What's Your Beef?
Jarvis's Vegetarian Scene
One of the many salads tempting Jarvis students to denounce meat.
What is it about a salad that can make someone totally disown a supposedly “vital” part of one’s diet? Is there something in that leafy green mélange of water and fiber that is compelling enough to slap a drumstick out of a hand and replace it with a baby carrot?
By far, Jarvis loves the unique taste of meat and could not bear life without it, though vegetarianism is alive and throbbing.
“I don’t like eating animals. I never did. I don’t feel the need for it,” says 11th grader Serena Voutt. This appears to be a rather popular stand on vegetarianism, the desire to stop cruelty towards animals. Health benefits are another persuasive factor in the decision to become a vegetarian.
It is safe to say that animal rights activism plays an integral role too. That is why PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) promotes a vegetarian lifestyle.
An innocent visit to the PETA website reveals an onslaught of propaganda produced to make your stomach churn in the loving memory of your previous meal, lest we forget. Phrases such as, “The holocaust on your plate,” “Kentucky Fried Cruelty,” and the millions of videos available for free viewing all combine to make one large cluster of very compelling propaganda. Heck, videos like that could push someone to give up food entirely - recently consumed or otherwise.
Aside from protecting animals, one must consider protecting the world in which one lives.
Interestingly, about 65% of the Central American rain forests have been cleared to make pastures for beef cattle. The soil in these lands runs out of nutrients quickly, due to the significant loss of topsoil with the removal of trees and often over-grazing of the land.
Topsoil, like the name would suggest, is the top 15-20 cm of soil and is where most plants set roots and absorb most of their nutrients.
Cattle also pass gas - methane, to be precise - which is detrimental to our ozone layer. He who smelt it dealt it. Therefore, he who smelt it helped accelerate global warming. It is far less stressful for the environment to produce vegetable products.
Many people will brag and boast about the wonderful benefits of a vegetarian diet, and they are evident. Generally speaking, vegetarians are much less prone to obesity, heart disease, cancers such as lung and colon, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, kidney stones, gall stones, appendicitis, rheumatoid arthritis, hernia, constipation and hemorrhoids due to a sea of reasons, generally because of diets high in fiber, low in cholesterol, trans and saturated fats, etc. This is assuming that the vegetarian does not necessarily consider potato chips an entire meal.
There are such things as unhealthy vegetarians, those who choose to eat fatty dairy products, oily foods and junk foods. Simply giving up meat isn’t necessarily the key to good health. Non-vegetarians can often be equally healthy, so long as they stay away from the “naughty foods” and eat foods high in fiber, calcium, etc.; it is just easier for a vegetarian.
With these seemingly endless health benefits, vegetarianism seems like the ideal diet for anyone wanting to have a sound body, but vegetarians quickly become anemic, due to the lack of red meat (or any meat) in their diet, right? It certainly makes sense that a vegetarian could become anemic, but the truth is, omnivores are often equally susceptible to anemia.
Iron is a key component in hemoglobin, which is found in red blood cells and is the substance that holds oxygen. Hemoglobin also makes red blood cells red. Anemia is a deficiency in iron leading to inhibited production of hemoglobin, which makes it more difficult for blood cells to send oxygen throughout the body as quickly as required. This can lead to lethargy and fatigue, headaches, insomnia, shortness of breath and sometimes even fainting spells.
You don’t have to be a vegetarian to become anemic. The most popular thing lacking in most people’s (vegetarians or otherwise) diets is iron. Red meats are rich in iron, but that wouldn’t be a very vegetarian choice for supper. Omnivores are susceptible to anemia because, often they won’t be eating the right sorts of meat, or won’t be getting enough vitamin C to help absorb and metabolize the iron. It is the most widespread mineral deficiency in the world.
Friend and long-term vegetarian, Caitlin Burns, is plagued by anemia, so I thought I’d exploit our companionship for the sake of journalism.
“I’ve been anemic for about six months now; well, I was diagnosed with it six months ago,” she tells me. When asked to describe an anemic spell, she revealed that “I feel tired, out of it; it doesn’t feel right. I have no energy.” She has had 4 “fainting” incidents and described them as “narcolepsiesque” and weren’t quite like the more dramatic faint we are familiar with on the stage. She described it as more of a need to sit down, where others would find it difficult or impossible to tell that she was having an anemia-related problem.
I asked her to describe how anemia has affected her life, mood, personality.“I feel moody and erratic, and hate people. F***s up your sleep patterns too.” She has been prescribed iron pills for the past few months and doesn’t experience the fainting spells anymore. Vegetarianism certainly has its ups and its downs. We’ve seen the positive impact it can have on our environment and to the other living beings on this planet, and its fantastic health benefits. There are many other reasons one might choose vegetarianism and that’s why everybody has their own reason for choosing this lifestyle. For me, it was my hobby of not doing things for a significant amount of time and then bragging about them later. That’s the real reason. It started off as a whim, and got larger and larger.
Though when people ask me why I became a vegetarian, I still always relish regurgitating those wonderful words Alan Whitney Brown once spoke, and tell them that I just hate plants.
JargOnline 2006 - 2007 