Here are 4 Vegetarian
Diet Viewpoints

A vegetarian diet means different things to different people. Here are 4 different views of what constitutes this eating program:

1. For some reason, some people think it means not eating beef or pork. Maybe they think chickens aren’t animals?

   

2. Moving along the meat-eating/plant-based diet spectrum, we next come to those who apparently don’t consider fish as part of the animal kingdom. They don’t eat other animals but include fish in their diet. There’s even a term—pescatarian—for those who abstain from eating other animals but still eat fish.

   When I was much younger, while vegetarianism was just a vague thought flitting around in my consciousness, I met a man who was a lifelong vegetarian. He told me something that has stuck in my mind all of these years. He said that people can go fishing—or think about eating fish—because they don’t hear the scream when the fish is caught.

   

   Macrobiotics should be included here. It’s a plant-based, whole foods diet that occasionally includes fish.

3. Next we come to those vegetarian diets that include dairy (lacto) and eggs (ovo). You could be a lacto-ovo vegetarian, or any variation… eating just eggs or just dairy.

   This is a common progression towards the vegan diet. When people make the switch from eating meat to vegetarianism, they often are afraid of not getting enough protein or whatever nutrients they think are being supplied by dead animals, so they continue to eat animal products, believing that taking milk and eggs from animals doesn’t hurt them.

   The thing about that is that cows and chickens raised for milk and eggs are treated just as badly as those raised for meat. In fact, they sometimes have a worse life and suffer more.

   In Food Revolution John Robbins writes, “The natural lifespan for dairy cows is 20 to 25 years. But under modern conditions, these animals are lucky to make it to age four.”

   About chickens, he reports, “Layer hens, meanwhile, are crammed together in cages so tiny that they do not have enough space even to begin to lift a single wing.” And that’s for their entire lives, which aren’t very long.

4. And that brings us to veganism. The followers of this diet and philosophy and lifestyle abstain from eating or using all animal products. In addition to the obvious—not eating dead animals—they also avoid using leather products (such as shoes, belts, furniture upholstery), wool, and silk.

   A variation is raw food veganism. Just as the name implies, raw foodists avoid all animal products and eat all foods in their uncooked state.

   For myself and others, as I’ve learned from the research I’ve done, it’s often a meandering path, taking this vegetarian diet journey. It’s an incredibly worthwhile journey. Just make sure you stop occasionally and have a picnic along the side of the road, enjoying something like veggie burgers, pasta salad with vegan mayo, and watermelon.

   

   Enjoy a vegetarian diet picnic!
   
   After the picnic, stroll on over to the vegetarianism page from vegetarian diet .

   
   

   
   

   ---