Sometimes talking about being a
vegetarian to a meat lover can be like talking about religion to a person who
has very different views. Thus, I
normally try to avoid it but sometimes it’s unavoidable, like when my meat
loving family (besides Rach) decides to tell me I should eat meat again. Sometimes
they even like to tease me about it. I usually just sit there and take it.
Sometimes it’s best to just ignore the comments but if people are going to give
me a hard time about being a vegetarian, I’m at the point where I at least want to be able to defend myself. Maybe instead of me having to just suck it up and take it, I can
defend myself with some hard facts, possibly causing my meat loving family and
friends to just not bring it up anymore.
(If you’re reading this and you eat meat- please take no
offense as I’m not judging you at all. I just want to give my vegetarian
friends some info the could use to defend themselves when certain people make
fun of them for not eating meat)
1)
Albert Einstein was a vegetarian and he was
really smart.
“Nothing
will benefit human health and increase the chances of survival of life on Earth
as much as the evolution to a vegetarian
diet.”
- Albert Einstein
2)
Pigs are emotional, sensitive, and extremely
smart!
Pigs are actually one of the most
intelligent species in the world even though they are rarely painted in this
light. They’re more emotional and intelligent than a dog. Could you imagine
eating something as loyal and loving as your dog? They even have the mental
capacities of a three year old human! Pigs, when trained, can do all kinds of
tricks and tasks. They love to play and
can get very curious. Pigs can also experience fear and sadness. They can very
well feel all the pain, physically and emotionally, humans cause them.
Cows
have feelings too. They respond better when they are given an individual name
and even like some people better than others.
For
me, the last thing I ever want to do is cause another living, emotional
creature pain, and it’s why I became a vegetarian. For more on this subject
here’s some good article to start with:
James Cromwell, lead
character of the movie Babe, has this to say:
“To deny an animal its
right to self-determination, its right to live out its life as it chooses in
its natural habitat, that is an aggression; it’s an aggression against the
planet and all other sentient beings.”
3)
One of the biggest things meat eaters tell me is
that human bodies were designed to eat meat.
That’s a load of garbage.
I will compare myself to a mountain lion-
At
the end of my long fingers that are great for picking fruits and veggies are
fingernails, not claws. While I can certainly make a scratch on skin with my
fingernails, there is no way my finger nails are capable of tearing into another body.
Then
there's my teeth and mouth. My mouth is quite small compared to a mountain lion
and there is no way I can open it was wide as a mountain lion. I certainly can’t
fit the whole neck of an animal in there or crack any bones with my mouth. As for my teeth, they’re great for smashing
fruits and veggies (again, not bones). If I tried to dig my teeth into raw
animal flesh, the animal would probably be laughing at me. Mountain lions have
sharp long teeth. You can even see these teeth sticking out of a closed mouth.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have that as I think I would be considered a vampire.
Even
my intestines lack resemblance to a mountain lion. My intestines, like all
herbivores, are nice and long. A mountain lion has short intestines to quickly
get rid of the rotting flesh of animals that’s in its stomach. Additionally, while a mountain lion is okay
eating fresh meat, I would get extremely sick eating any raw meat. My body
would want nothing to do with it.
Lastly there is my mind which is
built to care about other living things. A mountain lion’s brain isn’t built to
care about eating animals for food, but my mind cares for other animals. If a
person, like me, isn’t able to kill the animal and prepare it himself/herself,
it’s probably a good sign that he/she wasn’t meant to eat meat
4)
One HUGE reason it’s good to be a vegetarian is
for the environment.
Livestock is one of the biggest causes of global warming.
First of all, there is methane which is 72 times more potent than CO2! If everyone stopped eating meat, the world would be much better for it. Then there of course is the deforestation to grow feed for livestock, the transportation and refrigeration of meat, and the processing of meat, all of which accounts for making livestock a huge cause of global warming. Meat production also uses tons of water and other resources that could be used for much better causes.
Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang wrote a great article for World Watch that started off like this:
Whenever the causes of climate change are discussed, fossil
fuels top the
list. Oil, natural gas, and especially coal are indeed
major sources
of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide
(CO2) and other
greenhouse gases(GHGs).But we believe that
the life
cycle and supply chain of domesticated animals raised
for food have
been vastly underestimated as a source of GHGs,
and in fact
account for at least half of all human-caused
GHGs. If this
argument is right, it implies that replacing livestock
products with
better alternatives would be the best strategy for
reversing
climate change .In fact, this approach would
have far
more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their
atmospheric
concentrations—and thus on the rate the climate is warming—
than actions
to replace fossil fuels with
renewable
energy.
5)
Meat is just not all that healthy for us.
The more
meat you eat, the more at risk you will be for heart disease- the number one
killer of women. Red meats and processed meats are high in saturated fat which
raises cholesterol. If you’re a vegetarian you will also be less likely to have
some cancers, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. What makes meat really unhealthy now more than ever is all the hormones injected in livestock. The hormones in meat are affecting human hormones, thus negatively affecting the way human bodies work. These extra hormones can possibly cause certain cancers, weight gain, early puberty, etc.
I know this
is a touchy subject, so I’ll stop there for this one. J
6) Sage Canaday has been a lifelong vegetarian and
he’s one of the fastest ultra/ mountain runners out there.
I know I could go on an on about this but that would make for a little bit of a boring post. However, I really encourage you to do your own research on this as knowledge really is power, especially when you're trying to defend being a vegetarian to your Midwest, meat-loving, family.
"If
slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian."
- Linda and Paul
McCartney
