While not everyone wants to lose weight, everyone is on a diet. Some people are on a snack food diet, others are on a carbohydrate-only diet. In fact, there was a movie made a few years ago about a guy who was on a strict McDonalds diet, who ate all his meals at the home of the golden arches for more than a month. To me, the vegetarian lifestyle makes the most sense for a myriad of reasons.
I have always been one in favor of the rights of animals. From the age of four, after adopting my first dog from the Humane Society, I recognized the tantalizing personalities and humanlike qualities in not only man’s best friend but in all animals. Furthermore, after I became the proud owner of a horse at age 13, I just could not fathom the idea of eating a living, breathing creature.
Many people, after hearing of my dietary preferences, gawk at me in awe as to how I can give up beloved chicken nuggets and the salivating induced aroma of frying bacon. My response is typically, “How can you eat something, a carcass at that, that once had two eyes, a set of internal organs, and a mother, just like yourself?”
However, people can’t change how they were raised and I am forced to accept that, just as they are accepting of me- well, sometimes. I was lucky enough to grow up with a vegetarian mother who served as my mentor in forgoing meat-eating at a very young age.
Have you ever walked through the grocery store and looked at the section of packaged meat? The red, raw, clump of substance stares at you from under a tight sheeting of plastic wrap, oddly resembling the image of a body bag, holding the remains of a human corpse. Using disguised words like beef, pork, and poultry, the meat packing industry has given names to the flesh and animal insides it calls food that it sells to a growing market. Graphic, I know, but have you ever thought to wonder where this hunk of meat comes from? This could be Fido, currently chasing a tennis ball in your backyard. Or perhaps your childhood horse, which you’ve created an everlasting bond with like I have with mine.
If you wouldn’t eat a dog or horse, then you shouldn’t eat a pig; it's essentially the same concept.
In addition, did you know the FDA guidelines state that only 35 percent of ground beef needs to actually be meat? So, to cut costs, producers inject “flavor filled” chemicals and a product they call meat glue to make up for the remaining 65 percent of your dinner. If that isn’t disgusting enough, you should see the treatment and living conditions of your dinner premortem.
Now, you may be asking, “Well what do you eat?” What many people fail to realize is the existence of food substitutes! Almost every store carries your favorite meat product (ground beef, chicken nuggets, deli meats, etc.) vegetarian-style that arguably taste the same and, when realizing you aren’t eating a dead animal, even better.
Because the term "diet" is often misunderstood, I prefer saying that being a vegetarian is a lifestyle; a way of living healthier while simultaneously preserving the lives of animals.
