According to the Population Reference Bureau, 840 million
people around the world, including 200 million children, go
hungry every day partly because 40 percent of the world’s
grain harvest is used to feed livestock, not people. Influenced
by factors ranging from health and economics to ethics and
religion, millions of people all over the world are turning
to a vegetarian diet. In the United States, 10 million people
now consider themselves vegetarian.
Vegetarianism has become more popular recently as articles
about Mad Cow Disease and Foot and Mouth disease have focused
the public’s attention on beef and milk products as unsafe.
Vegetarianism has become so popular that airlines now offer
special vegetarian meals and several fast food companies,
including McDonald’s franchises in Europe and Asia, advertise
Veggie Burgers. Vegetarianism is not just one of the 1001
Hollywood diets that people try every year just to be fashionable
or because they are tired of consuming fast food. Vegetarianism
is a lifestyle, a philosophy that not only rejects meat, but
consciously chooses a way of living that is more in tune with
the natural world.
What factors make a vegetarian?
There are several types of vegetarians ranging from the strictest
group, the Vegans, to those who eat only fruit. Vegans don’t
eat meat of any kind, including fish and eggs, but eat other
dairy products. Lacto-Vegans are Vegetarians who also reject
eggs but eat dairy products such as milk or cheese. Ovolacto-Vegetarians
include both eggs and dairy products in their diet, but no
meat or fish.
Fruitarians are a special category of Vegetarians who eat
only raw fruits and raw vegetables and reject anything that
is cooked. Today with increasing evidence of diet’s critical
effect on good health and longevity, more and more people
question whether the human body is better suited to a vegetarian
diet or one that includes meat. Here two areas of research
should be considered – the anatomical structure of the human
body and the physical effects of meat consumption. Both actually
suggest that we are suited better to be vegetarians.
A meat eater can be recognized by the following characteristics:
claws, sharp teeth, no skin pores (perspires through tongue),
and strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest animal protein.
Meat-eating animals generally use their sharp front teeth
to tear flesh but not to chew it. They swallow their food
whole and therefore do not require molars.
Humans lack sharp teeth to tear flesh Also the human hand,
with its fingernails instead of claws, is better suited to
harvest fruits and vegetables than killing animals. When humans
do eat meat, their stomachs produce less than 1/20 the concentration
of hydrochloride acid found in carnivores. Another very interesting
aspect of the human body that shows we are better suited to
a vegetarian diet is the length our intestinal tract. Meat
eaters have short intestinal tracts. A carnivore’s meal is,
literally, so much dead meat. Dead meat rots quickly in the
body and must be quickly digested, as in a short intestinal
tract, if it is not to become toxic. According to a 1993 article
in the “Journal of Medicine” humans with their long intestinal
tract can carry meat within them for approximately two to
three days.
Two body organs adversely affected by toxins from decaying
meat are the kidneys which extract waste from the blood. These
are strained by the overload released when humans do eat meat.
Human kidneys have to work three times harder to digest meat
than to digest vegetables. Kidney activity decreases with
age, so continued meat-eating contributes to other age-related
health risks. Eating meat increases human risks of other illnesses.
Carnivores can metabolize almost unlimited amounts of cholesterol
and animal fats without negative effects. Not so herbivores.
Or humans. The human body tends to accumulate fat deposits
on the inner walls of the arteries, producing a condition
medically known as arteriosclerosis, whereby the flow of the
blood towards the heart is blocked. This creates the potential
for heart diseases and heart attacks.
Heart disease is the most common disease in western society,
affecting mostly meat eaters. According to “Journal of Medicine”
article the average bone loss of female meat eaters at age
65 is 35 percent in comparison to 18 percent in female vegetarians
of the same age.
Vegetables have positive benefits in maintaining good health
and sometimes even curing illnesses. Vitamin C and glutathione,
an antioxidant, found in fruits and vegetables, have proved
effective in preventing even some forms of cancer: and general
of strengthening the immune system. We can realize these health
benefits simply by reducing our meat consumption by 10 percent,
with a corresponding increase in our vegetable consumption
And we could reduce human hunger.
If Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only
10 percent for one year, it would free at least 12 million
tons of grain for human consumption. That is enough to feed
60 million people. According to the Vegetarian Society of
New Jersey a total elimination of meat in Americans diets
could feed all of India’s.
