How to Defend Being a Vegetarian to Your Midwest, Meat-Loving, Family

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:

         http://voices.yahoo.com/pigs-emotionally-sensitive-conscious-creatures-8084712.html

         http://www.peta.org/living/vegetarian-living/top-10-reasons-not-to-eat-pigs.aspx

             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