Meat or no meat?

My mother said that my decision to no longer eat any animals was just a phase I was going through. Now here I am 30 years later and I am still going through “my phase”.

In the past 3 decades, there has been a big rise in people adopting a meat-free diet. However, a lot more needs to be done to educate the public of the horrors that await the poor creatures that are needlessly killed to satisfy our appetite.

The popular myth is that we as humans NEED meat in our diet to survive but this is actually NOT true. If anything consuming too much meat can have the opposite effect.

Your shopping trolley can now be filled was 1000`s of items that have not harmed animals in any way but if you must have something that either look, smell or even taste of meat then there are lots of “substitutes” on the market.

I think that if all school children were taken to experience a dairy farm or an abattoir so that they can see where their chicken nuggets or hamburgers come from they can make an educated decision as to what they eat.

In an ideal world if every single person made a small change to their eating habits, having a meat-free Monday for example, then the knock-on effect would be amazing.

Research indicates that vegetarian/vegan diets compared with more traditional meat-eating diets are typically lower in saturated fat and have higher intakes of fruit, vegetables, whole grains and fibre. This may be why vegetarian and vegan diets are associated with lower risks of Heart disease, High blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes and Obesity.

Also, it has been proved that it is a bigger waste of our limited resources to grow crops to feed livestock rather than simply growing crops to feed mankind.

Now I do not want to sound like I am preaching to you, this is a free country and we can all make our own decisions. All I ask is that you examine the facts and make your own choice as it is not only better for you it is better for our planet and it is the only one we have.