The Importance Of A Vegetarian Diet

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
- Albert Einstein

This site covers the nutritional and dietary guidelines presented by the mainstream to the general population. So when vegetarian diets have a direct effect on a persons state of health, it has been noted. For example in the Vitamins chapter there is mention of the fact that a strict vegetarian may need to supplement B12.

Although it is becoming more popular, either for moral or health reasons, a vegetarian diet still seems to have a strange stigma attached to it.

Hundreds of millions of people are vegetarian (eg. Hindus for religious reasons); more health professionals are discouraging the consumption of animal fats and red meats, that have been shown to increase the chance of obesity, cancer and other diseases; and the environmentalists who know that much of the limited resources, on Planet Earth, are wasted by converting them to meat.

* It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef.
* 70% of US grain production is fed to live stock.
* 5 million acres of rain forest are felled every year in South and Central America alone to create cattle pasture.
* Roughly 20% of all currently threatened and endangered species in the US are harmed by livestock grazing
* Animal agriculture is a chief contributor to water pollution. America's farm animals produce 10 times the waste produced by the human population.
* There are sound reasons for health, ethically, and ecologically to be vegetarian. There is nothing strange about being vegetarian.

Definition

Vegetarian, the belief in and practice of eating exclusively vegetable foods and abstaining from any form of animal food.

To what extent this definition applies, in reality varies, what it refers to is a strict vegetarian or a vegan. Lacto-vegetarians include milk and other dairy products in their diet. Lacto-ovovegetarians eat milk, dairy products and eggs. Those who eat fish are not vegetarian.