Vegetarian Beliefs

This is a piece on the reasons why vegetarians become vegetarians and their belief in doing so. It is my own personal opinion on the reasons.

Many people nowadays are aware of the increasing difficulty of producing enough food to serve the world's population. We see examples of it all the time on television - poor starving people in countries in the Third World. It hits some people and they feel that they should do something. Becoming a vegetarian doesn't directly affect people who are starving and hungry. Instead it helps overall. It eases the pressure that there exists on the land. for that is part of the problem that enough food isn't being produced - there is too much pressure on land. But think about this, one quarter of the world's surface is given over to grazing over 1.25 billion cattle. Grazing is thought to be the best use for the land but that isn't so. If other sources like trees were used on this land it would help greatly. Timber, fuel and food like nuts and fruits could be got form the land. This would also prevent desertification. This is caused by clearing forests for grazing, overgrazing, overcultivating land to feed fat animals and people and using poor irrigation techniques. Grazing this many cattle and using up so much land may have it's advantages because it provides us with some sources of food like milk and cheese. But is it really worth all this when a vegan requires only one eighth of the land needed to feed a meat eater and a vegetarian requires half the amount of land needed to feed a meat eater.

More and more people nowadays are becoming more aware of cruelty to animals. There is more publicity now for cruelty to animals. People are starting to take a bigger interest in it. After hearing some of the atrocities that these animals have to go through to reach our dinner plate is horrific! Not only do they get killed but they suffer a lot preceding that. Take turkeys for example. The big companies that produce your turkey for you for Christmas dinner keep sometimes over one thousand turkeys in a shed that is far too small for them. These turkeys have been bred to be heavier than they should be. They are crowded in there and some of them suffer from leg deformations due to their weight,. They also attack each other and have to have their beaks cut off so they don't hurt or kill each other. Then when it does come to their time to be killed they are hung upside down by their feet on a conveyor belt while they move along towards where the place where they get stunned. But some of them don't even get stunned properly - their wings may hit the bath and not their head because they need to dip their heads in the bath in order to get stunned. Then they go on to get their necks slit - some of them are alive when this is done and others don't have it done properly to them - so suffer all the more. Then to insure that the turkeys keep breeding the female turkeys are kept separated and are artificially inseminated using a special device. The sperm has been received from the turkey by using masturbation. It's these sort of inhumane and barbaric acts that make people become vegetarians.

Another reason why people become vegetarians because it's being realised that a vegetarian diet is good for you. Some think that our digestive systems were originally made for only fruit and plants and that is what they are are better adapted to. Others believe that it is just healthier because in this modern time everybody is warning us to reduce our fat intake and the vegetarian diet contains little fat. It is one of the diets closest to the recommendations made by health specialists and governments - closer than a meat - eating diet.. It has been proven that by having a vegetarian diet you can reduce your risk or certain cancers by up to forty percent and also heart disease by thirty percent. It It is also proven that you can lower your cholesterol levels, restrict your chance of suffering from kidney and gall stones, diet - related diabetes and high blood - pressure. In these days when cancer is such a common killer vegetarianism seems like a sensible, wise, healthy and interesting option.

Parts of the second paragraph have been adapted from a Vegan Society leaflet.