It’s National Vegetarian Week in the UK and World Vegetarian Week everywhere else!
Coming on the heels of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day, it’s the perfect week to ditch the animal products, start to get healthier and likely drop a few unwanted pounds in the process.
Check out our top 15 reasons why you should start with World Vegetarian Week and go veg for a lifetime!
1.It’s better for your ticker.- Studies have shown that a vegetarian diet is the best possible for your heart health. According to Vegan Health, vegetarians have a whopping 34% lower risk of dying from heart disease than meat eaters. Worth the switch? Definitely!
2. It’s better for your blood sugar. - Surprisingly to some, the benefits of ditching meat go beyond improved statistics for heart disease: Reuters has said that a meat-free diet offers a lower risk of developing diabetes! Even the Mayo Clinic has acknowledged that a vegetarian or vegan diet can improve the quality of life for those who already have diabetes, helping to improve blood sugar control and insulin response.
3. You’ll reduce your risk of developing cancer. - Turns out, not only do animal proteins actually aid the growth of various cancers, but plant-based proteins can actually reduce the risk of developing certain cancers in the first place! In fact, lifestyle choices like going veg (NOT GENETICS!) are the most important in determining your risk of disease! Reason enough? Make the switch today!
4. It’ll make your bones healthier. - Contrary to what we’ve always been told, milk is not the best way to make our bones strong. In fact, dairy milk can actually cause osteoporosis by leaching vital nutrients from our bones. Not only that, there are actually delicious plant-based sources of calcium such as sea vegetables, spinach and many, many more.
5. You might just lose some weight! - Vegans are also at a much lower risk of obesity than non-vegans. Did you know that Tofurkey makes a pretty awesome vegan “pepperoni” pizza? You won’t sacrifice taste but you might just sacrifice some unwanted pounds in time for bikini season!
6. You can live in harmony with your ethical beliefs. - How many times have you looked at your dog and wanted to kill him and eat him? I’m guessing in the realm of never. There’s actually no real reason why we eat some animals and don’t eat our best canine or feline friends. Remember, chickens don’t come from the freezer section - they were once living, breathing animals that had to be killed for our plates! All animals deserve to be treated with love, compassion and respect and going veg helps you live out your ethical beliefs!
7. It’s better for the planet. - The United Nations has said that factory farming is one of the biggest threats to the environment we face today. In fact, eating meat is worse than driving a car! So for now, keep your beloved Toyota Corolla and pick up some Lightlife Smart Dogs instead!
8. It’ll save you from nasty contaminated meat products. - Remember the recent meat recall? Well, that wasn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last! What about vegetable contaminations, you might ask? In fact, most contaminated vegetable outbreaks are usually related to run-off from factory farming of animals, so it’s actually bad for everyone! Ditch the meat now and tell the industry you’d like to keep that crap out of your body!
9. It’ll make your skin glow. - Little known fact: when you drop animal products, your skin improves tremendously! Speaking from personal experience, I now never worry about acne, discolorations, or any other nasty skin condition and I always have that “Veggie Glow.” Want it, too? Go meat-free!
10. Who wants to be eating slime or glue? - There have been a lot of nasty meat “products” in the news these days, including the disgusting pink slime and it’s closely related disgusting cousin “meat glue.” Don’t want that junk in your body? Go veg, now!
11. You’ll be in good company. - Carrie Underwood, Bill Clinton, Ellen Degeneres and Alicia Silverstone are all examples of the great company you’ll have when you choose to stop eating meat. In fact, the number of vegans has doubled in the last three years alone! Make some friends – go veg!
12. It’s good for the kids. - Worried about what’ll happen to the kids when you decide to start living a meat-free lifestyle? Don’t be – a recent study has found vegetarianism is beneficial for children as well as adults. So stop worrying, you’ll be giving your kids the best possible chance for a healthful life!
13. Pregnant? Good – meat is awful for the baby! - Did you know eating meat can lead to a higher stress environment for your fetus? In fact, eating vegetarian during your pregnancy can lower your child’s risk of heart disease and set them on their way to a healthful life!
14. You’ll start to explore delicious new foods and recipes! - There’s nothing better than exploring delicious plant-based recipes that are new to you, taste delicious, and really, really good for your waistline. Start here at Susan Voisin’s FatFreeVegan.com, and then run on over to Lindsay Nixon’s Happy Herbivore for some of the best vegan recipes out there!
15….Including sweets! – Ever heard of Sweet & Sara marshmallows? Or Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups? If not, you’re missing out and going vegan will open a whole new world of delicious, cruelty-free and naughty sweets for you to try!
Make the switch today, go veg! Check out some of our tips for how to ease the transition!
Anjali is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of Intellectualyst, as well as a vegan and lawyer in NYC. Read about her life adventures on her blog, Anjalism.com. She loves trying new vegan recipes and meeting new people! Email her at anjali@intellectualyst.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter today!
View all posts by Anjali Sareen ->
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I just check this article out thanks to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling Superstar, X-Division Champion, and Vegetarian, Austin Aries. It is a nice article and great facts.
Hello, I was linked to your article by a friend asking opinions on the piece and the event. I am not vegetarian, but I do believe that as a society, particularly in North America, we need to eat a far more balanced diet.
That said, I found the content of the article one sided, and in some cases fairly disturbing. I’ve added a few counter points to the items in the article below.
Before I get to the rest, I would like to point out one thing, your point #6 is offensive. To presume to interpret not only one other person’s beliefs, values and life experiences, but ALL your reader’s beliefs, values and life experience reeks of conceit. I believe in having enough respect for the animal to use the entire animal. I believe in local, sustainable farming.
You assume that your readers are ignorant of where their food comes from, and while that may be true for some, it is not a universal state. Have you ever visited a well run, sustainable, local farm?
In the end, what your are saying is that everyone else can live in harmony with YOUR ethical beliefs.
8 – This is only true if the entire world makes the same choice, and butchers off the millions of cattle and other animals that are producing the waste which as you pointed out is the source of “most contaminated vegetable outbreaks”. Otherwise you are also exposed to the contamination (on products that are more often eaten raw).
10 – If you don’t want junk in your body, don’t put junk in your body. Regardless of whether you eat meat or not, get to know the people who supply your food, learn where it comes from and how it is produced. I don’t want to eat fruits and vegetables that have been so genetically altered that they are unrecognizable anymore than I want to eat the crap produced by fast food joints.
11 – To be blunt, who cares. Everyone makes life choices, those of celebrities don’t matter more to me than anyone else.
12 – Only if you are careful to make the diet balanced and complete. A vegetarian or vegan diet is not necessarily a healthy diet, it CAN be. I’ll accept the argument that it is easier to form a healthy diet based entirely or at least primarily on vegetarian products. A healthy diet requires educating oneself to one’s dietary needs and eating nutrient rich foods that meet those needs without having an excess or lack of certain nutrients. To imply that becoming a vegetarian is a free pass to a healthy diet is, at best, a half truth.
14 – how does limiting your choices give you the option of exploring more things? if you want to try a dish that is vegan/vegetarian you can, even if you also eat meat.
Thanks for your comments.
As far as #6, I generally believe that killing an animal isn’t treating it with respect…even if you use “the entire animal.” Similarly, I think most people generally want to avoid harm to other beings when possible, which is the basis of not eating animals. Have YOU ever visited a well run, sustainable, local farm? Here’s news: the animal still dies at the end of the day. I highly doubt you are the one actually killing the animal and therefore, you have no control over whether you are “using the entire animal.” Further, the vast majority of animals don’t come from “well run, sustainable, local farms.” They come from factory farms, plain and simple. So even if you are eating meat from exclusively local farms (which I highly doubt), you are still killing an animal for your plate.
8. Even if the entire world went vegetarian, I’m not naive enough to think it would happen overnight. That said, the idea is that consumer dollars speak and telling the meat industry you don’t want meat is important. You seem to be quite a defeatist – if we all subscribed to the philosophy that we were just one person so nothing could get accomplished, nothing would get accomplished.
10. The idea was avoiding the crap that goes in meat. A lot of crap goes into meat. A lot more crap than goes into vegetables. Organic, chemical-free is obviously the preferable choice, but either way, “meat glue” and “pink slime” were exclusive to meat, which was my point.
11. Maybe you don’t care but to some, the idea of community is an important one, and it can’t be denied that vegetarianism comes with a community, if you let it. As you noted above, “To presume to interpret not only one other person’s beliefs, values and life experiences, but ALL [...] beliefs, values and life experience reeks of conceit” – I presume you understand that just because it doesn’t matter to you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to anyone else.
12. The study came to the conclusion that vegetarianism is beneficial, which is essentially what I said. It is better for kids not to eat animal products that can lead to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. It should be balanced: all diets should be balanced, but why are you worried about vegetarians and vegans? Why not the meat eaters? Most Americans eat white bread and empty crap calories, so if your concern is genuine, it should be directed at the entire population, not just vegetarians. (http://intellectualyst.com/worried-about-my-vegan-diet-how-about-yours-345/) I don’t think animal products can play a role in a balanced and healthy diet and many people (physicians and nutritionists included: http://www.thechinastudy.com/, http://www.pcrm.org/) agree.
14. The fact is, many people get stuck in the same patterns. If you eat meat, it’s easy to eat meat night after night and never explore the vegetable options. In fact, Americans aren’t great at eating vegetables as it is with the Standard American Diet fairly common.: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070319/americans-eating-fewer-vegetables. You can explore options even while eating meat, but it’s much more likely you will explore those options when you drop it completely.
Anjali Sareen – you are a smart and brave person!