Being a vegetarian isn’t just about eating planters of vegetables and salad! Stop with these jokes of the year 2000! Here are 5 valid reasons for successfully embarking on this dietary transition.
It is advisable to return first of all to the foundations of vegetarianism first, let’s explain what this food mode is and see what are its different forms.
A vegetarian is a human who does not eat meat, poultry, fish, or any other animal. For him it is a question of not eating no product requiring death or exploitation of an animal. But the standard vegetarian generally eats animal by-products like eggs, dairy products and cheese, but also honey.
About the veganism, not only are the followers of veganism vegetarians, but in addition they do not consume any animal by-products. Their diet is therefore exclusively vegetable. No eggs, no milk and… no honey either.
This food mode is adopted by vegan, but this term implies a philosophical dimension, even militant which goes beyond nutrition, we will therefore focus here on vegetarianism.
1. Vegetable planters are good for your health
Vegetarian diets offer many nutritional benefits including blood lipid levels (including cholesterol) much lower than the average of the population as well as the magnesium, potassium, folate (B9), antioxidants, vitamin C and B many higher.
Vegetarians suffer much less from overweight, obesity and type II diabetes. They are a lot less hypertensive and develop a lot fewer cancers of the colon. According to an English study, a vegetarian would cost 3 times less for Social Security During his life.
Moreover, following the scandal of the Mad Cow, collective contamination by salmonella as well as pollution by dioxide of the meadows where animals graze, the scandal of beef steaks containing horse, it is legitimate for the meat consumer to have some hesitation in continuing to eat meat.
When he discovers that industrial farms use antibiotics on a massive scale, even synthetic hormones and that one commonly finds in butcher’s meat (80% from cows of reformed) significant quantities of estrogenic residues, it is normal that the consumer that is mistrustful and therefore, seduced by vegetarianism (and vegetable planters :)).
2. It’s good for the environment
From the publication of the already old book by Frances MOORE LAFFE “Without meat and without regrets” (Editons l’Etincelle 1976) a certain number of ecological arguments were proposed to support the vegetarian thesis.
For this author, massive meat consumption as practiced in Western societies is an important factor in food resource imbalance of the planet. He said that 45 years ago!
In America, over 60% of grain production is used as animal feed. The livestock industry thus gobbles up most of the vegetable proteins because the animal is a very bad “machine” for transforming the vegetable into proteins.
On hectare we only produce 25kg of meat protein while on the same area we could produce 500kg of soy protein.
This is why the practice of vegetarianism at the global level would make it possible to produce enough feed 2-3 times more people. On 100 Ha of land, 64% of which is devoted to breeding, we only manage to feed 257 people whereas if the same area is 100% devoted to vegetable crops, we could feed it 625.
L’impact intensive farming on the environment is catastrophic. It results in a huge waste of water because the number of liters of water to produce a kilo of food is very variable. It takes 900 liters to produce a kilo of wheat, 1400 liters for corn, 2000 for rice and soybeans, but it takes 100,000 liters to produce 1kg of beef, ie 50 times more.
Factory farming also leads to catastrophic pollution. In Brittany, one of the French regions where intensive pig, cattle and poultry farming is practiced, more than 50% of the land area receives more nitrogen than it can absorb.
In addition, 1/3 of water catchments are unsuitable for consumption because they greatly exceed the European drinking standards which are 50 mg of nitrate per liter.
3. Vegetarianism is good for morals!
“We must never consider a living being as a means of satisfying our desires” said Kant. How indeed can we accept to justify the existence of animals by the sole interest of feeding on them?
Unfortunately, industrial breeders do not consider animals that like pure commodity totally obscuring the reality of their suffering.
All animals reared in battery are invariably housed in the same boat and in particular pigs and chickens whose treatments are revolting as regards their breeding as well as their transport and their slaughter.
The animal suffering and the barbaric conditions in which they are massacred can only inspire us with deep repulsion.
How could those who remain insensitive to animal suffering be affected by human misery?
4. It’s good for global solidarity
Solidarity with the rest of the globe, and in particular the Third World, is a strong argument among vegetarians. Because meat production prevents cereal production. An animal that consumes 7 vegetable calories (cereals) only restores one in animal form (meat).
However, it should be noted that nearly 2/3 of the cereals produced in the world are used to feed the cattle of the rich countries and that paradoxically, the countries of the Third World contribute more and more to ensure the production (soya, peanuts, cassava…) to the detriment of their own needs food.
The serious problem of the global food shortage that we deplore today and that ofincrease disproportionate to their price on international markets is certainly one of the direct causes of these incoherent agricultural policies favoring the production of cereals for animal feed in wealthy countries.
Changing the way we consume protein by becoming vegetarian is therefore a act of solidarity with regard to the underprivileged peoples.
5. Are vegetarians thinner than others?
Despite our beliefs, there is no correlation between the size of a population and the importance of its average daily energy intake.
It is actually the nature of the food which is indirectly responsible of weight gain or not. Again, there is a benefit to adding the vegetable planters
Taking into account its nutritional specificity, its physicochemical characteristics, the food will induce a chain reaction of metabolic mechanisms leading in fine, either to the burning of the energy of the meal, or to its storage, at least in part.
We are too used to believing that the meat mainly and the Pisces are the only valid sources of protein.
Excellent proteins are found in animal by-products, eggs and the dairy products, but also and above all in plants. And contrary to some beliefs vegetable proteins are as nutritionally good as animal protein.
Animal proteins contain all 9 amino acids and in particular the egg. So when you are vegetarian ova-lacto, that is to say someone who eats neither meat nor fish but continues to consume eggs and cheese, the problem of protein intake does not arise.
And become a vegetarian, ovo-lacto-vegetarian, even flexitarian … or at least vegetate your diet much more it is to pay much more attention to what we consume and in this, it is a health advantage, and also slimming!