Vegitariansism: Unheealty Crime, or Environmental Savior?

by Elysia in oz

You’ve heard the scenario before: More and more people are becoming vegetarian because of cruelty to the animals, but also cruelty to the environment. The animals are forced to come face to face with their unfortunate, untimely death in slaughter houses. The environment loses itself due to the land needed for slaughter houses. If more people became vegetarian, it would save world hunger, the animals, and the environment. Besides, being a vegetarian is healthy for you.

First, there’s exhibit A: the meat-eater. We all know them well. In fact, you could be one. There are many meat-eaters in our world. Little do they know what they’re eating sometimes. Some meats are contaminated with chemicals and other gross things. An example can be Tyson chicken. Trust me, you do not know that food’s history. James Hopkins Bloomberg from the School of Public Health found that ninety six percent of Tyson chicken was contaminated with campylobatcher, a dangerous bacteria that causes two point four million cases of food poisoning each year. This basically means some meat is also harmful to humans.

While the meat eaters are off eating meat, they are not aware of what is happening. They don’t know that an area of rainforest the size of seven football fields is destroyed every minute they’re eating. That rainforest land is replaced to make room for grazing cattle. Even so, that cattle dies anyway. Not only that, but since there are so many meat-eaters, the starvation in the world has doubled. If more people were vegetarian, then world hunger would slowly decrease.

Then, there’s exhibit B: the vegetarian. Yes, there are many vegitigitarians in the world, but there aren’t enough. The more people go vegetarian, the more land in rainforests we save. Each vegetarian saves one acre of trees each year. In fact, being vegetarian lowers your risk of having a heart attack, cancer, and a stroke by almost fifty percent. This means that being a vegetarian can be very beneficial.

The animals even benefit from vegetarianism. Every year, each vegetarian saves more than one hundred animals from horrible abuse. I think the animals are grateful for that. On the other hand, seventy percent of our cereals and grains go to the farmed animals, and most of those calories are used to simply keep the animals alive, not so they can grow. Only a small portion of those calories go into the animals meat-eaters eat. This proves how a vegetarian lifestyle and a meat-eater lifestyle differ the animals.

After all of that, there’s the last point, exhibit C: the truth about eating meat. When comparing our body structures to carnivores and herbivores, we are more like the herbivore. In other words, our bodies aren’t designed especially to eat meat. Then there’s the ever popular question: Why do we eat meat, anyway? We are conditioned to eat meat. That’s where the meat-eaters come in. Some meat-eaters say, “In the wild, animals kill each other. It’s nature.” On the contradictory side, we’re NOT in the wild! We don’t even NEED a diet with meat. Vegetarian diets ALL have protein. In fact, with a vegetarian diet, you get protein from bread, beans, cereal, nuts, peanut butter, tofu, and much more. Wait, there’s more! Vegetarians also get the same amount of calcium, iron, and B12 as meat-eaters. So, don’t listen to those people who say vegetarianism is unhealthy, THEY’RE WRONG!

I will admit that this persuasive was written by me, a vegetarian. It’s important to me that people REALLY know what vegetarianism is. Vegetarianism isn’t as weird as everybody thinks it is. Many people do contradict the ways of vegetarians, but only because they’re not fully aware. So next time you hear someone trash-talking a vegetarian, you don’t need to pay attention to them. They’re just the wanderers from outside the crowd.