Go Vegetarian. .. Even If Only for One Day

Thursday, October 1st is World Vegetarian Day and October is Vegetarian Awareness Month. Are you a vegetarian? If not, maybe you should try to become one, even if for just one day a week.

Why? A few years ago, I was sitting at Great Sage, my favorite vegetarian/vegan/organic/green/local restaurant in Clarksville, MD. I saw a statistic from the Worldwatch Institute that read:

It takes 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat while it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat.

If you haven't already heard, we are running low on water and the raising and slaughtering of meat wreaks havoc on our environment.

Compared to grain/pasta, red meat is responsible for:

• 20 times the land use due to cattle grazing
  
  
• 17 times the common water pollution due to animal wastes
  
  
• 5 times the toxic water pollution and water use from chemicals applied to feed grains and water for irrigation and livestock and
  
  
• 3 times the greenhouse gas emissions from greater energy use

The book Skinny Bitch says:

• According to the EPA, animals are the largest polluters of U.S. waterways and
  
  
• The amount of land, food, water and energy used to raise 10 billion animals a year for slaughter could be used to grow food for all the starving people in the world

I've been a vegetarian for nearly 6 years. I don't eat anything with a face, so that means no beef, chicken or seafood. I do occasionally eat eggs and I eat cheese daily. My family and friends back home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania - aka Amish County, aka Land of Cows - don't understand why I make such a sacrifice, but to me, it isn't a sacrifice at all. With heart disease and cancer running in my family, it was a logical decision. Vegetarians have few instances of both of these diseases. But another reason I made this decision was to protect the environment.

The switch for me was easy because I rarely ate red meat or seafood, so all I was giving up was the occasional chicken or turkey breast. If you think it might be too difficult for you, try for just one day a week. And then move to two and see how far you can go from there. If you are worried about how you will get your daily dose of protein, trust me, you can get plenty of protein with a diet of fruits, vegetables and legumes.

Try it. For a day.