About being a vegetarian

Before reading this, please take 3 minutes and see this video, if you haven’t by now:
www.meatrix1.com


Defining to you: Why am I eating meat?
Try to define first to yourself, that what are your reasons for eating meat products, and why have you not started a vegetarian diet yet.
What are the values that you protect by eating meat? What do you stand for by eating meat? What do you teach to your (future) children by eating eat?

Would it be ever possible for you to become a vegetarian, and what could be the possible reasons for it?

Why am I vegetarian?
I want to be aware of my short life while I am living it. To be aware, I need to be mindful. Concerning food, I want to be mindful of the products I buy, being mindful of what I eat and drink. This is why I am trying to buy good products, eat less artificial products, I am trying to become as vegan as possible, and I have now trying to cut drastically on my alcohol consumption. I don’t smoke, and I use medicine only when it is absolutely necessary (which is barely ever). I want to be good to myself, and threat myself well by consuming good and healthy products. Ecological and organic products might cost more, but by eating less but better (which is enough) and by not using so much money for alcohol, makes also the living costs bearable.

I try to make this a short text, and therefore might cut some important topics. In the following text I name some single reasons for this, not all of them. You can always find more information about being a vegetarian and vegan from different internet sites.

The Danish vegetarian society writes in their brochure the main reasons why many people become vegetarian:

Why to be vegetarian?
• Stop bad treatment against animals
• Protect environment
• Improve your health
• Have a sustainable way of life

You would like all these issues to be true in your life as well, right?

Let’s find out more:

• When you are eating meat, an animal has to die for your meal. This has always been an important factor for me for not eating meat. I find it really difficult thought, that thousands and millions of animals are dying each day and week because of human consumption. I like animals, and don’t wish them to die because of a steak which could have been substituted by a delicious veggie-burger.
No animal has to die or suffer, when I am a vegetarian.

• The animals are suffering the way they are grown up and killed. Nobody wants to die, and the animals are sensing the same fear in the atmosphere as anybody would do, when there is this sense that one is going to die the next minute. It is an atmosphere of horror, and this essence of horror is transmitting through the meat to the person who eats it. The conditions, in which the animals are living and dying, are horrible. As a vegetarian, I want to promote animal rights.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes the following:

”We Are What We Eat”
Our anger, our frustration, our despair, have much to do with our body and the food we eat. We must work out a strategy of eating, of consuming to protect ourselves from anger and violence. Eating is an aspect of civilization. The way we grow our food, the kind of food we eat, and the way we eat it has much to do with civilization because the choices we make can bring about peace and relieve suffering.

The food we eat can play a very important role in our anger. Our food may contain anger. When we eat flesh of an animal with mad cow disease, anger is there in the meat. But we must also look at the other kinds of food we eat. When we eat an egg or a chicken, we know that the egg or chicken can also contain a lot of anger. We are eating anger, and therefore we express anger.

Nowadays, chickens are raised in large-scale modern farms where they cannot walk, run, or seek food in the soil. They are fed solely by humans. They are kept in small cages and cannot move at all. Day and night they have to stand. Imagine that you have no right to walk or to run. Imagine that you have to stay day and night at the same place. You would become mad. So the chickens become mad.

In order for the chickens to produce more eggs, the farmers create artificial days and nights. They use indoor lighting to create shorter day and shorter night so that the chickens believe that the 24 h have passed, and they produce more eggs. There is a lot of anger, a lot of frustration and much suffering in the chickens. They express their anger and frustration by attacking the chickens next to them. They use their beaks to peck and wound each others. They cause each others to bleed, to suffer, and to die. That is why farmers now cut the beaks off all the chickens, to prevent them from attacking each other out of frustration.

So when you eat the flesh or egg of such a chicken, you are eating anger and frustration. So be aware. Be careful what you eat. If you eat anger, you will become and express anger. If you eat despair, you will express despair. If you eat frustration, you will express frustration. ”

You can read more in Thich Nhat Hanh’s books, to get a more whole idea of what he is trying to say about eating being connected with everything else, about how to become more mindful in general. I believe this is true in my life:

I am living happier and more mindful life, when I am a vegetarian.

What about meat from ecological farming?
The ecological and some traditional small farms have better conditions for the animals than in the large meat factory farms, but often these farms are also lacking much of being animal-friendly places. Also in ecological farms, the animals are often stressed out and suffer pain. All the animals, are they growing in the ecological farms or not, are suffering from the animal transportation and slaughtering. The animal still has to die.


• Meat production is directly linked with several environmental problems, such as water contamination, cutting of the rainforest, erosion, desertification, and amount of CO2 gasses. The meat production is much heavier on the Earth than vegetable production. The meat production uses much more energy. Your environmental footstep is therefore much smaller if you are a vegetarian and considerably smaller if you are a vegan.


Have you thought that being vegetarian is not healthy, because you are missing some certain minerals or proteins?
The most typical question that vegetarians face, is the question that aren’t we missing some important proteins? Well, there are actually several positive health related issues to become vegetarian. The vegetarian diet includes more fibers, vitamins, and minerals than compared to for example a typical Danish diet. Vegetarians are seldom suffering from the diseases typical for meat-eaters, such as over-weight, heart diseases, high blood pressure, type II diabetes, diet-based cancers, and so on.

The vegetarians have even higher life expectancy.

There is much literature and advices available, that how you can make sure that you get all the proteins and minerals that you need as a vegetarian. The calcium you can get e.g. from nuts, cabbages, almonds, sesame seads etc. D-vitamin you get from forest mushrooms, soya drinks etc. You can learn more about these things.
I have been vegetarian now about 13 years, and I have never had any kind of illness related to the fact that I am a vegetarian.

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I have noticed that recently I am getting more and more amazed that there are still so many people who eat meat. It has become almost absurd idea for me to put dead flesh of another living being to my mouth, and to see how common this is in our culture. The amount of meat packed in plastic in the supermarket is difficult for me to see. How much happier I would be to watch the same amount of living animals, than to watch all that meat packed in those plastic containers. The whole meat industry is so industrialized, so inhuman, and so aggressive.

Maybe you are explaining your meat-eating habits by your background, culture and the way you grew up by eating meat? Now is now, and today it is you yourself, who makes these decisions in your life. Your background doesn’t make these decisions, but you have the autonomy to eat exactly the way you consciously decide.

Could you try it first for a couple of weeks, and see how you like it, how your mind and body feels afterwards? It doesn’t matter in which point you are in your life at the moment, you can become vegetarian in any moment.

Why not trying some good vegetarian recipes at home, and treating you in a good vegetarian restaurant on town?

Some movies to look (here also links to trailers):
-Food, Inc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3Iv
-Fast Food Nation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc_z623Wsro
-Temple Grandin. (not so much about food, but anyway interesting story connected with meat production) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHxxOKnH9YE

Other recommendations:
• Be in favor of locally produced products
• Eat according to the seasons (use seasonal products)
• Take your own shopping bad to the shop, also a durable net bag for vegetables etc.
• Get information about what is the philosophy behind dumpster-divers. I have great respect for them, even though I must admit that I have never tried it myself.


If you decide to become a vegetarian, you have my full support 