarch, water, soy, maltodextrin, silicon dioxide, food colorings and artificial flavoring. Don't you want to know exactly what you're putting into your body?
6. Health Benefits
There are tons of health benefits contributed to adapting the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. Whether you notice a decrease in acne or are looking to have a lower risk of obesity, heart disease, or cancer; changing to a meat-free life style can have some serious benefits when you do your research. It's proven that vegetarians live a significantly longer life, and who wouldn't want that?
Switching to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle isn't an easy choice to make. It's difficult and can literally seem impossible. But, there are so many reasons to give it a try, what harm can come from trying to make it work? You can read this Vegetarian Starter Kit for a little extra motivation. Even if you can only abstain from meat a few days out of the week, it's still better than not doing it at all.
