Reasons to Give Up Animal Products in 2021

 

Animal rights is one of the main reasons why we may choose to eliminate meat and other animal by-products from our diets. Most vegetarians and vegans choose this lifestyle because they care about the welfare of all creatures; animals as well as humans.

Michael Kern, Craniosacral Therapy Educational Trust co-founder, is passionate about animal rights and has been a vegetarian for over 45 years. While animal rights are an important issue, there are multiple reasons to give up meat, many of which are beneficial to both humans and animals.

Physical and Mental Health

Studies have shown that people who limit their meat intake or cut out meat altogether have a lowered risk of contracting many serious diseases and conditions such as heart disease, several forms of cancer, diabetes, and hypertension.

When coupled with regular exercise, a balanced vegetarian diet can increase lifespan and help maintain a healthy body. A vegetarian diet can also benefit mental and emotional health.

Saving the Environment

The meat industry is one of the biggest contributors to harm when it comes to the environment. Pollution, deforestation, chemical run-off into the water table and carbon dioxide production are just some of the effects of the global meat industry. Cutting out meat prevents contributing to these harmful effects and, if enough people choose to go vegetarian, the environment will benefit as the meat industry begins to shrink.

Solving Human Hunger

Producing meat takes significantly more resources than producing grains and vegetables. If we stopped breeding livestock for slaughter and instead used that land and those resources to generate crops to feed humans, we would be better able to eradicate starvation in the world as more food would be produced for human consumption without increasing cost or land use.

Protecting Animals

A huge percentage of meat sold in supermarkets around the world is produced in intensive factory farms, where the animals being raised are badly treated.  These creatures live and die in cramped conditions, often with disease and pain, suffering throughout their unnaturally short lives. By refusing to eat meat, we refuse to be a part of the system that generates animal suffering.