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March 98
'Vegetarianism is the diet of the future! Your future! Every week 2,000 people turn their backs on the traditional meat-based diet with all its cruelty and waste and choose a diet which is as nutritious as it is delicious - vegetarianism'. DIET OF THE FUTURE
There are a few different types of vegetarian and a number of different stages on the way to complete 'vegginess' but the most common type by far is the lacto-ovo-vegetarian. This is someone who eats grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, dairy products and free-range eggs. A vegetarian does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish or shellfish or slaughter house by-products such as gelatine or animal fats. Strict vegetarians, called vegans, also avoid dairy products, eggs, or any other animal products. Be part of the future - and make your next meal count - go veggie! WHY GO VEGETARIAN? Vegetarians are very much like everyone else. We eat many of the same things as meat-eaters, shop in the same supermarkets (but spend less time in certain meaty aisles!), and even eat out in many of the same places. There was a time when being a vegetarian was seen as being quite weird, but the facts speak for themselves. What's so strange about wanting to eat healthy, fresh food that hasn't died for the dinner table? Vegetarianism is good for the environment and doesn't cost the earth. Factory Farming Story books show farms as cosy places where hens run around in the yard, pigs wallow in mud and lambs play in the fields. Unfortunately, reality isn't always like that. Most modern farms are more like factories and the animals are treated like food-producing machines. Many animals are kept shut up in crowded sheds their whole life through. Some will have been changed by selective breeding and genetic engineering so that they grow faster, have more offspring, grow more wool or produce more milk than any animal would in the wild. These changes don't benefit the animals - they just increase profits. Factory farms also deny animals their natural instincts. They cannot move around freely, care for their young or even choose their food. Just imagine being locked in the school toilets with 30 or 40 other people for the rest of your life, with nothing to do - no television, games, or music and only porridge to eat. Broiler brutality There is no scratching around the farmyard for chickens on modern factory farms. Known as broilers, up to 100,000 birds are kept together in windowless sheds with dim electric lights. They are fed on a high protein diet and given antibiotics to help them grow faster so that by the time they are six or seven weeks old, the chickens are twice as heavy as they should be. This excess weight causes problems such as lameness, arthritis and even leg deformities. The sheds are never cleaned out during the life of the chickens - the layer of droppings just gets higher and higher. Lots of birds die from disease and stress and rot where they fall. At six or seven weeks old, the birds are rounded up and stuffed into crates. Some get their wings or legs broken at this stage. The crates are loaded onto lorries and driven to the slaughterhouse. Assault and battery Ninety per cent of the eggs you find in shops are laid by hens kept in battery cages. These wire cages usually house five birds and are so small that each bird has just about the same amount of space as this page. They can't stretch their wings, make a nest or take a dust bath and their feet become deformed from standing on the wire mesh all the time. Many have almost all their feathers plucked out by bored or aggressive cage mates. Some birds have their beaks sliced off with a hot wire or blade to stop this feather plucking. Wild hens would live for 12 years, but battery hens are worn out by the time they are two and sent for slaughter. The pork on your fork Pigs are as intelligent and sensitive as dogs, but most are sentenced to a life of boredom and misery. Wild pigs live in woodland areas and the sows like to build a nest of grass and leaves for their young. In factory farms they have to give birth in a narrow metal crate, where they can't turn round and can only move one step backwards or forwards. The piglets are taken away from their mother when they are only three to four weeks old so the sow can be mated again. They are fattened up in overcrowded pens, and killed at five to seven months old to become pork, bacon and ham. Luckless lambs You can still see lambs skipping around in fields and so most people think that sheep don't have too bad a time. They don't realise what goes on behind the scenes. For example, four million lambs die every year within a few days of being born. Often the pregnant ewes are not fed well, or they are forced to have their lambs earlier in the year than would happen naturally. As the farmers try to save money, fewer shepherds now have to look after bigger and bigger flocks, and many lambs die of exposure on cold, lonely hilltops. Beyond beef There are different breeds of cows - some are kept for beef and some for milk. A dairy cow must have a calf every year, otherwise her milk dries up. Her calf is usually taken away after only a few days, so that we can drink its milk. More calves are born than are needed in a dairy herd, so the unwanted ones are sent to livestock markets. Some will be fattened up as beef, but around 500,000 a year are sent overseas to veal crates which are banned in this country because they are so cruel. Cows would naturally live for about 20 years, but are worn out after six or seven years in dairy herds and are slaughtered.
Killing with kindness? Lots of people think that it's acceptable to eat meat because they have been told that animals in this country are killed humanely. A pistol with a 15cm bolt is shot into the brain to stun the animal so that it feels no pain when its throat is being cut. But the bolt has to hit the right spot exactly. If the animal moves its head as the pistol is fired, it could end up painfully wounded but fully conscious. One RSPCA report showed that up to half of all young bulls may suffer terrible pain as the stun gun fails to hit the target. Smaller animals are stunned with electric shocks, and poultry are dunked head first into an electrically-charged water bath. Many birds don't hang meekly on the conveyor belt, but move around trying to escape. Some move at the wrong time, missing both the stunning bath and the knife. They end up being plunged alive into a scalding tank designed to loosen their feathers after death. Better for the Planet Plants have the unique ability to use sunlight and simple chemicals to make all the proteins and carbohydrates that we humans need. In effect, all the food in the world comes originally from plants. We can either eat the plants directly, or we can feed them to animals which we then kill and eat. Meat production is a very wasteful way of using our plant crops because only a small amount of the food fed to animals is turned into muscle (meat). The animal has to use a large proportion of its food to make the bits we don't eat and to provide its energy for moving around and keeping warm. Of the protein we feed to animals only about 10 per cent becomes meat. This means that if we grow crops for people, instead of for animals, we could use the land to feed more people. In the UK, we could feed ourselves on just 30 per cent of the land we use at the moment. As the human population grows, it will become increasingly important to rely on vegetarian foods. There are no simple reasons for famines and food shortages. Often it's not a case of there being too little food overall, but of those in power making choices that deprive local people of the crops they need to feed themselves. For example, when large areas are cleared for cattle ranching, people are often pushed onto less fertile land. Or the local people may be forced to grow crops that are exported to the West for cattle feed rather than food they could eat themselves. As 15 million children die of starvation every year in the developing world, becoming vegetarian is one of the many changes we all need to make to bring their suffering to an end. Planet friendly How does meat production affect the environment? What sort of picture does the word farm conjure up for you? A rolling landscape with lots of trees, babbling brooks, green fields with hedges sheltering lots of wildlife? If you look below the surface, you'll find the real picture's not too rosy. Two hundred times more polluting than human sewage, millions of tonnes of animal waste are produced each year. Stored in tanks on farms, it may leak into rivers and streams killing the fish and contaminating the water for miles downstream. Animal farming also uses up a lot more water than plant crops. You can grow a pound of wheat with about one washbasin (13 litres) of water, but you'd need an amazing 125 bath tubs full (11,250 litres) to produce a pound of meat in a feed lot in the USA! When too many animals graze in one area, the soil structure breaks down and the top-soil (the vital fertile layer) is either blown away on the wind or washed away during heavy rain fall. About 85 per cent of top-soil loss in the USA is caused by livestock farming and the situation is becoming increasingly serious here in the UK. Large areas of the rainforest are being cleared to make room for cattle ranches that produce meat for the USA beefburger trade. In South America cattle ranching is responsible for up to 50 per cent of all tropical rainforest destruction. Even the ocean isn't safe from our greed. Eight of the world's major fishing grounds have already been virtually fished out and nine others are in serious decline. Stocks of fish have fallen so low that many countries have had to impose quotas. In spite of these restrictions, in the North Sea one quarter of the entire fish population is caught every year. Perhaps the worst thing is that half the fish caught are not even destined for the dinner table; they are used as fertiliser or animal feed. Better for you We all know about eating up our greens, but seriously, if you want to do all the things you've got planned for the future, you need to be fit and healthy. Changing to a vegetarian diet will go a long way towards ensuring this. Over the last few years lots of scientific studies and government reports have confirmed that a good diet is important for better health; and they all agree on what makes up a good diet: Low levels of fat overall
If you are eating a vegetarian diet with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, pulses and cereals, and not too much cheese and milk, you'll be getting exactly the sort of diet recommended. Of course, it's possible to think up an unhealthy diet that is completely vegetarian, but you'd have to work quite hard at it - lots of biscuits, sweets, chips and not much else. The medical evidence speaks for itself. The Oxford Vegetarian Study, a 12-year study of 6,000 vegetarians and 5,000 meat-eaters, came to the conclusion in 1994 that vegetarians are 20 per cent less likely than meat-eaters to die early. They also found that vegetarians have 30 per cent less heart disease and 40 per cent less cancer! |
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There
are now around 3 million vegetarians in the UK - around 4.5 per cent of the
adult population - and another 4 million people have cut red meat out of their
diet. Around 12 per cent of young people are vegetarian and an amazing 24 per
cent of teenage girls no longer eat red meat. In the last ten years the number
of vegetarians in the UK has doubled and the trend is set to continue over the
next decade.
A higher proportion of unsaturated to saturated fats. 
