<p>“Also, once I became a vegetarian, my diet gradually became more varied than it had been while I ate meat.”</p>
<p>I completely agree with Cynthia. I eat more vegetables and a much more varied diet now - lots of vegetables, legumes, and soy. Lunch today (just an example) was a veggie burger (Uno’s has good veggie burgers - esp. with the salsa), snow peas, squash, & zucchini. I would <strong>never</strong> have eaten that when I ate meat!</p>
<p>hmmm. didnt know UNO had veggie burgers in the first place… LOL!! shall try it out…</p>
<p>10% of all 18-35 year olds in the US are not vegetarians - I call BS on that one.</p>
<p>“I found that once I quit eating meat, mainly for animal rights reasons, more reasons to be vegetarian built up. Mainly, I felt much healthier. I also felt better about my environmental impact. I had planned to phase meat out, but ended up going cold turkey. Once I decided meat was bad, I just couldn’t eat it any more.”</p>
<p>CynthiaR, you put that so well!</p>
<p>Maize&Blue… look under what you put for “location”. That’s why you don’t believe it! Welcome to the real world! Be open minded. And chill… this is a thread for supporting vegetarians, not challenging them with BS.</p>
<p>Maize&Blue, 10% of all 18-35 year olds in the US ARE vegetarians. I think you got caught up with the negative there.</p>
<p>I don’t think he believes that either.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean the 99% thing literally. :-P</p>
<p>Still, even IF 10% are vegetarians (which I find very hard to believe), that’s still a small minority. You can’t expect 90% of the population to go our of its way cater to 10% of the population 100% of the time.</p>
<p>i’m vegetarian - been so since i was born. i do eat eggs, and milk, however (before anyone calls ‘fowl’ play on this one, it’s through religion, not so much due to peta websites, etc…).</p>
<p>it’s really not that difficult to be one as most places have veg foods. italian? most pastas, just leave out the meat. chinese? lots of veg chinese places. even if you don’t go to one, a decent amount of buddhists are vegetarian…the chef probably has experience in making something veg (usually it’s just a matter of leaving out the meat). indian? duh. even if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with only a roadside restraunt selling burgers, etc…get a grilled cheese sandwich with fries.</p>
<p>at home, we make many kinds of food - indian, chinese, thai, italian, spanish, mexican, and so on. you really dont have to branch out ethnically to keep things interesting, though. even if you eat meat, try it too (though i guess u can have carne asada then…)!</p>
<p>i’m not a fan of soy burgers/hotdogs/turkey, etc. they taste too much like plastic. what’s the point of having them?</p>
<p>anyhow, if you really are interested, give it a try [gradually]. if you start to have problems, back up a bit, until they dissapear, and try again. just remember, don’t push yourself, and if you can’t handle it for whatever reason…it’s not something you’ve commited yourself to.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I was actually referring to things like camps that I am stuck at. I don’t really expect people to cater to just me, but, for example, I was at a three week Gov. school last summer. About 150 kids, and at least 10 vegetarians I knew, probably many more. Every time we had a special meal, outside the college dining hall, they had absolutely nothing for us, and wouldn’t let us leave to find food elsewhere. If there is a large number of people trapped, options should be available. I don’t expect vegetarian fare at parties, my high school, friends’ houses, or most restaurants–but if I am stuck at a place that is supposed to provide food, and doesn’t, and won’t let me go find some elsewhere, well, I think I have a right to be miffed.</p>
<p>If you are planning to become a vegetarian for animal rights reasons, organic dairy products (and meat, for that matter) have certain restrictions that mean the animals have been treated semi-humanely.</p>
<p>those of you who are so strongly opposed to vegetarianism aren’t the first ones to come up with the “arguments” you so strongly assert on this thread. You will not believe how many counter-arguments to our lifestyle we, vegetarians, have heard on your part in our lives.</p>
<p>But, the interesting thing is how fascinating YOU find US. You see us so dedicated to something we believe in and you are incredulous… you don’t understand us because you don’t feel anything about animal rights (you don’t believe they exist), nor about health (you eat meat twice a day + you’re perfectly healthy = there’s nothing wrong with eating meat a lot).</p>
<p>In fact, I’m sure that if I gave you a zillion arguments + proof to substantiate these arguments (research, statistics, polls, etc) for why vegetarianism is a healthy lifestyle, you would be able to come up with the same amount of counter-arguments, no mater how banal.
I.e. argument- Salmonella is often present in chicken.
your answer- Provide evidence of widespread salmonella poisoning resulting from chicken consumption.
argument- PETA research has discovered…
your answer- propaganda!
argument- any article explaining the negative sides of meat-consumption (not related to PETA or any other pro-veg organization)
your answer- designed to make your stomach turn
you’re even prepared to reject the validity of statistics! </p>
<p>I don’t know why you do it. Do you like to debate abortion, same sex marriages and politics to the same extent? Are you just attracted to polarizing topics? Is that it? </p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I wish I could be as negative about vegetarianism as many of you on this board are. I wish I could go to sleep at night not caring. I wish I didn’t care less whether an animal died because of me, or not. I wish because it would make my life SO much easier. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, we each get to do what we think is best. You eat your meat as much as you want to and we don’t. You don’t care and we do. I can’t do a single thing about that and it makes me feel ****, to tell you the truth. </p>
<p>To those of you who absolutely can’t relate to vegetarianism, i can only put it this way: to me, it’s like having a friend who is being physically abused. You see your friend suffering, but no one else around you thinks there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, people around you abuse her, too. There’s no law against it, so there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it except not abuse her yourself. However, you still end up feeling horrible when people (i.e. you), who are pro-abusing your friend, try and convince you that you are crazy for caring about her.
And please don’t reply trying to explain how killing animals isn’t comparable to physical abuse. I already understand you think so.</p>
<p>But, anyway, I apologize for this entry being so long, but I had to get it off my chest so that some of you hopefully understood where most vegetarians come from.</p>
<p>This is a comment based off of karthikkito’s post. “chinese? lots of veg chinese places. even if you don’t go to one, a decent amount of buddhists are vegetarian…the chef probably has experience in making something veg (usually it’s just a matter of leaving out the meat).”</p>
<p>You need to ask if they use a fish sauce or shrimp paste, etc when cooking the food. Some restaurants use this in everything they make. Just a suggestion for next time you go out for oriental food. :)</p>
<p>crimson4me, thank you for that!</p>
<p>Being a vegetarian isn’t an attack on the meat eaters of the world, but a life style choice. We don’t berate your choices, so don’t berate ours. </p>
<p>Vegetarianism is no different from religion, marriage, state of residency or where you go to college-- one chooses it, and they have their reasons. We have ours and we know how to defend them. So relax already. It’s not like your theoretical arguments are going to change our beliefs.</p>
<p>vegetarianism is very different. unless its religiously motivated, why resist ur proper place in the food chain? life as we know it wouldn’t exist if predators didn’t exist. we’ve got canine teeth for a reason.</p>
<p>sure i understand the animal rights arguments, i boycott veal myself. but mother nature isnt merciful, and beef is quite good.</p>
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<p>crimson4me:</p>
<p>Those three points you reiterated in your last post have absolutely no substance. That’s why they were shot down. Now let me reiterate:</p>
<p>If salmonella is such a big problem, then how come more people aren’t getting sick? I don’t care about your little theories proposed by the sources you linked. If there is no factual basis that salmonella contamination is posing a health risk, then you have absolutely no argument.</p>
<p>Second point…PETA is an extreme organization. They have very little credibility. Regarding a PETA report as fact would be the equivalent of regarding a report from a major meat processing corporation as fact. I’m sure I could find plenty of those for you. And since PETA is obviously unbiased, according to you, then those studies done by meat manufacturers must be as well, right?</p>
<p>And lastly…that other article you linked has nothing to do with the title of the article, which was something like “Eating chicken is bad for your health.” The article described some unsanitary conditions in chicken processing plants. However, if no one is really getting sick from chicken, then you can’t say it is unhealthy. I’m sorry, but we live in the real world here. Just because someone creates a theory about how chicken is unhealthy, it doesn’t actually mean it is unhealthy unless there is some factual basis to support that claim.</p>
<p>I’m not “against vegetarianism.” If you don’t like meat, then that’s fine, but I don’t see why you need to make that an issue by labeling yourself a vegetarian. Like I said before, I don’t like seafood of any kind, but if someone asks me, I just say I don’t like seafood. I don’t go on to complain about the inhumane conditions of fish and how fish is supposedly unhealthy. I can also understand being a vegetarian for most religious and many cultural reasons.</p>
<p>“Do you like to debate abortion, same sex marriages and politics to the same extent? Are you just attracted to polarizing topics? Is that it?”</p>
<p>Yes, actually I do debate pretty much everything to the same extent. Why? Because I like to know why people think the way they do because it can help to increase my own knowledge and shape my own point of view. That, and debating is fun. ;)</p>
<p>“vegetarianism is very different. unless its religiously motivated, why resist ur proper place in the food chain? life as we know it wouldn’t exist if predators didn’t exist. we’ve got canine teeth for a reason.”</p>
<p>Well said. :)</p>
<p>And one more thing, crimson4me. When you see a tiger take down an antelope, or a dog kill a rabbit, or whatever killing whatever on the Discovery channel, I’m sure you feel at least a tinge of pity for the prey. Sure, I do too. However, at the same time, you need to think “that’s nature.” Tigers use their claws and teeth to get their meat. We use our intellect to raise animals in great enough quantities to feed the human population. Different manner, same end result – meat in your stomach.</p>
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<p>Vegetarianism, whatever its motivations, is a life style choice… I don’t understand why it irks you so. I don’t believe we’re endangering the ecology of the planet by abstaining from meat consumption. Atleast we didn’t give the world chicken flu!</p>
<p>I have a little vegetarian anecdote! :</p>
<p>I became a vegetarian when I was ten for many of the same ethical reasons that people have already raised here. I just found it to be a barbaric practice to eat animals. I travel a lot, and I visited many thrid world countries, and whenever my family would try to eat out, I’d have to explain very clearly what a vegetarian is. To these people, this was the craziest thing they had ever heard. I did a lot of thinking about this, and a lot of veggie soul searching (!) and I realized something that I still believe is very true. Vegetarianism is a mostly western phenomenon (excluding India and a few other countries that practice for mainly religious, not ethical purposes). Why is vegatarian practiced by mostly white middle and upper class people? I think it has to do with our culture’s distance from nature. For me, a girl growing up on Park avenue, farms, cows, pigs, whatever, were a whole world away. I think that a lot of us have a very romanticized image of animals and nature as a whole, whereas when I visited countries with poorer populations, these people lived around animals, they worked on farms, and they had no illusions about nature. Nature is, well, nature. Animals are not like some bambi orgasmic super dream, animals eat other animals, they kill other animals. This is the way the world works. These people were very connected to their nature and so they didnt have a warped idea about cruelty of eating other aniamls. For them, they see the circle of life day by day, and there is nothing startling and alarming about that.After musing for a very long time and grappling with my ideas, I decided to defect from vegetarianism after four years. HOWEVER, I only eat organic food, because the food industry, especially for beef, is not only cruel, but well, gross. </p>
<p>Just my two cents.</p>
<p>Here’s some information that’s hard to claim as being propaganda. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.eatright.org/Public/GovernmentAffairs/92_17084.cfm[/url]”>http://www.eatright.org/Public/GovernmentAffairs/92_17084.cfm</a></p>
<p>When did I say vegetarianism was unhealthy?</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean eating meat is nutritionally unhealthy either. Like everything else, it must be in moderation.</p>
<p>Oh and according to that article: </p>
<p>“In 2000, approximately 2.5% of the US adult population (4.8 million people) consistently followed a vegetarian diet and affirmed that they never ate meat, fish, or poultry”</p>
<p>So I actually wasn’t too far off in saying 99% of Americans eat meat. ;)</p>