Graham Hill is a weekday vegetarian. For many reasons, he's decided to reserve meat to just two days a week. Why don't more people follow his lead?
Mass consumption of meat has incredibly detrimental effects to the environment, the consumers' own health, and the treatment of livestock. Eating meat, particularly red meat, increases people's risk for heart disease, making meat produces more emissions than all of transportation combined, and animals are subjected to unbelievably inhumane conditions in factory farms. But this shouldn't be news to anyone. We've all heard facts like this. So why does everyone still eat so much meat? Meat consumption in the United States has actually doubled since the 50's making it even harder for cleaner, more humane, family-owned farms to survive as the number of factory farms increases. Do we just turn a blind eye to it and ignore the reality of where our own food comes from so we don't feel guilty every time we eat? Or it is like Hill suggests; people only see a binary solution, either meat or no meat at all, and are unwilling to sacrifice meat completely? Why don't more people take advantage of this middle ground?
Speaking as someone who has been raised as a vegetarian and never eaten red meat, my perspective is that it's not at all difficult to find non-meat options. In fact it's become much easier in just the past several years. When my mom was following a vegetarian diet in college, her options were bread, pizza, potatoes, and pasta. Now, entire sections of college dining halls and restaurant menus are dedicated to vegan and vegetarian options. Cutting down on how much meat you eat is not a difficult thing to do, yet if we all ate even just half as much meat as we do now, the benefits to the environment and our health alone would be tremendous.
This blog is based on a TED Talk by Graham Hill: http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html
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