Reasons to give up meat

For many people, giving up meat is a real challenge. And while some, unable to bear it, retreat from their principles, others continue to stand their ground with faith in their own strength. Awareness of the harm that meat can bring plays an important role in this. To make sure of everything personally, you should read the top reasons for rejecting it.

Main reasons

The reasons for refusing meat food in fact are countless. Nevertheless, 5 main ones stand out conditionally among them. Those that force a person to take a fresh look at a vegetarian diet and think about the need to switch to it. It:

1. 1 religious reasons;
2. 2 physiological;
3. 3 ethical;
4. 4 ecological;
5. 5 personal.

Religious reasons

From year to year, supporters of a vegetarian diet turn to different religions to find an answer to the question of how they really feel about meat-eating, but so far in vain. The fact is that almost all religions have different views on vegetarianism and most often leave it to each individual person to make the final decision. Nevertheless, scientists did not calm down on this, and after carrying out colossal research work, they noticed one pattern: the older the religion, the more important it is for it to refuse meat food. Judge for yourself: the oldest scriptures of the Veda, whose age is estimated at millennia (they first appeared about 7 thousand years ago), claim that animals have a soul and no one has the right to kill them. Supporters of Judaism and Hinduism, which have existed for 4 thousand years and 2,5 thousand years, respectively, adhere to the same opinion, although disputes around Judaism and its true position are still ongoing. In turn, Christianity reminds of the need to refuse animal food, however, it does not insist on it.

True, do not forget about Christian denominations that recommend fasting. In addition, it is believed that the early Christians did not eat meat, as Stephen Rosen talks about in his book Vegetarianism in World Religions. And even if today it is difficult to judge the reliability of this information, a quote from the book of Genesis testifies in its favor: “Behold, I have given you every herb that sows a seed, which is on all the earth, and every tree that has a tree fruit that sows a seed; this will be food for you. “

Physiological

Meat eaters claim that man is omnivorous and this is one of their main arguments. However, vegetarians immediately ask them to pay attention to the following factors:

• teeth – ours are intended rather for chewing food, while the teeth of a predator – in order to preliminarily tear it;
• intestines – in predators it is shorter in order to prevent the decay of meat decay products in the body and remove them as soon as possible;
• gastric juice – in predators it is more concentrated, thanks to which they are able to digest even bones.

Ethical

They emerge from documentaries that fully depict the process of raising animals and birds, the conditions in which it happens, as well as killing them for the next piece of meat. This sight looks shocking, nevertheless, many people are forced to rethink life values ​​and change their position in order to finally absolve themselves of responsibility for the slightest involvement in this.

Environmental

Believe it or not, animal husbandry does have a negative impact on the environment and jeopardize the safety of the Earth. UN experts have repeatedly stated this, focusing their attention on the need to reduce the amount of meat and dairy food consumption or to refuse it altogether. And they have good reasons for that:

• Behind every serving of beef or chicken fillet on our plate is an incredibly wasteful farming system. It pollutes the oceans, rivers and seas, as well as the air, carries out deforestation, which significantly affects climate change, and is completely dependent on oil and coal.
• According to rough estimates, today mankind eats almost 230 tons of animals per year. And this is 2 times more than 30 years ago. Most often, pigs, sheep, chickens and cows are eaten. Needless to say, all of them, on the one hand, require a huge amount of water and feed necessary for their cultivation, and on the other, accordingly, they leave behind waste products that emit methane and greenhouse gases. And even though the controversy over the harm that cattle breeding inflicts on the environment is still ongoing, in 2006 UN experts calculated that the rate of climate change for a piece of meat is 18%, which is significantly higher than the indicator of harm caused by cars, airplanes and other types of transport combined … A few years later, the authors of the report “The Long Shadow of Cattle Breeding” recounted everything, increasing the figure to 51%. In doing so, they took into account the gases emitted from the manure and the fuel used to transport meat. And also electricity and gas, which are spent on their processing and preparation, feed and water on which they are grown. All this made it possible to prove that cattle breeding, and, therefore, meat-eating, leads to overheating of the planet and seriously threatens its safety.
• The next reason is waste of land. A vegetarian family needs only 0,4 hectares of land for happiness and for growing vegetables, while 1 meat eater who eats almost 270 kg of meat per year – 20 times more. Accordingly, more meat-eaters – more land. Perhaps this is why almost a third of the ice-free surface of the Earth is occupied by animal husbandry or growing food for it. And all would be fine, only animals are unprofitable converters of food into meat. Judge for yourself: to get 1 kg of chicken meat, you need to spend 3,4 kg of grain for them, for 1 kg of pork – 8,4 kg of feed, etc.
• Water consumption. Each chicken fillet eaten is the “drunk” water that the chicken needed to live and grow. John Robbins, a vegetarian writer, calculated that to grow 0,5 kg of potatoes, rice, wheat and corn, respectively, 27 liters, 104 liters, 49 liters, 76 liters of water are needed, while the production of 0,5 kg of beef – 9 000 liters of water, and 1 liter of milk – 1000 liters of water.
• Deforestation. Agribusiness has been destroying rainforests for 30 years, not for timber, but to free up land that can be used for raising livestock. Authors of the article “What feeds our food?” it was calculated that an area of ​​6 million hectares of forest per year is used for agriculture. And the same number of peat bogs and swamps are turning into fields for growing forage crops for animals.
• Poisoning the Earth. Waste products of animals and birds are discharged into sedimentation tanks with a volume of up to 182 million liters. And all would be fine, only they themselves often leak or overflow, poisoning the earth, underground waters and rivers with nitrates, phosphorus and nitrogen.
• Pollution of the oceans. Annually up to 20 thousand sq. km of the sea at the mouth of the Mississippi River is turning into a “dead zone” due to overflowing animal and poultry waste. This leads to algal blooms, which take all the oxygen from the water and the death of many inhabitants of the underwater kingdom. Interestingly, in the area from the Scandinavian Fjords to the South China Sea, scientists have counted almost 400 dead zones. Moreover, the size of some of them exceeded 70 thousand square meters. km.
• Air pollution. We all know that living next to a large farm is simply unbearable. This is due to the terrible smells that hover around her. In fact, they affect not only people, but also the atmosphere, as greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide are released into it. As a result, all this leads to ozone pollution and the appearance of acid rain. The latter are the result of an increase in the level of ammonia, two thirds of which, by the way, is produced by animals.
• Increased risk of disease. In the waste products of animals, there are a huge number of pathogenic bacteria, such as E. coli, enterobacteria, cryptosporidium, etc. And worst of all, they can be transmitted to humans through contact with water or manure. In addition, due to the huge amount of antibiotics used in livestock and poultry farming to increase the growth rate of living creatures, the growth rate of resistant bacteria is increasing, which complicates the process of treating people.
• Oil consumption. All Western livestock production is dependent on oil, so when the price peaked in 2008, there were food riots in 23 countries around the world. Moreover, the process of production, processing and sale of meat also depends on electricity, the lion’s share of which is spent on the needs of animal husbandry.

Personal reasons

Everyone has their own, but, according to statistics, many people refuse meat because of its high cost and quality. Moreover, when entering a regular butcher shop, one can only be surprised at the smells that soar in it, which, of course, cannot be said about any fruit kiosk. Complicating the situation is that even cooling and freezing meat does not protect against pathogenic bacteria, but only slows down the decay processes.

Interestingly, recent surveys have shown that more and more people are now deliberately reducing the amount of meat they eat, or eating it only from time to time. And who knows whether the above reasons or other, but no less compelling, prompted them to do so.

Top 7 good reasons to give up meat

1. 1 Meat depresses sexuality. And these are not empty words, but the results of research published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Among other things, the article mentioned that people who eat meat suffer from premature aging of organs, which occurs due to the fact that the body needs more strength and energy to digest meat products.
2. 2 Causes disease. There was an article in The British Journal of Cancer that claimed meat eaters were 12% more likely to develop cancer. In addition, due to the pesticides used in farming, people suffer from miscarriages and nervous disorders.
3. 3 Promotes the spread of the bacteria Helicobacter pylori, which at best can lead to, and at worst – to the development of Guillain-Barré syndrome, expressed in autonomic disorders and. And the best confirmation of this is the results of research conducted in 1997 by scientists from the University of Minnesota. They took chicken fillets from different supermarkets for analysis, and in 79% of them they identified Helicobacter pylori. But the worst thing is that in every fifth infected fillet, it mutated into an antibiotic-resistant form.
4. 4 Causes drowsiness, lethargy and fatigue as a result of a deficiency of enzymes necessary for the digestion of food and overloading the digestive organs.
5. 5 Promotes the appearance of a constant feeling of hunger due to acidification of the internal environment of the body and a decrease in the amount of nitrogen that the body receives from the air due to nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
6. 6 Poisons the body with putrefactive bacteria, purine bases.
7. 7 Eating meat kills love for our smaller brothers.

Perhaps, the list of reasons for refusing meat can be continued forever, especially since it is replenished almost every day thanks to new and new research by scientists. But in order to save yourself from the need to look for them, it is enough to remember the words of Jesus: “Do not eat animal flesh, otherwise you will be like wild beasts.”