Vegetarianism Has Become a Popular

Vegetarianism has become a popular choice, a lifestyle decision that involves more than just dietary changes. Usually, a vegetarian lifestyle incorporates general healthy eating habits including avoiding processed foods, genetically modified foods, and hydrogenated fats. Similarly, vegetarians often opt to purchase organic produce. Not only does organic produce minimize exposure to harmful toxins or in the case of dairy products, hormones, but buying organic is also an ethical consumer choice. Therefore, vegetarianism incorporates a broad consumer ethic.

I decided to become a vegetarian out of disgust for the meat packing and slaughterhouse industry. Animals are treated poorly, kept in cages, fed horrendous diets, and pumped up with hormones and other chemicals. No civilized society should tolerate the meat industry. Moreover, meat is sold in unnecessarily large quantities, causing not just a proliferation of animal cruelty and environmental degradation, but also an increase in disease.

Obesity and heart disease are major health problems in the United States and is in part caused by being out of touch with the food we eat. Therefore, vegetarianism is a wise, healthy, and ethical lifestyle choice. A became a vegetarian when I first started reading about the way animals are treated in the commercial meat industry. Watching videos of slaughterhouses and reading accounts of what the animals are fed put me off eating meat forever.

Eventually I would also like to cut all dairy out of my diet for the same reason but until then I believe that purchasing organic dairy products is at least ethically more sound than purchasing dairy products from traditional farms. Animal cruelty is therefore one of the most important reasons to become a vegetarian. Making an ethical decision helps me sleep at night, increasing my self-esteem, my sense of value as a human being, and my overall emotional and mental well-being.

Moreover, choosing not to eat meat because of my disgust with the meat industry means I do not expose myself to the diseases and unknown problems that are caused by eating meat that has been taken from animals who were killed inhumanely after being fed hormones, chemical-laden diets, or even cannibalistic fodder such as that which leads to mad cow disease.

Although the American Food and Drug Administration reassures the public that meat is safe, no long-term studies have been conducted that show what the genetic effects might be from eating meats from hormone-injected and chemically-fed animals. Vegetarians also tend to have healthier diets by the very fact of avoiding meat: their cholesterol intake is dramatically lower than that of meat-eaters and so too is their intake of saturated fats.

Vegetarians would also tend to avoid patronizing fast-food restaurants like McDonalds, which peddle MSG, processed cheese, hydrogenated fats, and other heavily processed foods in addition to just meat. We vegetarians are usually more prone to cooking dinner at home using fresh ingredients or seeking out restaurants that cook healthy wholesome foods. Therefore, the act of avoiding meat can lead to a range of healthier eating choices. Since I have become a vegetarian I have noticed.