The Many Benefits of Being a Vegetarian

The benefits of being a vegetarian are two-fold. Actually they’re a-lot-more-fold but I’m gonna stick to the main two for now. If you’re new to vegetarianism, or just recently considering moving in that direction here are some things to think about.

Improve Your Health

First and foremost, all jokes aside your health is of vital importance. Without your health who cares about the other benefits of life let alone the benefits of being a vegetarian? Eating a diet of mostly plant based foods and several animal proteins like eggs and milk will enhance your energy, detoxify your body and make you feel a zest for life again. Also, next time you go to the doctor you’ll pass all the tests with flying colors.

The list of health benefits due to maintaining a vegetarian diet is longer than Rapunzel's hair. To name a few though:

  • Eating mostly plants reduces your chance of getting heart disease, high cholesterol and many different types of cancer.
  • You’ll be able to drop dress sizes and keep the weight off. Vegetarians are reported to have lower BMI’s and a higher level of maintaining a healthy body weight throughout their lives.
  • It’s a positive double whammy in the fight for your health because not only are you not consuming all the processed chemicals, additives and saturated fats found in meats and packaged foods, you’re replacing those bad things with very good things.
  • The increased fiber intake reduces you chance of colon cancer.
  • Increased antioxidant rich produce boosts your bodies disease fighting mechanisms.
  • You will be eating more beans and leafy greens which are high in calcium to keep your bones strong.
  • If you’ve stopped eating at the top of the food chain (aka animals), then you’ve cut out a serious bio-magnified load of chemicals, hormones and pesticides.
  • In addition, your hair and nails will be stronger, your skin will glow and you’ll likely live 3-8 years longer than your meat-eating pals.

With all those benefits on your team who wouldn’t want to be a vegetarian?!

Lower Your Food Costs and Be Nicer to the Earth

If you’re still not convinced, let me add to the growing benefits of being a vegetarian list a little more:

  • You know all that chicken, fish, and beef you buy at the grocery store? That accounts for between 10%-30% of your total grocery bill. If you stop buying it you’ll save thousands of dollars every year. Meat, especially the good kinds like grass-fed, organic, hormone free are pricey items. But when you switch to beans and veggies you’ll cut your spending significantly.
  • Just like all the Miss America’s out there you can help stop world hunger. U.S. livestock eats 5 times as much grain as the entirety of the American population. If we quit force feeding animals unnatural diets to fatten them up for slaughter, we could actually feed more of the world’s growing population.
  • You won’t be harming mother nature! Well, at least not as much. Another one of the many benefits of being a vegetarian is reducing pollution. Factory farms, which is where almost all meat comes from, are responsible for polluting a lot of the worlds soil and water.

    All the extra animals, packed into one plot of land produce a lot of extra manure. The animal waste has high amounts of nitrogen and other things which cause a lot of environmental damage. I know not everyone is interested in repeating science fairs and chemistry tests so I’ll spare you the super-technical details. But I will put it this way: over 175,000 miles of river and stream water is polluted from factory farms alone.

  • If the scientific facts don’t pull at your heart strings maybe this does: Bambi, Bessy and Wilber aren’t treated the way they deserve. Farmed animals are not protected from cruelty under the law the way other animals and pets are. Too many of them are getting treated inhumanely. By not purchasing meat anymore you have stopped your indirect financial support of these practices.

There are many other benefits of being a vegetarian. We barely skimmed the surface here but I hope it’s enough to get your noodle ticking and consider cutting back on eating all that meat. Whether it’s for your health, your wallet or your concern for our planet one thing is for sure: it feels good to be a vegetarian!

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