I have been a vegetarian for more than two years and I have never regretted it. However, for the past two years, I have had to formulate the perfect response to people when they say “but why are you a vegetarian? I don’t understand how you could give up meat.”
I have always known what vegetarianism is because my dad has been one for 25 years and one of my best friends became one during our freshman year of high school. However, I didn’t give it much thought until my junior year of high school.
The original reason I became a vegetarian was for ethical reasons. I think that killing any animal is inhumane and that the treatment of the animals raised for meat is horrific. I watched some documentaries and did a lot of research specifically about the treatment of animals.
Animals are given food that they don’t naturally eat to be fattened up before they are killed. Often, they get too overweight that they can’t support themselves, they are given no pain relief, and are confined to cramped small spaces that are not sanitary. These things made me decide quickly, and without looking back, that I wanted to become a vegetarian.
I think that a lot of people believe that this is the only reason to be a vegetarian and that people dismiss the idea because they don’t think eating animals is wrong in any way. But, if more people understood all of the ways vegetarianism is beneficial, not only to the animals, but to themselves and the world, I think more people would make an effort to consume less animal products.
Not all of the personal health risks of eating meat have been proven to be a direct cause, however, there are a lot of links to health risks caused by eating meat.
Highly processed red meat has been shown to contain carnitine which some studies have linked to atherosclerosis which is the hardening/ clogging of arteries. Red meat has also been shown to harbor hormones that can increase risk of breast cancer and it carries diseases like E. Coli. A study at Mary and Dick Allen Diabetes Center at Hoag Hospital in Irvine, California showed that regularly eating any meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes and obesity.
The names of these chemicals and the effects meat can have can get lost in the flurry of news that we hear every day. However, people react swiftly and with passion when there is a flu or ebola outbreak, so I believe that if you know that meat can damage your body, you should not consume it, at least not in the quantities most Americans do.
Outside of the personal risks eating meat presents, meat production is extremely damaging to the environment, and there is no denying that the use of resources for livestock is fairly senseless.
Cows, in particular, pose a huge threat to the environment. Cattle produce large amounts of methane when they graze and one molecule of methane is roughly equivalent to 20 molecules of carbon dioxide. Methane traps heat and warms the atmosphere at a much higher rate than carbon dioxide and this high production of cows will speed up global warming.
Processing meat and raising livestock is also costly to the environment. A quarter pound hamburger requires 7 pounds of grain, 53 gallons of water, 75 square feet for grazing and feed, and enough electricity to power a microwave for 18 minutes. Multiply this by the 93 billion pounds of meat that are processed each year just in America and the resources pile up. These resources could be used to directly feed people, instead of feeding the animals that feed people.
Eating meat hurts innocent animals, can pose serious health risks to yourself, and has huge negative impacts on the environment. All of these reasons are why I choose to not eat meat. I believe that if you have the information about the negative effects meat and meat production has, then not eating meat, or eating less meat, should be a priority in your day to day life.
Emma Farina
Opinions Columnist
About Post Author
