Project 2 Draft 2
Tommy Jimenez
Mat Wenzel
Project 2 Draft 2
18 July 2017
Save Yourself. Save the World. Go Vegetarian
Ever since I was a young child meat was a part of every meal. There wasn’t any ethical or moral question as to the treatment of animals or whether I was leaving a huge ecological footprint or because I was eating meat I was condemning the planet to global warming; it was just dinner or lunch “Garne y Arroz,” meat and rice.
I have long been a meat eater eighteen years to be exact and as a child being raised in a culture where meat was food, something to be consumed, I believed it to be true. Every meal had it: Spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and rice, pork chops, chicken cutlets, steamed beef, burgers, eggs and ham, salami sandwiches, and every Thursday salad but not just salad… Chicken Cesar Salad. I went years in complete blissful ignorance that the delicious meals I was partaking in meant the horrible and inhumane slaughter of billions of animals on some assembly line.
For this paper, I had to think long and hard about a community that I wanted to join but after going through a couple of topics there wasn’t any question, I would talk about the vegetarian community and making the transition. I have flirted with the idea of becoming a vegetarian for so many years now after being in the eighth grade and watching Food Inc. The film was an exploration of the meat industry and all the horrifying truths people tend to ignore. Now I’m not going write a review on the film but one scene that stuck with me was where cows were being loaded into some mechanism and an employee would shoot the cow in the head and the machine dropped the cow in the floor lifeless, where they were strung up on a hook and lifted in the air showering the floor with red rain. Now I’m no PETA freak but there is a sad truth that the majority of the meat we consume is done so by factory lines and slaughterhouses. I’ve never really been a big meat eater with the main source of my protein coming from chicken and never red meat. I haven’t eaten any red meat for a little over four years and I haven’t thought twice about it and the next step is becoming a vegetarian which I have been putting off for, say, the past four years. It’s been through this assignment and researching communities on vegetarianism that I’ve realized that the vegetarian community is huge and for me to narrow it down to abide the instructions of project two, I have been consulting new friends and old close friends finding out that a local vegetarian community can be this small group of friends in which we can help one another with useful information, tips for becoming a new vegetarian, recipes, and why they for so long have been leading this lifestyle and if this is what I want. For me wanting to become a vegetarian had a simple reason and that was the treatment of animals and the pains they endure. While interviewing Kaycee it was interesting to hear that her and I shared the same reason for wanting to pursue this lifestyle. Further inquiring I found out that what sparked Kaycee to make the transition was oddly familiar to mine with her seeing a PETA public service announcement aptly named If Slaughterhouses had Glass Walls. Having been so moved by this PSA Kaycee cut out meat from her diet cold turkey. Kaycee like many of us was accustomed to having meat regularly. It wasn’t until she became a vegetarian that she picked up all of her new diets. As she said, “I was a meat and potatoes kinda girl” every meal consisted of some sort a meat. This was hard on Kaycee physically causing her to lose ten pounds almost immediately and having been already underweight her family did not approve of the diet. With time Kaycee learned to implement different types of protein to evenly balance out her diet with eating peanut butter, darker leafy greens, and beans. Doing some research in the Vegetarian Times, I found an article speaking to why a plant based diet is good for you. One of the reason said that it keeps weight down and while that may be a great reason to go vegetarian this explains why Kaycee had a hard time with losing weight seeing as she was already underweight it took time to balance the diet and acclimate it to her. This gives me insight into how if I ever make the transition how ill approach cutting meat out of my diet because it’s a process and requires research and knowledge of your body. Having my main reason be to go vegetarian be for the animals I have slowed started seeing why so many vegetarians talk about the health benefits and that be the reason why they continue the lifestyle. A vegetarian diet is a rigorous one requiring you to be creative and your nutrition but the benefits are so plentiful. Blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease are the biggest killers and one sure fire way to reduce all those risks is by simply eating plants. (Vegetarian Times) Having a family background of diabetes with my seven-year-old cousin developing type two diabetes while as an infant I want to stay healthy and move my family in a better direction and be twice more likely not to develop diabetes than twice more likely. (Prevention)
Speaking to a member of the vegetarian community, a member of eight long years I have gained some really important knowledge on this lifestyle. I’ve heard the pros and cons with some of the pros being relative expense and in this case saving money and not having to buy a ten-dollar steak. (Kaycee.) One thing I found particularly interesting was that when asked if everyone should do this (Become a vegetarian), Kaycee denied vehemently claiming “…it’s not for everyone and there isn’t enough land to grow the plants everyone would need.” I did some research and found that in the world the large majority of the worlds arable land is used for pasture equating to the size of Africa, approximately thirty-three kilometers wide and that another large percentage that grows crops is exclusively for animal feed. (FAO) If everyone were to go vegetarian that would free up a lot of land and replace the land used for animals and well probably be enough to support everyone being a vegetarian. Going vegetarian can go leaps and bounds at helping the world environmentally, more than just freeing up arable land.
Pollution, climate change, and deforestation are huge environmental concerns that threaten sustainability to the earth. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations the major cause of CO2 levels rising is because of deforestation of carbon dioxide absorbing trees being cut down for livestock. Cows and other animals have an effect on the world environment by producing large amounts of methane a greenhouse gas capable of warming the earth and responsible for fifth-teen percent of the world greenhouse emissions when combined with CO2 lost from deforested trees. (EPA). To be put in perspective in accordance with the EPA transportation is responsible for less than that with fourteen percet. With land and other resources like water the earth needs a solution and vegetarianism may very well be the best solution. In their article, “Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Various Dietary Patterns Combined with Different Food Production Systems” authors Baroni, Cenci, Tettamanti, and Berati held an experiment to view the different ecological impact of certain diets including one of an omnivore, vegetarian, and vegan. They made sure that all three of the eating habits were nutritionally equal and found that overwhelmingly transitioning to vegetarian and vegan diets are more environmentally sustainable using less land and less fresh water when compared to the water usage for animal feed. It’s safe to say that the world can sustainably grow enough crops to support everyone being vegetarian proving Kaycee to be wrong and even would even help with climate change probably being a future endeavor.
Works Cited
"3 Things that Happen when You Stop Eating Meat." Prevention 67.10 (2015): 24. Print.
"8 Reasons Why a Plant-Based Diet is Good for You." Vegetarian Times42.8 (2016): 26. Print.
Baroni, L., et al. "Evaluating the Environmental Impact of various Dietary Patterns Combined
with Different Food Production Systems." European journal of clinical nutrition 61.2 (2007): 279-86. Print.
"Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 13 Apr.
2017. Web. 18 July 2017. <https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data>.
"Tracking Climate Change through Livestock." Animal Production and Health. Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 14 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 July 2017. <http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/resources/en/publications/tackling_climate_change/index.htm>.