"You no longer want to eat meat? What's your problem?"

At first, I did not want to write a post about that, but the subject is so interesting that I completely forgot my blog for a few weeks (okay, I have to confess that I also was hangover from the last novel I read, and you'll know why in my next post!).

So why do you become a vegetarian? (The proper translation at the request of my brother last night: "You no longer want to eat meat? What's your problem?")

The answer is not that simple, bro. I could summarize by saying that this is a "lifestyle choice", but this time it has nothing to do with any indoctrination. In fact, it is when doing research on GMOs that I stumbled upon La face cachée de la viande, a Quebec documentary. After it, I couldn't get out of the matter: I had to know.

My concerns are mostly on the "altruistic" way of seeing things. They concern the problems of the Third World, treatment of animals, environmental issues, etc..) And concerns about health come only in the background, a kind of bonus.

But first, I'll start with the bonus, because I know that this is what comes to each mind at first glance. We'll demystify the kind of bad preconception that we all have about a good alimentation: the one that to stop eating meat is bad for health.

Albert Einstein: "Nothing can be as beneficial to human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth than opting for a vegetarian diet."
Darwin: "Few men could stand for five minutes watching an animal struggling with a member crushed or shredded."
Marguerite Yourcenar: "Animals are my friends and I do not eat my friends."
Victor Hugo:
"What right do you put birds in cages? What right do you remove these singers the groves? Sources, at dawn, in the cloud, the winds? By what right do you remove life to live? "

The list of diseases a vegetarian diet is preventing is long: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, cancer, osteoporosis, etc.. No food of plant origin contains cholesterol. Recent studies even decreed that fat vegetable origins, unlike animal fats, does not promote the development of Parkinson's disease or dementia. It was also determined that vegetarians live an average of five years longer than the general population of the same country. By cons, it is said, but normally vegetarians do not smoke and are quite active. So the researchers do not know if all these benefits of vegetarian diet are mainly due to it or to the whole of their lifestyle. On the other hand, there is evidences that a high intake of animal protein is dangerous because of heterocyclic acids (and I'm not talking about what can be found in your meat without your knowledge). Source.

Here, it is said, vegetarianism is good for your health! Even "the presence or absence of meat in the diet seems insignificant to the level of benefits in sports." There's no need to fear anything. Vegetarians that you love will not die. Just for fun, type "vegetarian athletes" on Google and I'm sure what you will find will surprise you.

I can still hear my colleagues: "What! You want to become a vegetarian? And wild meat? Have you ever tasted horse?". No, actually, I've never tasted horse. Yes, wild meat is excellent. My problem is not on the side of taste, but rather on the ethical side. And now comes the killer question: Would you eat your dog?

That's a good question, right? It did not have relevancy? Well, if you believe it... An horse is so similar to a doge if you look at the preferred connection he has with his master, that for me, it was always clear that I will not eat it. And then, I think of Africa: as the two pigs fattened for my host family, my roommate had nightmares fearing that they will give them to us in our next meal. Yet she eats pork nowadays, under many varieties: why deprive after all? She has not seen these pigs grow!

Personally, I think that's the main problem: we are disconnected from what's on your plate. So much disconnected that some of us have no idea of ​​the path taken by the hen to land there. We actually have an idea, but is it the truth?

And it is a standard! It is not an exception!

On one panel, the genius of man, science shows that animals suffer physically and that they can have different emotions. Ethology shows that they can have a highly developed social and psychological life, some species more than those of men. On the other panel, the money-hungry men, who always want more, invented the food industry, and insert in it the mass slaughter. Every year, billions of animals die in fear or suffering. I do not dramatize. Watch stories like named above.

Yesterday, a global march with the slogan "Shut Slaughterhouses" took place. These people are not crazy. Learn before you say that without meat, nobody can live, we would all be sick (which is totally false!), these people are extremists (God that we need them to understand some things!) and that it will never happen (Negativity have never actually did something amazing).

And even if we succeed in inventing a method of killing that would prevent animals from suffering, take the life of an animal, for selfish pleasure when you do not need to survive, is it a fair act ?

Even if some people will respond to me that they have nothing to do with it, it remains that being vegetarian helps to peacefully stop the institutionalized violence that treats animals as objects. And wild meat will one day become either domesticated institutionalized, abused, as soon as men will want to mass produce.

In addition to the ethical question to animals, there is the one of the environment. We are asked to use our car less, but did you know that the beef industry generates more greenhouse gas emissions than the transport sector (on a global scale)? The production of one kilogram of meat requires 10 to 15 times more water than a kilo of vegetable? 15 000 liters/kg of meat against 1000 to 1 500 liters/kg for the plant. In addition, calculate 15 pounds of vegetable protein for 1 pound of meat. These numbers are huge! That means that the more we consume meat, the more we deplete our natural resources and endanger the biodiversity of the land to the beef industry. Forests are cleared in order to corn (among others) to feed the cattle industry. Which further leads to other problems ... but I suggest you to do your own research, or I never finish this post.

Change of subject, and there, but really there vegetarianism seduced me right away: it is said that vegetarianism practiced by a majority of individuals could be the solution to world hunger. Okay, it sounds a bit extreme, but think about it two seconds: "Knowing that the animals were fed with plant breeding, there is a mathematical relationship for each animal between the amount of food (energy) that provided the animal form of meat and amount of food (energy) would have provided the plants used his power throughout its breeding cycle. A good average seems to be a ratio of 1 to 10: The plant was used to produce a normal portion of meat could be used directly to provide 10 equivalent portions of plants! In other words, a vegetarian diet widespread on the planet could feed 10 times more people than the meat diet appropriate in all developed countries! Suffice to say that hunger in the world would simply eradicated, especially as many hungry countries produce and export their grain to feed the farm animals for the rich countries. A distressing truth that few people are willing to accept. "

Personally, I decided to reduce my intake of meat... I would eventually become vegan (no meat, no fish, no chicken nor egg or milk or derivatives), but it will be a long process. I do not want to endorse, vote with my wallet, for industry, for the rich of this world who want to do nothing about the millions of people dying of hunger and thirst.

So that's for my brother, my colleagues, for all those questions about my new fad to no longer want to eat meat: I'm weird and eccentric, but in love with life and I sometimes lose my head compared to "ordinary mortals". This is not to annoy you, far from it. I only have one big trip this summer to make a "homecoming" and it passed by the diet. Long ago, every bit of food was important, was known long before it is eaten. Today, we are told on the packaging "seasoned chicken breasts" and should read "hen who has the beak cut, the legs broken, fattened in the fewest days, shoot with antibiotics to prevent disease due to overcrowding, electrocuted (because it is faster), boned and shoot with water and salt"(and we wonder what it has been fed!). It also tells us "Drinking milk helps build bones," but it's not quite right, isn't it? As you figure out what it means. Or not.