Is it worth it to become a vegetarian?!
Is it worth it to become a vegetarian?
There's never really vegetarian type food in my house. I want to try to become a vegetarian. Is becoming a 'flexitarian' a better idea?
Answers:
First off, you might want to ask yourself why you want to become a vegetarian. Is it for health reasons? If so, why not alter your diet to include healthier standard foods instead of strictly non-meat foods. If you are doing it because you just don't want to eat meat and meat products, then being a "flexitarian" isn't really going to suit your wants. Vegetarianism requires a lot of self control and vigilance; many foods have animal by-products that you wouldn't think of right away. Caesar salad has anchovies, Jell-o has gelatin (an animal byproduct), while some cheeses use rennet, which is an animal enzyme. Some ales are also clarified using the enzyme from a fish's stomach. These are all things you are going to have to learn to avoid if you really want to become a vegetarian. Good luck with your decision.
No vegetarian food in the house? You never have vegetables, beans, pasta or rice in the house?
My sister is a vegetarian and she says it's way better than eating meat. If you do it right you start noticing changes in your body and yes they are good changes.
there is a difference between vegetarian and vegen.
Vegetarian eats foods that dont contain meat or meat products. which you should have lots of items in the house that dont have meat.
Now vegens dont even eat any product that comes from an animal. IE they wont even eat jello, not that you would want to know what its made of.
I'm not too sure what you mean by flexitarian but I guess it's a good idea. Eating very few meat is good for your health(like not more than once a week) but I suppose you still need to eat eggs, milk, etc. You also need to eat other types of protein, like almonds, soy and beans. Cutting carbs and eating lots of fruit and vegetables should be good too. You are responsible for what you eat so saying you don't have it at home is no excuse.
It's worth it for some, but others don't have the self control. If you think that it will be better for you, whether that's mentally, physically, emotionally, or ethically, then go for it. Take the time to do the research so that you stay healthy and gradually become more and more strict. And like any diet, if you fail for lunch one day, start again at dinner.
As far as "flexitarian", again, it's up to you. It's not necessarily "better", it's a ll your personal choice.
Yes it is worth it. You won't regret it. You'll lose weight, save animals, and be healthier.
No.
Animals eat other animals, its called life.
And who's to say plants don't feel pain?
It's been worth it for me. I've been lacto-ovo vegetarian for 1 1/2 years now and I love it. When I ate meat, I used to get frequent headaches related to my diet (usually I was low on either protein or sugar)... somehow my body would tell me which one... I'd get a craving for a high protein food like peanut butter or for sweets (I rarely eat sweets). Anyway, I've not had ANY of these headaches since switching to a vegetarian diet. I feel I have at least as much energy as I used to, probably more. My skin is clearer, my nails are healthier, and I certainly don't get sick any more often than I used to (although I've never been one to get sick often).
As long as you're not going vegan, there's still TONS of food options for you. The meat substitutes are great (Morningstar Farms, etc) for making the transition. A lot of stuff like pasta-roni and rice-a-roni have (a few) varieties that are vegetarian (not that they're incredibly healthy....). Baco's (imitation bacon bits) are actually vegan (so says PETA) although they aren't marketed that way. Probably half of everything currently in your cupboard is actually vegetarian. :) It's not that hard.
It's been better for me. Before I was overweight and i lost like 15 pounds just by becoming a vegatarian. I feel alot more healthier then before.
Being a vegetarian is not hard--believe me. The only thing to it is cutting out meat--that's all. I'm highly doubting every single thing in your house is meat. That's a bit of an exaggeration...
...and talk to your parents about buying other food. They're not going to bite you (at least I'd hope not...).
yes i heard you live longer
Yes. Never regretted it..
Good for your heart.. Lentils, legumes, brown rice.. soy products. You don't have to be 100% vegetarian,but try doing it several days a week.. If you do eat meat, don't make it the meal. Do like the chinese and japanese do.. Make it a part of the meal.. I don't eat a lot of meat,but I do eat fish and sometimes chicken.
i'm a vegg, so my answer is bias
it's worth every penny, my georcy price is less, a god load less
I can spend over $50 every few days on food before, now I spend $5 a week, $10 at the most, I eat very well, lots of fruit and vegg, noddles and rice, i am very happy, it takes awhile to get used to
but it's great, it aslo take less time to cook, and therefore less time to clean up.
yes, slaughter houses are bloodbaths where chickens are electricuted and then still half alive, get the combination of drowning, shock and boiling water. Cows barely a few months old hung upside down legs dangling throats slit open. Pigs sliced open still squealing..
any more information needed type PETA into google, there is a lot of explicit material.. i warn you now.
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If a vegetarian diet is very carefully planned, and that may require either fortified foods or supplements, it can be AS healthy as a good meat eating diet. I think there are a couple of benefits, but they come from eating a wide range of fruit and veg and being health conscious as vegans have to be, not omitting meat, and thus those benefits can be go without actually going veggie. Needless to say a uncarefully planned vegetarian, or especially vegan, diet can lack many essential nutrients and be very bad for your health.
There are many benefits to a diet containing meat. Many vegetarians claim that meat is unhealthy. This is a blatant fallacy.
It is well established that eating meat improves the quality of nutrition, strengthens the immune system, promotes normal growth and development, is beneficial for day-to-day health, energy and well-being, and helps ensure optimal learning and academic performance.
A long term study found that children who eat more meat are less likely to have deficiencies than those who eat little or no meat. Kids who don’t eat meat ― and especially if they restrict other foods, as many girls are doing ― are more likely to feel tired, apathetic, unable to concentrate, are sick more often, more frequently depressed, and are the most likely to be malnourished and have stunted growth. Meat and other animal-source foods are the building blocks of healthy growth that have made America’s and Europe's youngsters the tallest, strongest and healthiest in the world.
Meat is an important source of quality nutrients, heme iron, protein, zinc and B-complex vitamins. It provides high-quality protein important for kids’ healthy growth and development.
The iron in meat (heme iron) is of high quality and well absorbed by the body, unlike nonheme iron from plants which is not well absorbed. More than 90 percent of iron consumed may be wasted when taken without some heme iron from animal sources. Substances found to inhibit nonheme iron absorption include phytates in cereals, nuts and legumes, and polyphenolics in vegetables. Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, headache, irritability and decreased work performance. For young children, it can lead to impairment in general intelligence, language, motor performance and school readiness. Girls especially need iron after puberty due to blood losses, or if pregnant. Yet studies show 75 percent of teenage girls get less iron than recommended.
Meat, poultry and eggs are also good sources of absorbable zinc, a trace mineral vital for strengthening the immune system and normal growth. Deficiencies link to decreased attention, poorer problem solving and short-term memory, weakened immune system, and the inability to fight infection. While nuts and legumes contain zinc, plant fibre contains phytates that bind it into a nonabsorbable compound.
Found almost exclusively in animal products, Vitamin B12 is necessary for forming new cells. A deficiency can cause anaemia and permanent nerve damage and paralysis. The Vitimin B12 in plants isn't even bioavailable, meaning our body can't use it.
Why not buy food supplements to replace missing vitamins and minerals? Some people believe they can fill those gaps with pills, but they may be fooling themselves. Research consistently shows that real foods in a balanced diet are far superior to trying to make up deficiencies with supplements.
Lets not forget either that protein, while it is found in plants, is better quality in animal products.
Some people claim that meat is unhealthy because it contains saturated fat. So does margarine and olive oil, and they're vegan suitable (in fact the hydrogenated fats in Marge can be very bad, but that's another story). Besides, any excess calories in your diet, any excess sugar, starch or carbohydrates are stored in your body for later use. This is done by turning them into saturated fats.
Cholesterol too. Your body on average creates four to five times more cholesterol than the average person consumes, and compensates by creating more when less is consumed. Cholesterol isn't evil, it is essential; it makes up the waterproof linings of all our cells and without it we would die. Too much can be bad, but as with saturated fats there are more healthy ways of disposing of it, like regular exercise. Anyway, it isn't so much how much cholesterol you eat, but how well yur body handles it. A person who eats loads of dietary cholesterol and leads an unhealthy lifestyle can still have low cholesterol, and vice versa. Most people's bodies are able to take a large amount of cholesterol without getting atherosclerosis. For this reason that eating meat gives you heart disease is very misleading, and for the most part untrue. Of course, if you do have a problem eating loads isn't a good idea, but for most people there is nothing at all to worry about.
Yes, there are things in meat that there is some evidence can cause cancer in some people, but there are as many in plants too. Soy especially has some very potent carcinogens. Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines.
Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women. Also they are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.
Soy is bad for numerous other reasons, but that isn't the point, I'm just using it as a quick example relating to cancer not being exclusive to some animal products. The evidence that claims meat does cause cancer is patchy anyway.
Some people also claim that we aren't designed by evolution, to eat meat. They claim that our digestive system is quite long and that we produce amylase, a starch splitting catabolic enzyme, akin to herbivores and unlike carnivores. Apparently this clearly shows that we were designed to eat plants. Such people should go and look up 'omnivore' in a dictionary. They have also been known to cite other reasons we are like herbivores and unlike carnivores: that we suck water instead of lapping it, and that we perspire through our skin, such things have nothing at all to do with whether or not we were designed to eat meat, and nothing to do with how our body handles food. I might as well say that because we, like most carnivores and unlike most herbivores, have eyes that face forwards, we must be carnivorous. Of course, that's not true for precisely the same reason.
The fact is Humans are omnivores, with the ability to eat nearly everything. By preference, prehistoric people ate a high-protein, high-mineral diet based on meat and animal sources, whenever available. Their foods came mainly from three of the five food groups: meat, vegetables and fruits. As a result, big game mammoth hunters were tall and strong with massive bones. They grew six inches taller than their farming descendants in Europe, who ate mostly plant foods, and only in recent times regained most of this height upon again eating more meat, eggs and dairy foods. We are adapted to eat meat, and it is just as natural as eating plants.
Some also claim that the digestion of meat releases harmful byproducts into our system. This is true, however such are our adaptations to eating meat that our bodies are quite able to dispose of said products without any adverse effects.
So, in summary: it isn't healthier to avoid meat. You can be healthy without meat, but likely not as healthy as if you did, assuming you kept things like the wide range of fruit and veg that a veggie diet usually entails. Too much meat can be bad, but normal amounts are no problem at all. Any health benefits that come from a veggie diet come from a wide range of fruit and veg, and being health conscious, as veggies often are; that doesn't require you to not eat meat."
I don't think a vegeterian diet benefits anyone in any way better than a better meat eating diet could at all. If you have no ethical qualms, it's quite pointless, and even if you do it doesn't actually save any animals lives, for the simple reason no one would keep animals they can't make a profit on, so they'd still go for the chop if there was no one to eat them. PETA will tell you otherwise, but they have very strong ethical opinions, and mould their 'evidence' around it. There is, for example, some evidence that vegans live longer and are at less risk from cancer and heart disease; however those studies show only a very marginal and insignificant difference and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable.
yes! i'm the only veggie in my house and i have been for years and it has been a little difficult at times but it is SOO worth it. i feel good about myself for doing something to save animals from suffering and i'm in good health (i get sick maybe once a year max). hopefully your parents will be supportive and buy vegetarian food, the only problem can be choosing a restaurant because some serve meat in about 95% of their meals. it is a difficult transition, my sister is slowly becoming a veggie as well (she still eats chicken), but it is 110% worth it. if you need help go to http://www.goveg.com/vegetarian101.asp... they have recipes, lists of vegetarian foods, and facts that show why being a vegetarian is great. good luck!
That is a silly idea. You may be able to last a week maybe, then you will crave for normal food. It's just not practical. Just imagine being served burgers at a cookout with your family and friends. They all chow down....while you nibble on the lettus, onions, and tomatos.
Only you can answer that question. Look in your heart. If you are a person of compassion, you will know that killing animals is just wrong. You'll be a better person for being a vegetarian! 8^)