The Juicy Steak Or The Vegetarian Diet? by Sahir

You come home from basketball practice at night, only to inhale the mouth-drooling smell coming from your backyard. Upon entering, you see the sizzling, fresh, barbecued steak. It is perfectly cooked, a crisp maroon color, and your stomach grumbles loudly. Without waiting any longer, you dig into your steak, welcoming the vibrant & juicy taste into your mouth. Meat is a food many people often claim as something that tastes too good to give up. This might be true, but what most meat-eaters don’t know is how they are destroying the environment and their body by eating it. Vegan or vegetarian diets both can help to cure this patch in the environment. They positively impact the environment and the body because they reduce methane emissions from cows, rid all traces of harmful chemicals that enter your body through contaminated meat, and decreases the chance of you getting life-taking diseases that can be caught by eating red meat. Many may argue that your protein intake will drop This is not entirely true as there are plenty of other protein sources besides meat. Before I begin, I would like to quickly claim that a vegetarian person, in the case of this position paper, is lacto. Now that this has been established, let us continue onto why vegetarians will help to save this world.

If meat is demanded less, then less livestock is required. This will result in a massive decrease in the emissions of methane. Methane, “in terms of its contribution to global warming, is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide” (Do cows pollute as much as cars? HowStuffWorks). Despite the small amount of methane in the air compared to carbon dioxide, they cause almost equal results. According to Are Cows the cause of Global Warming? from Time For Change, “A cow does an overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year”. This means that one single cow releases anywhere from 0.19 to 0.33 kg of methane a day. It has also been proven that cows produce more methane when they are cramped together in stalls compared to when they are spread apart in fields. Each day, cows are producing more and more methane due to the amount of food they are being forced to eat. The extra food stored in their body is either stored as fat or are released as methane. Cows are not the only animals that produce methane. All ruminants - goat, sheep, and more - produce methane. Cows are the biggest culprit, but other ruminants will soon be significantly impacting global warming and emissions. A change of diet in humans will result in a reduction in the mass production of cows and livestock. That will lead to massive decrease in methane emissions. Less methane in the air will have an impact that will show in 5 to 6 to years. Transport & factory emissions are already dropping with the world heading in a more sustainable and green future, and with the addition of less methane emissions from cows, global warming may become cured.

One of the many reasons that cows are producing so much methane is because they’ve been injected with hormones. In addition to hormones, all cattle are given antibiotics whether they need them or not. Most ranchers believed that these chemicals would not be present in the final meat products, but this is wrong. An article from PETA called Meat Contamination quotes, “Animal products are loaded with bacteria, antibiotics, hormones, dioxins, and a host of other toxins that can cause serious health problems in humans”. This explicitly tells one about the dangers of eating meat. You may think that these chemicals won’t do anything to yourself, but this is also wrong. A clear example would be of the antibiotic tilmicosin. “Excessive levels are also found of risky antibiotics like tilmicosin, whose label tells the farmer, ‘Not for human use. Injection of this drug in humans has been associated with fatalities’” (Did You Know These 10 Chemical Additives Are Commonly Found In Meat?, Waking Times). This drug might help livestock grow faster, but they end up inside the bodies of humans. Besides of tilmicosin, many others chemicals can cause fatal results if they interacted with certain cells in the human body. We’ve even come to a point where “the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that 70 percent of food poisoning is caused by contaminated animal flesh” (Meat Contamination, PETA). ‘Contaminated’ means injected with many killing chemicals. It is practically impossible to eat meat without eating hormones that were injected into animals. I, for one, would not want to know what would happen if a chemical from an animal caused a disease to a human. It would not be a pretty sight.

There are many companies that claim that their meat is organic and chemical free. This is actually very possible, and there is a small portion of meat companies that produce safe meat. The problem that arises here is that even though your meat doesn’t consist of chemicals, red meat itself has it’s own dangers. “Your gut microbes break down a compound found in the meat known as carnitine, which in turn produces trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). And TMAO has been associated with atherosclerosis, the fatty buildup in your arteries which in turn may cause a heart attack” (How Red Meat Affects Your Health: 7 Reasons To Avoid Beef, Medical Daily). This is just one of the many examples of the harm red meat can cause. A lot of the food we eat contains oil. Taking in this liquid has resulted in our arteries becoming clogged, but red meat is another, unknown way of how our arteries clog. If blood cannot access any part of the body, then serious results could happen, such as heart attacks, heart failures, and other, cardiovascular related problems. One of the 6 facts from the same articles is that “Red meat consumption is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and three extra servings of red meat every week increases the risk of developing diabetes by 50 percent”. Red meat can actually be worse than eating too many desserts in terms of diabetes, and this is something that many people don’t know. In America, meat is one of the biggest industries. This industry provides food for one of the leading nations in this world. The problem here is that often any person of any age starting from the age of 5 can eat too much meat. Those extra servings can lead to diabetes, as this article has said. Becoming vegetarian immediately rids this issue from continuing, as there is no intake of red meat. There are thousands of studies on the internet and in books that also claim various results of eating red meat, and they are increasing by the day.

Of course, there is a slight downside of becoming vegetarian, or at least you’d think. Many people argue that becoming vegetarian reduces your protein sources to a slim amount. All kinds of meat - beef, chicken, fish - all have a high source of protein. They are easy to find in almost any neighbourhood, and our often fairly cheap. The green diet instantly turns this advantage into a disadvantage. Although fairly true, there are many other alternatives for protein other than meat. The article The Ultimate List Of 40 High-Protein Foods! By BodyBuilding.com, shows that the top 6 protein sources are not from animals. Instead they consist of Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, eggs, and more. In Asia, many countries consist of many vegetarians, such as India. Here lentils are cooked with other spices in order to produce healthy & tasty food that is high in protein. Some may still argue that the price of these foods are too expensive, sometimes almost double the price of meat. Once again, the meat community has struck a true point, but this is also not entirely true. Over the past couple of years, vegetarianism has spread like wildfire, as more and more people are becoming aware of the extinction of species and the future of the Earth. In response to this change, more and more companies are producing vegetarian products to reach the demands of customers. This means that vegetarian food options are becoming much more easy to access, and when buying from the right place you can get these products for decent prices. Of course, for now, most vegetarian-producing companies will price their products slightly higher than meat products, but paying a little bit more in order to help the world and benefit your body will not do any harm to anyone else.

Vegetarianism helps the environment by reducing methane emissions that cattle produce, stops deadly chemicals from entering your body, and stops the risk of catching fatal problems from red meat. It also helps those who support animal rights. Despite the small issue of price, an issue that can be easily cured with the right mindset, Vegetarianism might actually be one of the most crucial decisions we as a species could make to save the planet. So next time you come home from basketball practice, let your nose lead you to the delicious smells of grilled vegetables that are packed with chemical-free protein and vitamins that will not cause you to obtain diabetes, heart failure, or other problems. Bon apetite!

Bibliography:

"Do Cows Pollute as Much as Cars?" HowStuffWorks. N.p., 16 July 2007. Web. 12 June 2016. <http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm>.

"Meat Contamination." PETA Meat Contamination Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 June 2016. <http://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-contamination/>.

"Did You Know These 10 Chemical Additives Are Commonly Found in Meat?" Waking Times. N.p., 08 Aug. 2014. Web. 12 June 2016. <http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/08/08/know-10-additives-commonly-found-meat/>.

"7 Reasons to Avoid Red Meat." Medical Daily. N.p., 22 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 June 2016. <http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-red-meat-affects-your-health-7-reasons-avoid-beef-253727>.