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Vegetarians fall into a number of different diet classifications. Ovo-lacto vegetarians include dairy products and eggs in their diet, but do not eat meat, fish or poultry. Lacto vegetarians do not eat eggs, meat, fish or poultry, but eat dairy products. Vegans, meanwhile, have a stricter diet and lifestyle, eschewing all animal products, including dairy items, eggs and honey, and not wearing or using animal-made materials such as wool, silk, and leather.
A person may become a vegetarian for many reasons, including the health benefits of not consuming animal protein, ethical reasons such as compassion for animals, religious beliefs, ecological or economic concerns, such as the expense of raising livestock and producing their feed, compared to using similar resources to grow grains and vegetables intended directly for human consumption.
Heath-wise, a vegetarian diet can reduce the risk for such diseases and disorders as obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Much of this is because the vegetarian diet does not include animal fat, and also contains less cholesterol. Additionally, many vegetarians eat more fiber and vegetables.
Many vegetarians make the ideological case for their diet. They contend that if grain farmed in the United States was consumed by people, rather than by livestock, it would feed far more people and could be exported to other countries whose residents are suffering from famine.
Vegetarianism has also long been a tenet of a number of religions, including Buddhism, Jainism, and, in part, Seventh Day Adventism, Hinduism, and some Roman Catholic groups.
History
Vegetarianism has had a long history in the world. Many anthropologists believe that our early ancestors subsisted more on plant food than animal food, as evidenced by the fact that our digestive system is more akin to other herbivores than carnivores.
Early philosophers like Plutarch, Pythagoras and Seneca wrote about their opposition to eating meat. Seneca, for instance, wrote, “To abstain from the flesh of animals is to foster and to encourage innocence,” and after following a meatless diet for about a year, claimed that the abstinence was “not only easy but delightful.”
In the 1840s, vegetarianism was part of an experiment in utopian and communal living in Massachusetts, where Amos Bronson Alcott, father of Little Women author Louisa May Alcott, founded Fruitlands, a vegan community that embraced Transcendental philosophies. While the experiment ultimately collapsed, Alcott’s work no doubt had influence on his friends and contemporaries in the Transcendental movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
More recently, vegetarians have played a part in some of the world’s most prominent political events. For instance, Soviet Russian government declared vegetarianism illegal after the Russian Revolution of 1917, forcing restaurants to close and vegetarian societies to disband. In 1935, a German vegetarian group was forced to close after it refused to join the Nazi Living Reform Movement.
In the United States, many blame the USDA’s early food guides, which promoted a diet heavy in meat, eggs and dairy, for creating a society that was so reliant on animal products. Additionally, advances in transportation, livestock farming and refrigeration made it easier and cheaper to buy and eat meat.
The 1971 publication of Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé, is widely credited with popularizing the vegetarian movement in the United States and pointing out the problems of the meat-based society that America had become. Lappé’s most significant finding was that it takes about 14 lbs of grain to produce a pound of beef. She saw this as a waste of resources and a contributor to the world hunger problem. Her bestselling book paved the way for vegetarian cookbooks, restaurants, communes and co-ops.
A later book, Diet for a New America, published in 1987 by John Robbins, helped take vegetarianism in America to a new level. The book covered the inhumanity of factory farming and the environmental consequences of animal-based agriculture, and also demonstrated the unhealthiness of meat-based diet while describing the benefits of vegetarianism.
Today, vegetarianism is a popular way of life around the world. According to a poll conducted in 2003 by Harris Interactive and the Vegetarian Resource Group, between 4 and 10 percent of Americans consider themselves vegetarian, although only 2.8 percent surveyed said they never eat meat, poultry or fish and seafood.
Context
While the American Dietetic Association has stated that a vegetarian diet is safe and can meet nutritional needs, vegetarians still need to ensure that they are getting all of their daily dietary requirements, particularly ones that nonvegetarians can obtain easily through animal products. The nutrients that are of particular concern include protein, iron, calcium, Vitamin B12, Omega-3 fatty acids and zinc.
Pregnant women and children in particular must be careful that they are ingesting enough protein and calories. In 2003, a New York woman was convicted of first-degree assault on her daughter, who became severely malnourished after being fed a strict vegan diet. Vegetarian activists have called the sentencing a manifestation of a long-held prejudice against vegetarians, vegans and similar alternate lifestyles. This prejudice ranges from simple jokes about the perceived ‘holier-than-thou’ or hippie attitude of vegetarians to government officials and medical professionals publicly decrying the vegetarian lifestyle and what they see as an unbalanced diet.
External Links:
Wikipedia - Vegetarianism [1]
The Vegetarian Resource Group [2]
Vegetarian Times Magazine [3]
North American Vegetarian Society [4]
The Vegetarian Society [5]
Further Reading:
Diet for a Small Planet [6] by Frances Moore Lappé
Diet for a New America [7] by John Robbins
The McDougall Plan [8] by John A. McDougall and Mary A. McDougall
The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism [9] by Colin Spencer
The New Becoming Vegetarian: The Essential Guide to a Healthy Vegetarian Diet [10] by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis