What are the advantages and disadvantages of being vegetarian?!
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being vegetarian?
Answers:
Pros:
What you eat is likely to be healthier.
No worries re. horrid factory farming methods, hormones, antibiotics, etc in meat.
It's usually harder to get fat.
It forces some very creative cooking, especially if you dislike tofu/'meat substitutes.'
Paying attention to veg means you end up with better veg, not those awful cardboard tomatoes &c. My idea of a salad is not white wilted iceberg lettuce.
There is no such thing as 'mystery vegetable' in cafeterias. I'm told bad meat is, well, pretty awful. And apparently ubiquitous.
No worries over 'mad cow,' having possibly eaten the products of Robert Pickton's farm, etc.
Cons:
Necessity of squinting at every last ingredient on new products in grocery store; putting down 90% saying 'Goddammit...'
Many boring conversations about why you are a vegetarian, and if you're quite sure about it.. ("Don't you just want to try it once?" "No." "No, seriously. You must want to try it!" "No." "Okay, but I mean, just once." x100)
Confusion over you and vegans, and people who eat fish. ("Oh, sorry -- that's got egg in it" from well-meaning acquaintances, and "We have a lovely salmon" from waiters identifying "vegetarian" items.)
Re. "Most men will not stay around..." -- what sort of simpering sad sack is this that can't handle his own BBQ? Very unfortunate.
Edited to add:
Con: A pervasive belief on Yahoo! Answers that one gives a toss what other people eat, or that one thinks there's a moral superiority attached to it. I mean, if you said "I don't like cheese and I don't eat it," a few people would probably try to convince you that cheese was actually quite tasty, but not make any other assumptions. It's a pity "vegetarian" is such a loaded term nowadays.
no meat...no meat
Advantages. Lower food bill. Lower fat intake. No cholesterol.
Disadvantages. Meat tastes good, especially if marinaded and grilled.
There are lots of advantages and disadvantages, but one you should think of most, If you are a Female, and Heterosexual.
Most men will not stay around, for a long term relationship with a vegan. Men want meat, and even a pretty woman, won't make them put up with veganism for long....Sorry, but it needed to be said.
Well as I have said many times people need a balanced diet to truly be Heather. That being said it is easier to regulate your weight on a vegetarian diet the draw back is there are vitamins in meat that are hard to com by in a vegetarian type diet, My mother is a vegetarian not because of choice but she is allergic to meat, so it has been a long time since she has eaten it and is now B12 anaemic.
advantages:
No contribution to cruelty and abuse of animals.
Thats all i need.
disadvantages:
putting up with myths, insults, assumptions and stupid generalisations from meateaters.
Minuses
Weight loss, halitosis, wind, loss of concentration, unsightly hair growth, bigoted views of non vege, preaching and a false belief that you are actually making a difference.
Plus
More meat for me
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.
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.
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. 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.
It's not really good for animals anyway: for a start the meat industry is booming at the moment; secondly if enough people went veggie to actually affect the industry at all, and the demand for meat decreased, it would mean animals which were surplus to requirement. You're kidding yourself if you think that would mean they'd live happily ever after, as they couldn't be sold no one would want to keep them, and they'd still be slaughtered.
Think about it, the second farmers couldn't sell their livestock, the second they couldn't make a profit, they wouldn't keep them any more. Keeping animals isn't cheap, and to keep them, without profit, would be hugely expensive to any farmer. How many do you reckon would be prepared to make that kind of loss?
Now, what'd happen then? Maybe a few wild pigs or goats would stay alive, but for the most part it would be impossible to release them into the wild. The vast majority would have to be slaughtered.
I quote "If no one were allowed to farm animals, farms would grow crops instead. The first thing to go would be all the animals. Once the rural landscape were rid of cattle, sheep, and the like, fields would get larger, for the convenience of the combine harvesters, and hedgerows would go. Wild animals like rabbits would now be a more major pest. No farmer would want animals eating the plants, and so the war on such animals would intensify. Grown in the fields would be domesticate species of food crops, and so the number of plant species would decline."
Domestication is one of the best things that can happen to animals. If the golden eagle tasted any good you can bet your life it wouldn't be nearly extinct.
I quote "In the wild, a sheep would have to look for food, compete for it, jockey for position in the herd, look out for predators, guard its offspring, and it one day would die because of some accident, perhaps a fall, some nasty illness, or it would become weak and have its throat ripped out by the local predators. By striking contrast, the life of a farmed sheep is rather different. A farmed sheep has complete protection from predators; all the food of exactly its favourite kind at its feet all day every day, for which it does not have to compete; no competition for mates; no need to guard offspring; free health care; free haircuts; it is very unlikely to die in childbirth, and unlikely to die a nasty death. True, half a ewe’s offspring are taken away and killed. However, in the wild, a ewe would lose most of its offspring anyway, and in nastier circumstances. By the standards of the natural wild, a sheep’s life is about as cushy as a life could possibly be."
This is true, animals in the wild invariably die violent deaths. the closest an animal will get to dying of old age is being picked by a predator because it it old and therefore an easier to target. Farmed animals invariably lead happier, healthier, less stressful lives than those in the wild.