I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat vegetarian. Is it
for health or for animal-rights or other reasons?

Can you all please respond with a quick indication of your reasons to
chose to eat vegetarian?

Thanks,

TC

wrote:
> I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat vegetarian. Is it
> for health or for animal-rights or other reasons?
>
> Can you all please respond with a quick indication of your reasons to
> chose to eat vegetarian?

There are, of course, many arguments both for and against
vegetarianism. I have been vegetarian for over 30 years,
and the change over was motivated by a friend who was
involved in a particular spiritual practice. Later I
became aware of other supporting information.

This first item is a brief statement, in my words, from
the spiritual path I referred to:

It is an enigma of life that we must destroy other life
forms in order to sustain our own, and this destruction
causes us to take on kharmic indebtedness. Life forms
are made up of 5 elements or attributes - water, earth,
fire, air and ether. Plant life has water active and the
other elements dormant. More elements are active in
higher life forms, with ether being active in man only.
The debt we take on increases with the number of active
elements. In order to progress on the spiritual path
one is advised to partake of plant life only in order
to minimize the taking on of new debt!

---------------------------------------------------------

Some years ago I had a book (since lent out and not
returned) called something like 'The Essene Gospel of the
Disciple John' - I'm not sure I remember the title.
It purported to be a scholar's translation directly from
an Aramic text located at the Vatican, and it contained
talks by Jesus devoted solely to methods to purify the
body and the necessity of the vegetarian diet if one
wanted to progress on the spiritual path.

---------------------------------------------------------

A book 'Faith, Love, and Seaweed' by Ian F. Rose details
his family's experience going to the vegetarian diet, how
it saved his life, and how it helped his son Murray go on
to be a famous olympic swimmer.

---------------------------------------------------------

I have heard that young children, if their parents have
been somewhat relaxed (not insistant on a specific plan)
and who make alternatives available, will over time auto-
matically select for themselves a balanced diet and, when
starting solid foods, will avoid meat if they can. We
tried this with our older son and he showed an aversion
for meat of any kind; he carefully ate around any meat
included in the dish. This was one of the many things that
influenced us to become vegetarian, and we have been so
for 30 or so years.

----------------------------------------------------------

Kindrick

wrote:
> I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat vegetarian. Is it
> for health or for animal-rights or other reasons?
>
> Can you all please respond with a quick indication of your reasons to
> chose to eat vegetarian?

Hello,

Right now it is an experiment for me, to see if I will be happier that
way. Why? Inspired by...
1) a more harmonic life with all living beings.
2) philosophy of life elements: in hinduism there is a division of
life energies into sattva (peace), rajas (activity), and tamas
(darkness). Meat is considered tamastic: dark and bad for the person's
body and soul. To explain: It destroys the peace of mind, meat is
connected with desire, passion, and violence. I think it might be hard
to combine a truthful life of modesty and self-control with eating meat.
3) health reasons: I heard theories that proteins should be much
better in nuts, seeds, cheese, etc.
But I find it hard to separate the reasons. Somehow they might be
connected...

I hope this helps you.

/ O

For vegetarian (according to Vegsoc.org research) the main reason is
health (50-60%), followed by ethics followed by environment.

With Vegans its a much more even split between kinder to people,
animals and the environment.

My question to you is - Why would you not?

These days when it is so easy why would you purposefully wish to
uneccesarily hurt and kill animals , damage your health and contribute
to trashing the planet.


Buy this cookbook - it's a good (and delicious) place to start to make
a difference.

http://www.foodsforlife.org.uk/recip...-cookbook.html

Don Quinoa > wrote:
> With Vegans its a much more even split between kinder to people,
> animals and the environment.

* digs through quote files *
__________________________________________________ _____________________
I have determined that being a vegan smoker is the best way to irritate
the most people.
-- This Here Giraffe (comment on fark.com)
__________________________________________________ _____________________

My personal reason is to be kind to the cute animal and for $deity,
as well as the environment. Not sure how "kinder to people" fits
in with being a vegan.

--
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is
not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they
are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them
as they fly overhead. -- RFC 1925

dear tunderbar,
in addition to all the obvious ethical and spiritual reasons for
eating vegetarian and the obvious health benefits, there is the
frightening reality of just how much our foods have been tampered with
that keeps me interested in vegetarianism and organic/natural foods.
this is a bad time in history to eat meat, even if you like it and feel
ok about eating it. you have unsafe conditions at meat and poultry
processing plants, mad cow, all sorts of hormones and pesticides and
antibiotics found in meat, poultry, dairy, fish. our old friends at
monsanto have bought up the third largest seed producer, getting ready
to grow all sorts of genetically altered produce. school children have
been eating genetically modified and irradiated foods in their
cafeterias for years. the lower on the food chain you are, the logic
goes, the less exposure to poison you have. a cow has itself and
whatever it has ingested, the worst of which may be stored in its fatty
tissues. sorry to gross you out, but i, for one, am scared. if i don't
know where it came fromor what's in it, i try to avoid it
wrote:
> I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat vegetarian. Is
it
> for health or for animal-rights or other reasons?
>
> Can you all please respond with a quick indication of your reasons to
> chose to eat vegetarian?
>
> Thanks,
>
> TC

I didn't like meat. After my second year of college I had my first
apartment and discovered that the meat I had purchased out of habit sat
in the freezer all summer. I was eating eggs, cheese, veggies- and
one day I decided to do it "right". I was vegetarian for 14 years,
until I was pregnant with my daughter and I craved meat, so I ate it.
My younger daughter wants to be vegetarian but LOVES meat but I've
been offering more vegetarian food lately- I would rather not eat meat,
but my household does. Frankly, cooking it is uninspiring and I just
don't like it much.


Kate, mom to Ursula (10), Sage (7.5) and Benno (4!)
http://systems.cs.colorado.edu/~koli...f-formula.html

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself. ~Rabbi Abraham Heschel

Looking for a thinking moms list? see
<http://listserv.uts.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/parent-l>

tunderbar wrote ...
>I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat
> vegetarian. Is it for health or for animal-rights or other
> reasons?
>
> Can you all please respond with a quick indication of
> your reasons to chose to eat vegetarian?

Philosophical and metaphysical arguments aside, it is demonstrably
more healthy to eat vegetarian.

I was a member of a 10-year, 10,000 person longitudinal statistical
survey of a population (Seventh-day Adventists in S.California)
where use of tobacco, alchohol, and even caffiene is extremely
low. But roughly half of us are vegetarian/vegan and the other half
are generally moderate meat eaters. (Both halves were breathing
the same smoggy air, etc. :-)

The results of the first survey (there is a second, larger one in
progress right now) was that the half of us who were vegetarian
had 5~7 years longer expected life expectancy. And we also had
much lower incidence of diseases like cancer. We had something
like a 50% lower incidence of cancer of all types, and very low
(30%) incidence of some types like colo-rectal cancer. This is
generally considered to be a direct result of vegetarian lifestyle.
http://www.llu.edu/llu/health/

In Sept, 2003 I attended a seminar presented by the folk from the
Weimar Institute http://www.weimar.org/ and after my whole
life (53 years) of eating vegetarian, I changed my habits to become
more vegan. In particularly cutting refined sugars to near-zero
and refined fats to <<50% of my previous intake. While I have
not practiced the recommended exercise (because I think I am
too busy and it is deadly boring) I attribute the near elimination
of sugar to my second winter season here in Portland, OR with
not a single symptom of illness. Before that I would have at
least a week of bad throat/sinus infection every winter.

wrote:

> I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat vegetarian. Is it
> for health or for animal-rights or other reasons?

Because I simply don't like eating meat.

"Not sure how "kinder to people" fits
in with being a vegan."


Well there was the Scottish clearances when everyone was chucked off
the land to make way for the sheep....

There's the Rainforests chopped down and the native indians turfed out
to make way for cows - then later because of dessertification there's
no grass so they chopped down more rainforest evicting more people to
grow GM soya to feed to the cows.

Then there's the environmental effects which is very unkind to all
people.( a few more degrees desalination from melting ice caps in the
north sea and we'll be in instant BIG trouble)

Then wasting the earth's resources - unkind to poorer people (the west
just steals more as it runs out of it's own)

Factory Farmed animal fat has proved VERY detrimental to health causing
many people sorrow and death. Is that kind?

More than any thing the founder of Veganism Donald Watson reasoned that
until a human becomes more thoughtful about the unnecessary suffering
they cause to helpless undefended animals there is little chance for a
more compassionate behaviour and kindness towards fellow humans.

Richard Crowley wrote:
> tunderbar wrote ...
>
>> I am curious as to the reasons why someone would eat vegetarian. Is it
>> for health or for animal-rights or other reasons?

Both:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/img/pdf/tryveg0204.pdf


Steve

Be A Healthy Vegan Or Vegetarian
http://www.geocities.com/beforewisdo...ealthyVeg.html

Steve's Home Page
http://www.geocities.com/beforewisdom/

"The great American thought trap: It is not real
unless it can be seen on television or bought in a
shopping mall"