For many vegetarians or vegans, there is a defining moment at which they make the definitive decision to not eat meat anymore. For me, this was when my Dad told me the more you view meat as flesh, the less appetising it becomes.
Before becoming veggie, I found I just didn’t enjoy eating meat anymore, I started choosing vegetarian options over meat options when eating out and only ate chicken in the end. So in the end I thought, why be half-hearted when I can become fully veggie?
The first thing I noticed was how much cheaper eating vegetarian is compared to a meat diet. Last week, for example, my food shopping for 7 days, including lunches and dinners, cost me just over £10 (which is ideal for a uni budget)!
However, there is a potential health risk if you don’t consider how to maintain a healthy, balanced diet after cutting out meat as I noticed that I was becoming fatigued and losing weight. I wasn’t maintaining my protein or iron intake which I had previously obtained from meat which was making me feel not quite 100%. I therefore introduced more protein-rich foods (such as lentils and chickpeas) and iron-rich foods (like spinach and nuts) to ensure I was replacing the dietary benefits of eating meat and maintaining a balanced diet.
Surprisingly, as a society, we tend to eat more protein than the body requires. The British Heart Foundation says that you only need “around 0.75g of protein per kilo of body weight per day (for the average woman, this is 45g, or 55g for men). That’s about two portions of meat, fish, or tofu per day. As a guide, a protein portion should fit into the palm of your hand.” Therefore, for many people, it is not about cutting out meat entirely but reducing your consumption of it or replacing it with plant-based proteins such as beans or lentils.
As I became more focused on my diet, I became aware of how being vegetarian benefits my physical health and the world around me. For example, cutting meat out of your diet and introducing more plant-based foods has a plethora of health benefits such as:
- Lowered blood pressure: reduced blood pressure can prevent serious cardiovascular conditions such as heart failure, heart attacks, and strokes.
- Reduced cholesterol: studies show that people who go plant-based, decrease their blood cholesterol levels by up to 35%, high cholesterol being a key risk factor of heart disease.
- Reduced risk of cancer: plant-based foods contain phytochemicals, the nutrients that your immune system needs to fight off diseases like cancer.
What startled and worried me the most about meat consumption is that excessive consumption of processed meat (bacon, canned meats, sausages, etc.) has been classified in the same category as tobacco and asbestos for causing cancer by the World Health Organisation. This does not mean that they’re equally as dangerous, but that they have the same strength of evidence regarding being a cause of cancer – a frightening revelation.
Meat and dairy specifically accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation
Not only does being vegetarian benefit your health, but also the health of the planet. Being veggie reduces your carbon footprint, as a vegetarian diet produces 2.5x less carbon emissions than a meat diet! At a time when climate change is most prevalent, society tends to focus on travel or fossil fuels as drivers for the climate crisis, when in fact over a quarter of the problem is the food industry and the scale of our meat consumption. Even if you do not cut meat out from your diet entirely, reducing your meat consumption could be that small difference you make to help heal our planet from our own destruction.
More compassionately, in becoming vegetarian I have become more aware of and saddened by the treatment of animals in factory farming. They’re treated more like cogs in a machine than living, breathing beings. I’m not alone in this feeling, as when I asked my Dad’s side of the family (who are all vegetarians or vegans) what their defining moment was for boycotting meat, many responded with it being a distressing video of factory farming footage online!
So, I have shared my motivations for becoming vegetarian, but of course, everyone will have varying standpoints and perspectives on this belief. The most common response I receive when explaining why I’m vegetarian is the belief that we need meat as an integral part of our diet to remain strong and healthy, as our ancestors did. If you resonate with this idea I would recommend watching ‘The Game Changers’ documentary on Netflix or consulting professional footballer Chris Smalling’s story to provide some insight into how you can live a healthy life while being veggie. For further motivation, my Dad recommended to me the ‘Forks Over Knives’ movement, which greatly changed my perspective regarding health, nutrition, and eating veggie. I would also recommend the ‘Cowspiracy’ documentary on Netflix.
Ultimately, turning veggie has not only benefited my physical health but is my small way of helping the planet. If any of these reasons motivate or resonate with you to rethink your level of meat consumption, I hope that next time you do a food shop, you can feel the same satisfaction I do, knowing that we are doing our bit to help save the planet.