Archive for January, 2007
What are the health benefits of being vegetarian or vegan?
I know there are lots of reasons to cut meat out of your diet. The one I personally find the most reasonable is for your health. I have met several people who have become vegetarian or vegan for "health reasons".
So I'm wondering, what are these health benefits? Is meat not healthy? Why does cutting meat from your diet make you a healthier person?
Just because someone says they are vegetarian or vegan doesn't necessarily mean that they are healthier. It depends on the protein sources they are eating in place of meat. You can do it right, but most people dont, and I have found that veg eat way too much sugar.
Key reasons: benefit to the planet, it takes a lot less resources to grow vegetables for food consumption than it takes to grow cows (also responsible for disappearing rain forests), plus, it doesn't support factory farming practices which are not only horribly cruel to animals in that they have horrible living conditions, but also, this type of farming is environmentally destructive.
I was veg for about 6 years. Health benefits (if you do it right with nutrition focus), you can find a better pH balance. Most people in our culture are too acidic, meats, dairy, animal products, and even beans and brown rice are all high acidity pathways in metabolizing in the body. Because the body needs to maintain a balance, it draws Calcium from the bones to counter the acid levels of metabolizing these proteins. A main cause for Osteoporosis is this high acidity level (if it were just about getting calcium, US would not have the highest rates of milk consumption and osteoporosis).
America would do better to eat less meat, and more fruits and vegetables. We need only a fraction of the protein we are getting daily.