Not many years ago, being vegetarian was almost cultic; however as society becomes more educated about the meat it consumes, more and more people are embracing the vegetarian life-style. The main reason for this conversion is the quest for longer, healthier life.
When my siblings and I were growing up our parents did not have much money, therefore we did not always have meat; sometime three or five times per month. Despite the fact that our mother was a good cook and knew how to make vegetables taste good. we thought we were depraved going without meat. The one thing that stuck with me through all those years is the fact that our skin was smooth and it glowed. Adults were always asking us what did our mother used to make it look skin so pretty. We did not have that answer; it was not until we became adults that we discovered that the condition of our skin was due to our partially vegetarian diet; those were “the good old days.” Now my sisters and I reminisce, we have concluded that a meatless diet is what we need; it was good for us then and it is good for us now. Of course meat tastes better than vegetable, but that can be said about everything that is not good to eat, nonetheless it is not hard to change our life-style. There are many palatable non-meat dishes, and I am not talking about tofu; vegetable done well can be very tasty. One just needs to make sure that he or she is eating from the four food groups. Protein is the only thing we will be changing and our bodies only need three ounces of protein for each meal. No one would willingly consume pesticide, steroids or hormone, but we do so every time we eat meat. The animals “arealso pumped full off antibiotics, hormones, steroids, and are dipped in pesticides. Over half the cattle and nearly all pigs, calves, and poultry are fed a steady diet of antibiotics” (Academic Library).
Meat has not always been bad for ingestion; this is the twenty-first century and we must keep up with technology and meat is another item we add to our list of “killing me slowly.” My grandfathers lived to be eighty-five and ninety-four respectively and I have never seen either of them use a cane; like us, they were partially vegetarians. When we were growing up, once in a while we would hear of a still birth, and any other death was an old person; now, everybody dies; the baby, the young, the middle age, and the old. We become financially independent; and we bask in the sunshine of the “better days;”. Technology has taken over our lives and everything is being done in a shorter and cheaper manner. Live stocks including chickens were made to graze in open fields and mature slowly; not anymore, the financial profit from slow maturity is marginal. Even fish that belongs in the ocean, and should remain in its natural habitat, is farm grown now. Everything is geared for speed; George Bernard Shaw says:
In our factory farms chickens never see the light day, have there[sic] beaks cut off, and are forced to eat food containing their own excrement. Baby cows that are destined to become veal are forced to spend their whole lives chained to stables so small that the animals cannot turn around. In order to make their meat tender they are feed a low-iron diet. This artificial diet leads to joint problems, which cause the animals to be in constant agony.
We human are a set of rebellious people; we cannot leave anything in its natural state we have to spoil it by making it better. We pollute our water and our environment and then we spend twice the amount of money fixing what we should have left alone. We will spend even more money for health care because we need to have synthetic meat. We called this modern time, “the better days,” yet our grandparents were more sensible than we. We need to start practicing vegetarian life-styles or prepare ourselves to ingest even more tainted meat, meat made in laboratories.
Work Cited
“Vegetarian - To Meat or not to Meat.” Academic Library. 3 May 2013
Shaw, George Bernard. “Reason for Being a Vegetarian.” Academic Library. 3 May 2013
