Happy World Vegetarian Day!

Today is a very important, although lesser-known, holiday in celebration of our vegetarian friends world-wide. Sorry vegans, your day doesn’t come until November 1st. For those of you that don’t know, a vegetarian is a person that doesn’t eat animals. Weird, right? It get’s weirder. They won’t drink meat-based drinks either. I’m kidding about that one. We should all avoid meat-based drinks, but many vegetarians will also avoid foods derived from animals, such as eggs, cheese or even honey. That’s almost as crazy.

Why do they do it? What’s wrong with hamburgers? What’s wrong with hotdogs? Are these people anti-american? Are they supporting terrorism? Surprisingly, no. It’s quite the opposite. The most common answer to “Why?” is simply that they feel better. Your body doesn’t get bogged down with trying to process the complex proteins in meat. This leaves more energy for being happy!

Besides this, they can sleep well, knowing that they are not involved with the industrialization of life. Hamburgers come from cows. McNuggets come from chickens. Tenderloins comes from pigs. Hotdogs come from all three. It’s easy not to think about it, but when you do, you realize that these animals must be grown en mass within efficient, and thus inhumane manners in order to provide these foods to billions of humans world-wide.

There are many other factors that can drive someone to sign off the consumption of animals and depend on side-dishes for total nourishment. The environmental impact is huge. There is less risk for food borne illness. There are even religious factors across all cultures.. except for maybe the cannibals of the Vanuatu islands.

As for me personally, I love steak, salmon, pork chops, fried chicken, hamburger helper and shrimp ramen. That doesn’t rule me out from being vegetarian, however. I just get a different designation as an ovo-carnivorous vegetarian. It’s kinda like being jack-Mormon.

As for all of you full vegetarians, a happy World Vegetarian Day to you!