To meat or not to meat

CEBU, Philippines - As a lifelong die-hard meat lover, I enjoy nothing more than munching on Big Macs and meatballs drenched in red sauce as my version of a healthy potluck.

I was watching the late night news and trying to come up with a topic to emphasize my madness on meat.

During the midst of that activity, I noted a news item featuring a hundred year-old woman celebrating her centennial year and, guess what, she was a vegetarian! In the report, the old lady said that had it not been for her being a vegetarian, she would have not been living until now.

At the back of my mind was the idea of reinventing my diet and become a vegetarian myself.

According to the Vegetarian Resource Group, vegetarians do not eat meat, fish, and poultry. Vegans are vegetarians who abstain from eating or using all animal products, including milk, cheese, other dairy items, eggs, wool, silk and leather. Among the many reasons for being a vegetarian are health, ecological, and religious concerns, dislike of meat, compassion for animals, belief in non-violence, and economics. The American Dietetic Association has affirmed that a vegetarian diet can meet all known nutrient needs. The key to a healthy vegetarian diet, as with any other diet, is to eat a wide variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, plenty of leafy greens, whole grain products, nuts, seeds, and legumes.

Medical studies demonstrating the health advantages of a meatless diet are convincing, let alone plausible. Among the advantages of vegetarianism are the following:

1)A vegetarian diet promotes healthier, longer life. Vegans are half as likely as meat eaters to die of heart disease. This is also noteworthy for women: risks for ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and osteoporosis drop significantly for vegetarians.

2)Allergies, asthma, and arthritis can also be avoided. When people with asthma adopt a diet free of meat and dairy products, more than 90 percent of them have been able to reduce or discontinue their medications.

3)Vegans are generally thinner than those around them. They are on average 20 pounds lighter than meat eaters who consume the same number of calories.

4)Vegetarianism is good for the environment. This is so because producing plant foods strains the earth’s resources far less than producing animal products. And for anybody who never loses sight on the disappearing rain forests, dwindling fossil fuels, or vanishing wildlife species, vegetarianism would be a logical choice.

5)A vegetarian lifestyle is more humane. Billions of farm animals are slaughtered for food every year. Aside from its gory details, it’s fair to say that the lives and deaths of most animals raised for meat, milk, and egg production are nothing but a whole lot of killing.

Nonetheless, before making a leap to vegetarianism, here are the disadvantages of the diet:

1. One possible disadvantage of a vegetarian diet is protein deficiency. Since vegetarians do not eat meat and meat is a primary source of protein of most human diets, it’s conceivable that a vegetarian could have difficulty getting the recommended daily amount of protein.

2.The Mayo Clinic states that as diets become more restrictive, it becomes more difficult for those who follow them to get a healthy balance of nutrients and vitamins. If a vegetarian is lactose-intolerant and does not eat dairy products, for example, that person becomes susceptible to calcium deficiency or vitamin B-12 deficiency, and lacks zinc, iron and vitamin D.

3.It can be a challenge in some areas for vegetarians to find restaurants that offer meat-free entrees, and even when they do, it’s difficult to guarantee that the kitchen properly separates equipment that’s used to process meat and equipment that is used to process plant-based items.

4.Health Guidance points out that a strong disadvantage to being a vegetarian is having to explain your dietary choice over and over to people you meet. If people you encounter are not supportive or understanding of your choice, it can be irritating to have to defend what you eat and why.

There will always be that two sides of a coin. But as far as my diet is concerned, I still cling to what Mark Twain said, “Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”