Why People Become Vegetarians

Why people become vegetarians? According to the growing population on Earth, there are approximately 17 million vegetarians in the world. Vegetarians are people who have decided to say “NO” to products of an animal origin. Today vegetarianism also is considered a slimming diet. But in origin, about a thousand years ago, the idea of animal origin product refusal had more religious character. The first vegetarians were ancient religion and the philosophical representatives, which supported ideas of clarification and self-improvement of the person (Buddhists, yogis etc.). What has been changed now? Why people do become vegetarians? The first and the most popular reason is pity for animals and unwillingness to be involved in their sufferings. For example, Lev Tolstoi (famous Russian writer) became the convinced vegetarian when he had seen tears in the eyes of a calf, who was led to die in a slaughter-house. The second reason is that consuming meat is harmful to the human body. Some people and scientists consider that the humans are vegetarians by origin and it is very hard to digest meat or fish for their organisms. The long intestine is an evidence of impracticality of people’s bodies to process the meat. Meat stays in the digestive track for a long time, starting to decay, which allocates harmful toxins that poison us. The digestion of meat goes a different way in wild predator’s bodies. Their intestines are short, and during time of digestion meat doesn’t have time to start to decay. Some scientists and medical specialists challenge this theory, asserting that the digestive system of the person is able to process both vegetative and animal products. But nobody will argue that together with meat we consume antibiotics and hormones, which have been used to feed the majority of animals. We mustn’t forget about a shock dose of adrenaline whose emission is provoked by fear and suffering of an animal before their death. With a “fear” hormone, it connects the aggressive behavior of many convinced meat consumers. The third reason is that vegetarians look much younger and healthier than those who eat meat. The process of detoxification of an organism goes more intensively, and the person receives more vitamins if vegetables and fruit prevail in a diet. Refusing meat, vegetarians avoid the big doses of cholesterol, thereby protecting the heart and vessels from changes, and a body from overweight pounds. One more reason to be a vegetarian is a desire to lose weight. The vegetarian diet is considered today very fashionable. Instead of limiting itself in meal and to eat on schedule, it is enough to refuse high-calorific meat in favor of vegetables, fruit and cereals. Using this principle it is impossible to lose weight very fast but if we have managed to reach the desirable effect, it will be possible to keep off for a long time. Even after seeing the “Best speech you will ever hear” by Garry Yourofsky, who became a vegan after 25 years of meat consumption, we still have some questions to think about. Why we should stop to eat meat and become at least vegetarians? Can we consume meat and stay healthy? How much meat we can consume? Historically people always consumed meat as a source of proteins, amino acids and energy. “Paleontological evidence suggests that meat constituted a substantial proportion of the diet of even the earliest humans. Early hunter-gatherers depended on the organized hunting of large animals such as bison and deer.”(Wikipedia) In many countries people consume a lot of varieties of meat such as a horse, dog, cat, bear, moose etc. The others, in opposition have strong restrictions mainly because of religion or cultural traditions (probably as a result of early religious traditions). Even so, familiar beef meat or pig meat are forbidden, taboo in India, and Muslim counties. The main issue of meat consumption actually is not what kind of meat we consume, but how much we do. Meat consumption has constantly grown in the developed countries of the world and was slowly growing trends in such countries like India and China. This table shows the amount of consumed meat (kg/per person) a year: Country | 1961 | 1981 | 1991 | Canada | 81.7 | 100.3 | 94.8 | China | 3.8 | 15.0 | 27.9 | Denmark | 56.7 | 76.5 | 111.8 | France | 77.7 | 98.8 | 101.7 | German | 63.8 | 95.9 | 87.9 | India | 3.7 | 3.8 | 4.6 | Italy | 30.5 | 74.0 | 86.4 | New Zealand | 113.5 | 128.6 | 138.9 | Switzerland | 55.4 | 83.3 | 80.8 | United States | 89.2 | 108.0 | 114.4 |

The prompt growth of meat consumption in the world happened after 1991. So, since that time till 2002 Denmark and New Zealand almost tripled the amount of consumed meat and meat products. The United States more than doubled it.

This link http://www.good.is/post/transparency-which-countries-eat-the-most-meat/ contains information about meat consumption in the world. “An increase in the consumption of meat is directly correlated to an increase in a country's economic development. As a country becomes richer, its citizens generally eat more meat, a much denser source of protein than is available in poorer countries. But the range of the amount of meat eaten in different countries around the world is truly astounding, from barely enough for a few hamburgers to the weight of several people. Our latest Transparency is a look at which countries are eating the most meat every year, on a per capita basis, and which are eating the least” (GOOD magazine). Why do we need so much meat? Is it necessary according to our metabolite process? Will we suffer from hunger without 275 kilograms of meat per person a year? The personal requirement of proteins is various and depends on many factors, including a state of health, age and weight of a body. The heavier and younger we are, the more protein is necessary for us. Using the table below we can estimate how many proteins a day we need to consume for our nutrition. Age | 1-3 | 4-6 | 7-10 | 11-14 | 15-18 | 19 and older | The weight Factor, kg | 1,81 | 1,50 | 1,21 | 0,99 | 0,88 | 0,79 |

For example, using a weight factor for my age group 0.79, I multiplied it by my weight of 62 kg and as a result I received my daily proteins requirement as 49 grams or about 18 kg per year. Knowing that 100 grams of meat contains about 20 gram of proteins, I got an approximately average amount of necessary meat consumption as a 90 kg (or 198 pounds) a year. But why we should consume meat only when eggs, beans, breads, noodles, spaghettis, milk and especially cheese are great sources of proteins? May be excessive meat consumption is a part of a very popular high protein and low carbohydrate diet of our days? In this situation, the more meat we eat, the slimmer we should be, and all meat lovers are supposed to look as models for glance magazines. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, and excessive meat consumption doesn’t bring any visible rewords. We know that consumption of goods, food, and services depends on the level of development of the country, which is different all over the world. There is an amazing statistics, providing by World Cancer Research Fund International, which displays how the statistics of cancer depends from the level of a country’s development. This data shows that the higher the development level – the bigger cancer rate. So, in both sexes, males and females: “The highest cancer rate for men and women together is found in Denmark with 326 people per 100,000 being diagnosed in 2008. The age-standardized rate was at least 300 per 100,000 for Denmark, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, France and United States of America” (WCRF). It brought me the idea to put together all the above information about meat consumption in developed countries and cancer statistics united them together and I got this table: # | Country | Cancer Age-Standardized Rate per 100,000 (World) | Meat consumption, kilograms/year per person 2008 2002 | 1 | Denmark | 326.1 | 321.7 | 145.9 | 2 | Ireland | 317.0 | n\a | 106.3 | 3 | Australia | 314.1 | n\a | n\a | 4 | New Zealand | 309.2 | 313.3 | 142.1 | 5 | Belgium | 306.8 | n\a | 86.1 | 6 | France (metropolitan) | 300.4 | 247.4 | 101.1 | 7 | United States of America | 300.2 | 275.1 | 124.8 | 8 | Norway | 299.1 | n\a | 61.7 | 9 | Canada | 296.6 | n\a | 108.1 | 10 | Czech Republic | 295.0 | n\a | 77.3 | We clearly can see that the data has a strong correlation. If the statistics of meat consumption could be more accessible in internet resources, dependence of cancer developing from meat consumption in developed countries will be more obvious. In the table below we can find out more confirmation about dependence of cancer rate in a more and less developed countries. Cancer is often considered to be more of a developed world issue; in fact 56 percent of all cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) occur in more developed countries and 44 per cent in less developed countries. There were 255 cases of cancer diagnosed per 100,000 in more developed regions, compared to 147 in less developed regions in 2008 (WCRF). Age-Standardized Rate per 100,000 (World) | Cancer | WORLD | More Developed | Less Developed | Lung | 23.0 | 31.3 | 19.1 | Colorectal | 17.3 | 30.1 | 10.7 | Stomach | 14.1 | 11.4 | 15.3 | Liver | 10.8 | 5.2 | 13.1 | Esophagus | 7.0 | 3.6 | 8.7 | Bladder | 5.3 | 9.1 | 3.3 | Non-Hodgkin lymphoma | 5.1 | 8.6 | 3.5 | Leukemia | 5.0 | 7.3 | 4.0 | Kidney | 4.0 | 8.6 | 1.9 | Pancreas | 3.9 | 6.8 | 2.4 | Lip, oral cavity | 3.8 | 4.4 | 3.6 | Brain, nervous system | 3.5 | 5.1 | 3.0 | Thyroid | 3.1 | 6.1 | 2.2 | Melanoma of skin | 2.8 | 9.0 | 0.6 | Larynx | 2.2 | 2.8 | 2.0 | Other pharynx | 2.0 | 2.5 | 1.9 | Gallbladder | 2.0 | 2.2 | 1.8 | Multiple myeloma | 1.4 | 2.7 | 0.8 | Nasopharynx | 1.2 | 0.4 | 1.5 | Hodgkin lymphoma | 1.0 | 2.0 | 0.7 | All cancers excl. non-melanoma skin cancer | 181.6 | 255.8 | 147.8 | To be or not to be a vegetarian depends on us, but we need to possess the full information to make a right choice.

The Analytics

Everybody has a right to choose to be a vegetarian or not. When we are children, our parents or relatives decide what is best for us, what we are supposed to do, to read, and certainly what to eat. When we become older and get the option to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, we have a lot of information about how good or bad this habit is, how much damage it’ll bring to our bodies. We think that we know enough to make a right choice. I am not sure that everybody is informed enough about meat consumption as well, because as adults we continue to consume meat due to “habit, tradition, convenience, taste”, brought to us by our ancestors. We eat meat because most of the people around of us do it. How much do we know about meat consumption? How safe is it? How much meat we need to consume to stay healthy? I didn’t try to discuss many aspects of meat consumption in this composition, because each question require an additional research. I know from my own experience that I have had a lot of different information about it, but never tried to put it all together and compare the data. Doing this paper, I asked myself questions and tried to find answers. It was really a grasping process for me and I hope it won’t be boring for others. I like statistics. Numbers talks better than you can say loud or explain using words. This is why I put a lot of numeric information to think about, to make your own calculation, to play with. I hope that this paper will bring a little change into our lifestyles or just will leave some numeric information in the memory, which will become useful later on. It is never too late to start over, or change something in our lives, or maybe, just become a vegetarian.