A vegetarian shuns eating meat, but will eat eggs, fish and dairy. A vegan vegetarian (pronounced “vee-gan”) avoids eating all animal or fish products.
There are many sound nutritional and environmental reasons to eat a plant-based diet. The human digestive system is created to easily digest plant food, but not flesh, which makes us herbivores by nature. Consider that the hydrochloric acid in the human stomach is only 1/20th the strength of that found in carnivores. Carnivores require the stronger acid to process the flesh they consume. Human hydrochloric acid is designed for plant food, which means it can’t fully process flesh. Furthermore, our intestines are 12 times the length of our body, whereas carnivores have intestines three times the length of their body. This is important because once a carnivore digests its prey, the remains needs to be quickly flushed through to prevent putrification (rotting). (So that's why a dog poops right after he eats!) On the other hand, when humans eat meat, the combination of weak stomach acid and long intestines means putrification occurs throughout the digestive system, which can, and often does, lead to disease. Plant food, however, requires the longer journey to properly break down the fats, proteins, complex carbohydrates and nutrients.
The meat and dairy industry would have us believe that we can’t get all our nutrients from just plant foods. This is simply ridiculous—our bodies are designed for plant food! Eating avariety of organic plant food grown in optimum soil conditions gives us all the vitamins, minerals, fats, essential fatty acids and protein we need.
Non-organic meat may contain any number of contaminants, including multiple disease-causing organisms, high concentrations of pesticides and herbicides, tranquilizers, artificial growth hormones, food colorings, preservatives and the rendered parts of other diseased or dying animals. These contaminants contribute to a wide variety of diseases found in Americans today. And meat and dairy in general contribute to weight gain.
Raising animals for food takes a huge toll on our water supply, as the following stunning statistics will illustrate. Over half of all the water used in the United States is for animal production. The water required to produce five one-pound hamburgers is equivalent to the amount of water a single-person household will use in a year! On the other hand, it only takes 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. (Wow!)
To make matters worse, the animal industry in the United States produces 130 times more excrement than humans do, and is the single largest source of water pollution in the U.S. What’s worse is that virtually none of this excrement gets treated, and instead winds up polluting our water supply—decimating fish populations and aquatic life in the process.
Raising animals for food is also the single greatest reason for deforestation throughout our planet. For every acre of American forest that is cleared to make room for parking lots, roads, houses, shopping centers, etc., seven acres of forest is converted into land for grazing livestock and/or growing livestock feed. Every single day—worldwide—tropical rainforest about the size of New York City is decimated…forever. Most fast food chains get their beef from Central America, and the Rainforest Action Network (http://www.ran.org/) estimates that about 55 square feet of tropical rainforest is required to produce just one hamburger.
Our demand for meat is so great that virtually all animals used for food today are grown in “factory farms.” The problem with factory farms is that the animals—pigs and chickens—live in highly confined cages their entire lives, or, in the case of cows, live in cramped feedlots during the later part of their lives. They are fed scandalously substandard “food” such as their own excrement or rendered animals (including diseased and dying animals as well as deceased pets from veterinarians), and often go insane from their confinement. Sickness is so rampant that animals must be given an assortment of drugs and antibiotics just to keep them alive long enough to get them to the slaughterhouse. Since profit is based on the weight of the animal, all sorts of cruel and unusual practices are used to make the animals gain weight unnaturally. Any person with ordinary sensibilities would find the conditions of any factory farm heartbreakingly cruel and abhorrent. I think so, poor babies :o( But, out of sight, out of mind—you would never know by looking at the cheerful packaging in which the dead animals are presented.
Makes you really think about what you eat... I felt great the 2 weeks before my fast eating vegetarian and then vegan. I thought how there are WAY many more types and varieties of vegetables/legumes than "edible" animals on this planet, so there are WAY more combinations of foods to enjoy! I never felt like I was missing anything by not eating meat. (Ask me about Whole Foods and Heinens' no meat chicken! It's delicious!)
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