For Your Health
People become vegetarians for a number of very different reasons. This can range from wanting to save animal lives, to improving environmental impact, and simply wanting to maintain a better diet. Vegetarian diets have been proven to be quite healthy. In particular, the surplus of fresh produce (when compared to average meat diets) helps to reduce the risk of several diseases.
Among the top causes of death among Americans is heart disease. Heavy meat diets can exacerbate a heart condition. On average, vegetarians enjoy a fifty percent lower chance of heart disease. Their food reduces saturated fats in the body, as well as cholesterol levels.
Studies show that areas that predominantly consume vegetarian foods tend to have lower instances of breast cancer. When compared to meat-eaters, vegetarians show a forty percent reduction rate of breast cancer. Other studies have also shown a trend among vegetarians towards reduced risks of colon cancer.
People who regularly consume large amounts of meat are approximately eighty percent more likely to develop diabetes in comparison to vegetarians. Vegetarians not only have a lower risk of diabetes. If someone who already has diabetes turns to a vegetarian diet, they require less medication to control the illness.
Many vegetarians naturally tend to have a lower body mass than meat-eaters. This is especially true for vegetarians with low to moderate fat diets. Maintaining a consistent vegetarian diet is a much healthier option than crash dieting. Of course, like all healthy lifestyles, it should be paired with regular exercise.
Calcium Absorption and Protein
Among all creatures, it is only humans that consume milk from other animals. Humans are able to obtain nutrition from sources other than cow's milk. Apart from this, processed cow milk tends to have numerous artificial substances, such as toxins and hormones. There are several calcium-rich plants such as kale and beans that can be consumed instead.
For Your Environment
By consuming foods on the lowest level on the food chain, vegetarians play an active role in environmental protection. One of the biggest impacts is that tremendous amounts of energy are saved in the processing of vegetarian diets. The main environmental aspects that benefit are the water, soil, and air. Today vegetarians only account for a very marginal amount of the population. If vegetarianism was practiced on a mass scale, we would soon see noticeable benefits to the environment.
Many areas have witnessed a drought at some point or another. Processing meat requires large amounts of water. By comparison, processing the same amount of fresh vegetables and fruit only uses a fraction. Lower numbers of cattle also mean less water pollution. By switching to a vegetarian diet, people can help save water and ensure that it is used more efficiently.
In large open areas, grazing cattle contribute significantly to soil erosion when they walk about. This is worsened when they pull plants out of the ground to eat. The exposed soil is then dried out, damaging surrounding plants. Over time, this can make it harder and harder for new vegetation to grow.
The surplus of animals also creates huge amounts of fertilizer. In turn, this requires chemical sprays to keep bugs away. Chemical sprays can seep into the air, as well as the ground. When this occurs, they damage plants and affect the air quality. Vegetarianism helps to keep the air and other environmental aspects from obtaining additional harm.
For Your Wildlife
Saving animals is one of the most common reasons that vegetarians use in order to explain their diets. There are two levels of saving animals. The first includes various types of farm animals. The second more important category includes wildlife. Many species of wildlife are killed in the process of rearing and processing livestock for food. Often this happens because some types of wild animals may be natural predators, or simply because their habitats lie in the way of farmable land. By killing off the animals and wrecking their habitats, this can eventually lead to endangerment and extinction.