The Baking Queen

Not long ago, a well-known star made the headlines when he made an environmental plea for everyone to adopt a low fat vegetarian diet. He was not even advocating a total abstinence from meat – just one day a week. Many of the newspapers that covered the story were unkind. They laughed and called him an old hippy who didn’t know what he was talking about.

None of the media that covered the story did it in any depth. If they had taken him a little more seriously and considered the facts, they would have understood just how much sense he made. If you look at the issue square in the eye from a vegetarian’s standpoint, you will see why they so passionately believe in it.

You might wonder what giving up meat has to do with the environment. There are whole books devoted to facts about the meat processing industry. One of the points made is that raising beef is a terribly inefficient use of arable land. The same amount of land that it takes to satisfy America’s voracious appetite for meat could be put to far better use producing soy products, for instance.

If you have a very strong stomach, pay a visit to a meat processing plant. These are all located far away from large populations for a reason. They smell so bad, they literally make people sick. Those who are unfortunate enough to have to work in the plants or live nearby them have a higher than average incidence of a number of health complaints.

If you do manage to get inside and see what beef processing involves, you literally may end up having nightmares. There is nothing remotely humane about the mass slaughter of these animals. OK, technically this is not an environmental concern, but it is certainly an ethical one. Those pretty packages of beef you see on the supermarket shelf won’t look the same to you after you have seen how they were made to get that way. You won’t be laughing about a vegetarian diet any more, that’s for sure!

The beef industry goes to great lengths to promote the health benefits of meat eating. Aside from protein, there is very little to substantiate their claim that meat is an essential part of one’s diet. An argument might be made that an occasional small serving of meat may be in order, but so many eat phenomenal amounts of meat and it is a major contributor to numerous serious health problems, including heart disease and cancer.

Ask anyone who has given a vegetarian diet a chance and most of them will tell you that they are happier for it. Many never eat meat again. Almost no one who has been a vegetarian ever goes back to eating large amounts of meat. No matter what the meat industry tries to tell us to the contrary, a vegetarian diet is a healthy diet.

Interestingly, even the Catholic Church recommends that and most major religions advocate abstinence from meat from time to time, if not permanently. Hindus and many Buddhists have been vegetarians for millennia and it has worked for them. In fact, it seems like the only ones who advocate a high meat diet are the cattle industry lobbyists!

The next time a superstar advocates a vegetarian diet meal plan, don’t sneer. They are trying to do the world a service with the vegetarian weight loss diet.

Popularity: unranked [?]