when you were young you were the king of carrot flowers

WARNING: the following video is graphic

I've been vegetarian for about a year and a half now and it's one of the most essential parts of my life. I had always wanted to cut meat out of my diet but when I was younger my mom didn't know what to cook me for dinners so I had to wait till I was out of the house to make this choice. hah. Anyway, the main reasons for going vegetarian...

your health

Our nations top three killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes.  It has been scientifically proven that vegetarians have "lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer".

• vegetarians have a 20% lower rate of mortality from all causes
• meat is full of traces of antibiotics, hormones, toxins, etc
• obesity and its related diseases are very very rare in vegetarians

the environment

Clear cutting in forests in order to make room for cattle grazing at our current rate will leave us with NO AMERICAN FORESTS in 50 years.  The burning of these forests releases 50-100,000,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere per year.  (Along with hazardous CO2 released by burning oil and petrol in factories and abattoirs associated with meat and dairy production).  There is much more energy in grain (what is fed to the animals) than energy consumed by the humans that eat these animals.  In fact, 20 vegetarians could live off the land required for one meat eater.

• if all Americans became vegetarian, it would free enough grain to feed 600,000,000 people (the population of INDIA)
• the water used to produce 10 pounds of steak is equivalent to the average consumption of water for an entire household for an entire year

animals

Easy enough--put yourself in their shoes!! No matter your view on our neighbors and co-inhabitants of this planet, no living thing deserves to be treated with the indecency that an average cow or chicken is treated with every second of every day in America.  The video I posted above may be graphic but it proves the point and can hopefully give you a new perspective.

• each year 15,000,000,000 land animals are slaughtered for food
• unwanted male chicks (because they can't lay eggs) are gassed or pulped while their sisters go to the battery sheds
• cows would naturally live up to 20 years but are slaughtered after 5-7 years when their milk production begins to fall

Going vegetarian is a life choice and not as difficult as you may think.  Basically everywhere you go there is an option for you and hopefully all of your vegetarian friends :)

(specific info found on goveg.com and flex.com/~jai/articles/101.html)