Paper #11 Why vegetarianism strongly contributes to a better quality of life

Vegetarianism strongly contributes to a better quality of life, because it avoids the animal suffering, negative environmental impacts and fat-related diseases.

 

The first reason why vegetarianism strongly contributes to a better quality of life is because it avoids the animal suffering. Animals in general are treated without any respect by the companies that aim only the profits. For instance, to produce the baby beef, Sadia put the calf inside a box, and the calf grows limited by the box dimensions in order to obtain soft meat. This confined growing causes terrible pain due to the fact that it cannot move. Hence, the absence of movement leads to painful illnesses such as arthrosis. Therefore, being vegetarian is a way to discourage this barbarism.

 

The second reason why vegetarianism contributes to a better quality of life is because it avoids negative environmental impacts. Food companies have been responsible for the increase in the deforested areas. For example, in 2007 Perdigão deforested 3.367,20 km² of the Amazon Forest to form pasture areas, the equivalent of 30% of the total deforested area, 15% higher than 2006, according to the site www.amazonia.org.br. As a result, be a vegetarian is a way to help the decrease in the deforestation levels.

 

The third reason why vegetarianism contributes to a better quality of life is because it avoids fat-related diseases. It has being proved by many studies that the main cause of heart attack is the meat consume. For instance, a recent research conducted by the University of Medicine of São Paulo together with the Heart Institute shows that abnormal high cholesterol levels which mean high concentration of LDL and low concentration of functional HDL are strongly associated with cardiovascular disease because it promotes arteriosclerosis, that leads to myocardial infarction. This research concludes that a change in diet is necessary so as to avoid the elevated cholesterol levels in the blood stream such as refrain from consuming meat because, as stated in the research, meat contains saturated fats that are significant contributors to elevate cholesterol levels. For this reason, vegetarianism is a practice that leads to a healthy life, as the chances of having a heart attack are reduced by not consuming meat.