Is Vegetarianism Really In All of Life's Best Interests?

Question

Is it? Would it really be safe to assume that the world would be a better place if everyone ate nothing but plants? First of all, aren't plants technically living just as animals are? That's not really the point though. If everyone in the world were to eat plants and the like, the whole world would be wiped of its resources. A large numbers of animals would have nothing to eat and who knows what that would do to do our ecosystem?? Another interesting point is that research actually shows that there are more animals harmed in crop diets than in rumanent-pasture diets. I'm not advocating animals abuse, cause I'm directly against that. I'm saying that vegetarianism is not the answer, in my opinion. If anyone can prove me wrong (which is technically impossible since this is all opinion), please do.

Answer 1

No, moderation in all things and being true to your primate nature is best. The idea of vegetarianism is based is religious mythology, and as such, is a myth. Long live KFC and eggs and sugar and cheese and alcohol and coffee and trans-fats and hot dogs and monosodiumglutamates and (well, you get the idea)

Answer 2

Hmm, i don't see why it is impossible to prove you wrong. You have made a few claims which are totally inaccurate. If those claims are wrong, the opinion you conclude from them is wrong.

Your first major claim is that if humans only ate plants, edible plants would become extinct. However, what do you think farm animals eat? In the US, for example, farm animals consume well over half of all corn consumed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism . Now if those farm animals were not being raised, all that available food (or the fertile land if the food is unsuitable for humans) could be used to grow crops. In fact, since you only get 10% of the energy when you go from one food level to the next (for every 100 calories a pig eats, only about 10 calories are available to the predator of that pig) http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/onlcourse/chm110/outlines/foodenergy.html a vegetarian system would use plants more efficently than they are used now. If your concern is with the availability of plants, you should become a vegetarian because so many more plants than necessary are being consumed by farm animals. If humans ate them directly or used that land to farm other edibles, fewer plants would actually have to be used.

Your second major point is that more animals are actually harmed in crop diets than in pasture diets. I assume you mean the claim that more animals are killed by the harvesting equipment than by slaughterhouses. I have heard this claim before and it is not accurate. About 9 BILLION animals are slaughtered every year in the US. http://www.upc-online.org/slaughter/2000slaughter_stats.html The professor who came up with the idea that crop production is actually more harmful to animals estimated 1.8 billion animals are killed a year in the US by crop production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_eating_meat#Farming_plants_harms_animals If you just go by the numbers, and give this argument the benefit of every doubt, it would still seem that it is much better to kill 1.8 than 9 billion. Other problems with this claim are: like I said above many many crops go to feed animals, so to be fair the number of animals killed in producing the crops that feed animals should be added to the 9 billion; the animals killed by farm machinery likely have had healthy, happy lives, unlike the animals raised for slaughter; and finally that 1.8 billion should be taken as a criticism of the practices of the agriculture industry, not of vegetarianism itself.

If your opinion that vegetarianism is not the answer is based on those two claims, then, yes, your opinion is wrong. An opinion derived from innacurate facts can be proven wrong.

Answer 3

I am not a vegetarian, but I would have to say yes, vegetarianism is in our best interest, at least when it comes to the ability of the earth to sustain an expanding human population.
All life-sustaining energy comes from the sun. Trees and plants take the energy they capture from the sun and use photosynthesis so that it can be used. The animals that eat plants are consuming the left over energy from the photosynthesis in the most efficient means they can acquire it, since animals cannot photosynthesize. An animal that eats another animal is getting a smaller portion of the energy because less and less of it is available the further away from the original source (the sun) the consumer gets. Thus, the most efficient means of using the energy from the sun is to get it from the most direct sources--plants and trees. To help the earth sustain the greatest population, it would be in our best interest to get our energy the most efficient way--from plants and trees.

Answer 4

The points you made were not opinion. Plants are alive, but as far as we know are not self-aware. We would be able to grow plenty of plants for food if that was the only market. More animals wouldn't be hurt because people have vegetarian diets. That makes no sense.

Answer 5

The strangest bit of trivia floating around in my brain is something I read last year....people who do not consume meat are more likely to suffer from infestation of intestinal parasites. That little tidbit sure made me think. Elsewhere in the article it qualified the statement by saying that while a human host can pick up stages of tapeworms from eating meats not cooked properly, they are not likely to become a health risk if the person has adequate protein in their diet.


this is probably the only info I've ever seen that convinces me not to be a vegetarian (I was for many years)....ooh I have the heebeegeebees

Answer 6

My mom is a semi- vegetarian. She sparingly eats chicken and fish as well as eggs, yogurt and cheese, but no beef or pork products. However, while I don't consume a lot of red meat myself and find most pork products to be overly salty and disgusting, I don't believe that cutting meat out of your diet entirely is a good idea.

1) Think about people who are diabetic, specifically those with type 1 diabetes. They are more at risk for Microalbuminuria which is an indicator of subclinical cardiovascular disease, marker of vascular endothelial dysfunction and an important prognostic marker for kidney disease. By consuming fish type 1 diabetics significantly rduce the risk of Microalbuminuria. Also the American Association of Diabetes recommends the consumption of meat products for diabetics in general.

2) Now unless you are going to eat only plants taken expressly from your garden then I would suggest not going this route. Studies have show that many of the "healthy" veggie foods that are being marketed today contain the product MSG, clverely disguised of course as yeast extract. MSG, for those of you who don't know, is a chemical associated with reproductive disorders, migraine headaches, permanent damage to the endocrine system leading to obesity (which increases your risk of developing diabetes) and other serious disorders. That isn't to say however that all vegetarian food substitues contain yeast extract/MSG or that all yeast extracts contain MSG.

3) Infants whose mothers are strict vegetarians or vegans are at risk for health deficiencies due to strict vegetarianism. They are at risk of contracting rickets (though the risk is diminished provided they get the proper amount of exposure to sunlight), iron-deficiency anemia, macrocytic deficiency and emaciation or slowed growth.

4) So many of your vegetarian food substitues include soy or wheat product. I recently found out that my friend has had an allergy to gluten and soy for several years and not known it.

So with all these factors do you really think an all vegetarian diet is good for everyone? I'm not saying it's bad for everybody either. I think it really is a matter of choice. Although I will agree that too much land is given over to ranchers when their livestock isn't being used at a fast enough rate to justify the rate of deforestation to accomodate them.

Answer 7

i dont think its natural for humans to eat meat, altho i do it. i was in the meat biz for years in all phases, and i know what it takes to kill a cow or a hog. try and catch a chicken. i dont see how it was done in the beginning and how mankind acquired the taste for dead animals. you are right about 1 thing tho, weve screwed things up enough to where there would be a lack of vegetation for man and domesticated animals to co-exist. cattle and hogs are mostly kept in feed lots for most of their adult lives. there isnt enough grazing land to support them.

Answer 8

Hitler was a vegetarian. If the whole entire world was vegetarian, we would have a lot more genocides to put in the history books.

Answer 9

Domesticated animals are bred to die and be consumed. They have no other proper function. They do not exist and will not survive, in situ, in the wild.

Answer 10

It's also not as healthy to have a strictly vegetarian diet.