Vegetarianism

To be or not to be? This is one of the most controversial questions when talking about this subject, mostly because the people are often confused and don’t know anymore which is the right thing to be done. Having compelling arguments on both sides, it is often hard for them to decide what is better for their personal health or for the environment.

To start with, what is a vegetarian? Vegetarians do not eat meat, fish, and poultry. Vegans are vegetarians who abstain from eating or using all animal products, including milk, cheese, other dairy items, eggs, wool, silk, and leather. Among the many reasons for being a vegetarian are health, ecological, and religious concerns, dislike of meat, compassion for animals and belief in non-violence. The Vegetarian Society, founded in 1847, writes that it created the word "vegetarian" from the Latin "vegetus" meaning "lively". The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and other standard dictionaries state that the word was formed from the term "vegetable" and the suffix "-arian".

The earliest records of vegetarianism as a concept and practice amongst a significant number of people concern ancient India and the ancient Greek civilization in southern Italy and in Greece. In both instances the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence toward animals and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers. Following the Christianization of the Roman Empire in late antiquity, vegetarianism practically disappeared from Europe but reemerged during the Renaissance. It became a more widespread practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Why do people become vegetarians?

Most nonvegetarians wonder what drives people to convert to vegetarians and give up their daily meat intake in order to adopt an entirely different way of lifestyle. There is no single answer to this question. Nonvegetarians become vegetarians for a lot of different reasons - some even for multiple reasons.

The first reason,which most vegetarians claim, is that they have serious ethical problems with eating meat. These people often object to eating meat because it means that an animal had to die to feed them, and sustaining their own life by killing an animal is not a good enough reason to eat meat. Many vegans also feel that eating dairy products (including eggs) or other animal products (like honey) exploits animals and, thus, choose not to eat any animal-based foods. On the opposite side, some vegetarians, sometimes referred to as pseudo-vegetarians, will actually eat fish and chicken on a regular basis.

The second reason, is realated to the health benefits. It has been proven that vegetarian diets are healthier and more viable than non-vegetarian diets. A vegetarian is less likely to have a high BMI(body mass index), high levels of cholesterol, high levels of blood pressure, and a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes, renal failure, bone loss, and dementia. The reason for the health benefits of vegetarianism is due to the omission of meats, especially non-lean red meat, which have high levels of saturated fat and carry risks of animal-human disease transmissions To add more,there is also the aesthetic reason: some people just don't like the taste of meat, or how it looks like, or the fact that it is high in cholesterol and often contains very high concentrations of hormones and preservatives.

Next, people become vegetarians for environmental reasons. Considering recent concerns about climate change and global warming, it's no wonder many people look to their eating habits and decide to change.

- Eating up land

Our hunger to eat up animals has given rise of dangerous consequences than expected. It is believed that around 30% of ice free land is now used in welfare of livestock (cultivated for meat). It is believed that over grazing by the animals have resulted in loss of fertility and flooding. Also the academics have drawn out figures which indicate that the grains that are fed to the cattle in western countries if fed to humans can significantly cut down the global hunger ratio.

- Deforestation

Millions of trees are cut every year to feed animals. It is found that since last 3 decades the agriculturists are targeting tropical rainforests at large. They depend on these forests to feed and graze their cattle, and to grow up the crops. It is estimated that every year around 6 million hectares of forest land is converted to farm land.

- Earth Poisoning

Most of the cattle farms channelize the animal wastes into massive waste lagoons, which often leaks, breaks, and mix up with water supplies. Tens of thousand miles of rivers across Asia, Europe, and America are polluted with animal wastes every year. A single spill of waste from North Carolina Pig factory lagoon in 1995 killed millions of fish and polluted hectares of coastal wetlands that were used for shell fishing.

- Water resources

It is believed that every summer thousands sq.km of the sea at Mississippi becomes “dead zone” because tones of animal waste, sewage, nitrogen compounds and