Living a life without meat is healthier, kinder to the environment and more
humane than a diet with meat. I should know, I was shortening my life span by eating so
much meat. I was literally killing myself, one bite at a time. After my diagnoses with
high cholesterol I started researching ways to begin a healthier lifestyle. It was then that I
found out about the many negative effects farmed animals have on the environment.
Sufficed to say, I was ultimately mortified when I read about the cruel and inhumane
lives these poor animals live until their death.
I know that we as humans have eaten meat for thousands of years, but thousands
of years ago we had to eat anything we could in order to survive! Some may think we
cannot attain the right amount of nutrients and vitamins that a meat diet can provide. I
would concur with this statement; if we do not monitor our diet correctly we run the risk
of anemia, or lack of protein and the B-12 vitamin we need. However, according to many
doctors around the world (including my own) a vegetarian die...
McBroom, Patricia, “Meat-eating Was Essential for Human Evolution.” UC Berkeley. University of California at Berkeley. CA. Jun 14, 1999. Web. 28 Apr.
Meriam-Webster Dictionary defines food as “material taken into an organism and used for growth, repair, and vital processes as a source of energy” (Mish). Food is simple, yet humans have made it very complex. In the United States of America, food has become more of a hobby than a nutritional need. Every family gathering, holiday, and birthday celebration contains food of some sort. Types of food are customary at different times, like birthday cake at a birthday party, or stuffing at Thanksgiving. There is an entire holiday dedicated to dressing up and giving children candy (Halloween). One of the popular holiday foods is meat. An average of 10 million land animals (not including fish or other water dwelling organisms) are brutally slaughtered
could not develop without it. Some believe humans consumption of meat is unnatural, so it must be wrong. However, since 1960, there has been evidence of primates in the wild eating meat, and they do it to gain certain advantages over one another.
If you are abreast with the history, some thousands of years ago, during the Paleolithic Age, cavemen had very few options for the foods that they could eat. As a result, their food intake was usually just restricted to fish, vegetables, nuts and the like.
Roughly over 20% of 121,000 middle-aged men and women died over a period of 28 years during a study of red meat effects on the body (Harding). Beef, pork, lamb, mutton, and veal are all red meats. While these meats are rich in vitamins and protein, they can lose much of their benefits through cooking and processing. Limiting how much red meat an individual eats could add years to their life by avoiding heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes. By simply replacing one meal weekly, that consists of red meat, for a meal that is poultry, fish, nuts, or vegetable based could reduce the risk of dying in middle aged years by 7 to 9% (Harding).
Society has recently become increasingly obsessed with health and nutrition, as more and more individuals realize that they can dramatically change their quality of life by adjusting their diet and lifestyle. One way that people have tried to pursue a healthier lifestyle, is by removing meat and other animal products from their diets, whether they become a strict vegetarian who eats no animal byproducts, or a lacto-ovo vegetarian who still eats eggs and dairy. As with any other lifestyle, research is always being done to see if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, and so far, the results of vegetarian diets have been encouraging. Vegetarian diets have proven to decrease the risk of heart disease, cancer, obesity, and many other health problems. With a little planning and dedication, a vegetarian diet will be healthier and more beneficial than a traditional diet
Before we had agriculture to plant crops and care for animals, people were hunter-gatherers. They ate meat that they could catch and kill and they gathered whatever vegetation they could safely eat.
What the American culture is used to is eating three meals with a few snacks in between a day, and two out of the three meals usually involve eating meat. Most people don’t realize the risks of eating meat. Today’s medical experts say that avoiding meat helps you avoid saturated fat. They have found out from studies that women who eat meat daily have a fifty percent greater risk of developing heart disease than vegetarian women and a sixty-eight percent greater risk in men (staff writer). People may not know about serious diseases meat can obtain such as, mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease. In the September 1999 issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases, approximately 76 million food borne illnesses- resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths occur in the United States each year from improperly cooked or diseased meat (Licher). That is a lot! You can also get salmonella poisoning from meat. People think that the problems come from eating red meat and are opting for fish over steak, but new evidence proves that fish can cause health problems too, risks that can’t be cooked away. This is a growing problem called histamine poisoning (Peck). Children are learning at a younger age that they don’t like meat, maybe because they don’t like the taste, or maybe it’s because they have a fear of eating their favorite cartoon or movie hero. For example, the pig from the movie “babe”.
Due to the use of Anthropophagy for leisure purposes, it is evident that cannibalism is a topic of much interest among humans, aside from its label as a social taboo. Technically, a human’s eating of another human has a chemical effect on the blood. Too much human meat causes a build up of vitamin A and amino acids such as homocysteine in the bloodstream, which could cause congenital defects in future offspring. However, if human organs which are rich in B vitamins and folic acid are eaten along with the human meat, homocysteine is not able to metabolize in the bloodstream. This means that cannibalism could hypothetically be the basis of a healthy diet (“Natural Food”).
...e. "A Hypothesis to Explain the Role of Meat-Eating in Human Evolution." Www.cnr.berkely.edu. 4 Feb. 2001. Web. .
Meat is a coroner stone to the majority of American’s diets. I would venture to say the majority of American’s eat meat for their three meals a day. Eating meat isn’t all bad, it actually brings a good source of protein to one’s diet, in a moderate amount. In 2012 a study was done and found that the U.S. total meat consumption was 52.1 billion pounds. That comes out to be 270.7 pounds per person. We still eat more meat than just about any other country, besides Luxembourg (A Nation of Meat Eaters). Eating red meat is bad for humans because of the negative health effects, the environmental issues it causes, and the inhumane treatment of the animals.
For several years the issue of eating meat has been a great concern to all types of people all over the world. In many different societies controversy has began to arise over the morality of eating meat from animals. A lot of the reasons for not eating meat have to deal with religious affiliations, personal health, animal rights, and concern about the environment. Vegetarians have a greater way of expressing meats negative effects on the human body whereas meat eaters have close to no evidence of meat eating being a positive effect on the human body. Being a vegetarian is more beneficial for human beings because of health reasons, environmental issues, and animal rights.
However, many people still refuse to be a vegetarian for different reasons. Some people prefer the taste of meat, and some people believe that they are born to eat meat. Despite that about 2 billion people in the world live basically on the meat diet, around 4 billion people live mainly on a plant-based diet because of food shortage(Pimentel ＆ Pimentel, 2003, pp660S). As everyone knows, the number of population is growing. For example, the total U.S. population doubled in the previous 60 years, and it may double again in the next 70 years (Pimentel ＆ Pimentel, 2003, pp660S). People won’t have enough meat to eat in the future. On the other hand, a well-planned vegetarian diet offers many health benefits. Therefore, people should become vegetarian because it benefits to huma...
Having a healthy dietary method can reduce the chances of receiving many health diseases. These health diseases include obesity, heart disease, and cancer. By consuming certain foods and nutrients in one’s diet the risk factors for these health diseases can be reduced. A healthy dietary method that is beneficial to reducing and/or improving these health diseases is the vegetarian diet. The vegetarian diet follows a dietary pattern that is characterized by the consumption of plant-like foods and the avoidance of flesh foods (meat, poultry, and fish). The foods in this diet provide the body with many essential nutrients. This is why many health benefits have been associated with the vegetarian diet. This dietary method has been linked to reducing the causes of obesity, heart disease, and cancer.
The problem is that many people do not realize the enormous effect their eating habits have on their bodies.