Chitika

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Teenage vegetarianism.

The first eco-friendly step that I ever took was when I turned vegetarian at the age of 17.  The change was quite illogical and poorly-planned.  I had many friends that were vegetarians, some of whom had never before eaten meat, but that had never phased me.  My roommate in boarding school was a vegetarian and I distinctly remember her showing me a fairly disturbing PETA pamplet.  Still, unphased.

One afternoon, however, I was in the school's library, poking around, and came across a Buddhist textbook.  Although most of the content has long-since been forgotten, there were repeated passages about respecting life, which for whatever reason impacted me greatly.  Since that afternoon I have been a vegetarian, although the strictness of my diet has changed as my attitudes and opinions have evolved.  At one point I thought about returning to eating meat but then read "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins and that was that.  I am currently a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but I also eat fish, so in many ways I do not consider myself to be a "true" vegetarian.  I'm at a point in my life now where the labeling is not very useful as it is always followed by such a long explanation, or worse yet, an argument about ethics, which I'm not inclined to get involved in.  For the record, I personally do not take issue with anyone else's food choices, nor do I want others to try to convince me of the merits of theirs. 



For those of you that are vegetarian, there is ample evidence to suggest that such a lifestyle is both environmentally and economically beneficial.  Two helpful statistics that I have come across lately are that being a vegetarian (or nearly-vegetarian) can literally reduce your carbon footprint by a tonne a year (meat-eaters average 2.5 tonnes or so) and by just cutting one average-sized meat-based meal per week out of your diet, you can save $100 over the course of a year.  For those of you that are meat eaters, regardless of whether or not you intend to ever stop eating meat completely, those are two excellent reasons to reduce meat consumption!

No comments:

Post a Comment