你為什麼吃素？
我一個朋友 吃素四年了
原因是某一天突然覺得蛋奶肉味道不對
就此吃素四年
家裡面沒有任何宗教信仰
父母長輩飲食都很正常
她本人飯量挺大 沒有減肥健身的習慣超愛吃甜點 蛋糕之類
理由是蛋糕香精比較多吃不出蛋奶的臭味平時一起吃飯確實是一點肉都不吃
肉菜裡面配菜會吃
而且確實是靠聞味道判斷出某些素肉難辨的東西=_=#作為雜食動物我只是比較好奇
肉真會突然吃起來就臭了 嗎？=_=#
關於吃素的問題，目前來說已經是老僧長談了
首先要說的是我是做哲學的，做哲學還是自然哲學
於是人本思想誕生
然後眾生平等思想誕生
然後植物和動物之間的二元論誕生
然後我就吃素了
但我知道我是人類，我是社會性動物
所以我也不算純素，當我融入群體性而放棄獨立思考思想時候，我就吃葷了。
Donald R.Griffin在《Animal Minds》、以及Marian Stamp Dawkins的Through Our Eyes Only？The Search For Animal Consciousness中也有提及過動物的德道地位。動物的道德行為，包括終身配對、利他行為、談和、照顧、同情及互惠等行為，動物也有其獨立的意識、心智及觀念主張。對牛犢、豬仔和其母親拆散、強迫母牛不斷受孕、壓制理毛、奔跑及其他動物獨有的屬性，而這只是讓動物受折磨的過程，我們還要關注動物的死亡。
有個朋友評論了人也不該吃植物，因為植物也可以做出的defense的interaction。特此回答一下：
植物沒有目的、利益、情感動機。為數不多的有關「植物存在價值」的研究不討論植物的內在動機，而是探討我們對待植物的態度：我們能主導並控制植物、管理植物。或者能感受到與植物的聯繫。當然並不贊成毫無理由地破壞植物。但很多屬性用在植物身上時，只能是「在隱喻意義上」使用的。也就是我們所使用的語言符號，本身都依賴於我們作為動物 這個現實 。德勒茲認為，男人可以「生成女人」，人可以「生成動物」（至於能不能「生成植物」，我覺得不太行啊，雖然看有後續的解讀 認為也可以「生成」別的東西……）
反對素食的朋友們，是否應該為滿足人的不必要的口腹之慾，導致動物死亡的這一議題，尋找更多的道德必要性？
分割線--------------------------------------------------------------
之前從人類食素的健康角度寫，遭到質疑，並陷入這樣的困境：即使吃肉有那麼不健康，大多數人願意以「不健康的食肉飲食」為代價，來換取食肉在味覺上帶來的滿足感。那麼除了食肉的帶來的健康問題，還會給我們帶來哪些倫理上的困境？我試圖單從動物倫理學角度說一下素食的合理和必要性，作為一名理工男，文采比較差，所以各位見諒，板磚輕拍。
在我們對問題進行判斷的時候，往往基於我們自己的自身視角出發，沒能從全視角的看待問題，德國人真的要比猶太民族高等嗎？黑人真的是劣質的嗎？而歷史上納粹或者侵華戰爭中他們被預先植入的假設就是「猶太人不是人」、「中國人不是人」。只有讓他們滅亡才能使社會得到文明進步，人類文明得到升華。參與戰爭的士兵們認為自己在行使正義，並為他們所做的事情引以為豪（提高人類整體素質），他們化身為「正義的使者」。反觀今天的我們，似乎在對待動物問題上同樣犯類似的錯誤，人類預設「動物的價值僅僅在於被我們食用」，但實際上「動物，特別是脊椎動物是具有情感和認知能力的，每個動物擁有區別其他動物的心理活動」
按照齊格蒙·鮑曼在《現代性與大屠殺》的表述：屠殺不只是猶太人歷史上的一個悲慘事件，也並非德意志民族的一次反常行為，而是現代性本身的固有可能。科學的理性計算精神，技術的道德中立地位，社會管理的工程化趨勢，正是現代性的這些本質要素，使得像大屠殺這樣滅絕人性的慘劇成為設計者、執行者和受害者密切合作的社會集體行動。從極端的理性走向極端的非理性，從高度的文明走向高度的野蠻，看似悖謬，實則有著邏輯的必然。而拯救之途也許就在於：在任何情況下，個體都無條件地承擔起他的道德責任。
「動物」或「肉類」這類抽象的辭彙逐漸讓把他們從我們之中進行隔離，他們有別於我們（猶如納粹們隔離猶太民族），我們越發迷失於其中當你看不見受苦受折磨的是一個個活生生的生命個體的時候，你跟他們的距離就變得很遙遠了，於是你去參與傷害他們的事就很可能了。但同時我們會陷入很多困境，如：
（1）猿猴的智商或者模仿能力可並絕對比所有人類的單獨個體低很多，如果我們可以對猿猴囚禁，我們同樣也可以對植物人囚禁，他們並沒有價值，這又是工具理性所要的困境
（2）絕大多數生物醫學專業的學生在動物實驗課上，心理產生過對動物的同情和親手殺死實驗動物所帶來恐懼，感性層面往往是拒絕這麼去做，但要「獲得實驗課的學分」又不得不這樣去做所以我們不得不從「聖母婊」的感性認識的層面理解。
環境倫理學家Michael Allen Fox在《深層素食主義》中曾有過如下的經典表述：
「相信人類支配權的信念不僅使食肉合法化——反過來說也成立：肉類強化了那個假設。殺戮、烹煮、食用動物，或許為人類對自然界其他動物的優越性提供了最終的確認，而其鮮血噴射是一個生意盎然的主題。」
"對我們的飲食活動有更好的了解，有可能引導我們對自己在宇宙中所處的位置有更深刻的領悟，這個領悟可能恰當地在我們心中激起一種感恩與謙遜的反應。"
「這些結論都引向同一個結論，吃肉習慣促成了一種較不可取的生活方式，而素食在許多方面是較可取的；素食立場的整體力量不需要依賴任何單獨的論證，或任何論述團體的成員。……並不是每一個人都會被某個訴求說服，但有許多人——或許是大多數人——會覺得在這個論證光譜上某個事項具有說服力。」
在這個意義上，素食絕不僅僅是一種飲食偏好那麼簡單。「素食主義乃是一個整體的世界觀的一部分。」（Fox語）素食主義者應當了解它的觀念和實踐傳統，「傳統」對於任何一個擁有歷史的團體來說都是重要的，傳統是一個媒介，通過這個媒介，一種實踐得以形成並在代際之間傳播。
我們正在殺掉真正的動物，並對他的畫像祈禱，雞年大吉！多麼可笑。
我們對待動物的態度，終究會決定我們如何面對自己的內心。
那麼有人會擔心吃素帶來的健康隱患了，大可不必，轉角遇到愛，看這裡
清華學霸帶你讀懂「吃肉致癌」 - 知乎專欄
#摘自網路，侵刪#
可怕的肉毒
看了下面的文字後，你不用醫生和科學家的研究報告(雖然有大量這方面的報告)你就能天然感覺癌是從哪裡來的，如果再嗜愛食肉的話，就有點冒死吃河豚的味道了。而且這些材料還是出自在食品檢驗和預防方面比中國大陸要嚴格十倍的美國。
「我為什麼成了素食者？」一個美國作家這樣寫道：「當您真正了解肉類是污穢不潔的，又是有傳染病的屍首時，您能再面無懼色的狼吞虎咽嗎?我不吃任何肉食和任何維他命丸，也健康的活了半輩子。我在美國旅行多次，常在飯館和別人家中吃飯，棄肉吃素的經過，未曾使我難受，讓我慢慢道來吧。
「在旅行時，有一天吃肝咬了兩三口，覺得味道不對勁，再用刀子一切，真把我嚇了一跳，膿包里竟有一窩小蟲，早己煮熟了。從那天起，每逢看見肝我就反胃。但是牛肉仍是我所喜愛的，直到一件事震撼了我，我才全然斷絕牛肉!事情是這樣的，我的鄰居從牛群中挑了一隻最棒的母牛，供應他自己的牛奶。某天，衛生員來檢驗，說這隻牛有結核病，應予銷毀。鄰居說他不相信，置之不理，後來，另外的檢驗員又來檢查，報告的情況相同。我的鄰居勉強的把牛送往一個較大的屠場，獲得許可，觀看切割。出現在他眼前的，是一整葉被結核菌蝕爛了的肺……此事過後不久，我領著班上的學生去遠足，路過該屠房，我就問那位作嚮導的政府驗肉員：「請問老兄，如果一頭牛害結核病，一葉肺爛壞了，您們怎樣處理呢？」「我也請問你，你的蘋果上有個爛斑，你怎麼辦？你還不是把它削掉，然後吃下去嗎？」我注意到學生們臉上吃驚的表情。等出了屠場，我問他們削蘋果和割牛肉是否相同。「不同，開玩笑！」他們異口同聲地否定。他們說：「病肺的血液會周流全身。」於是我又指出另外的不同點：「動物的病菌會寄生在我們的人身上，而蘋果的黴菌只會活在果菜上面，再者，它也不會周流循環。就算把蘋果的爛疤吃下去，也不致於害病。」這樣一來，過去使我討厭的某些肉食，越發使我討厭了。
「過去我愛吃雞。但參觀附近的一個養雞場之後，這方面的食慾也沒有了。我看到，養雞人天天巡視雞房，把病雞和少下蛋的雞挑出來，送去市場。那些垂頭喪氣、屁股潮濕的傢伙，都進了加工廠。使我吃驚的是，根本就沒有任何檢驗工作。胃好像告訴我，別再把死雞送進我的皮袋裡去了。
「某次，同朋友去亞利桑那州某山澗釣魚，搞不清到底怎麼了，所釣到的魚中，將近二分之一是有腫瘤的，或在內部，或在外部，看了令人倒胃口。查閱有關資料，才從政府報告得知，有些山澗里，魚癌流行，尤其是鱒魚。其染病率有的高達百分之九十。」。
與中國相比，美國的天空要純凈多了，水也乾淨多了，即使如此，美國的魚類還染上了癌症，那中國的動物呢？可想而知。
現在中國一個北方漢子就著二鍋頭嚼的豬頭肉跟楚漢相爭時樊蒯啖的豬腿已大不一樣了。現在的動物屍體是內外均沾毒：現代農業廣施化肥和農藥，動物吃植物，毒素進入動物的體內，人又以動物為食,人便成為有毒物質的最高富集者。沒辦法，食肉者位於食物鏈的最高環節。
毋庸諱言，植物上有農藥殘留，但美國愛德華州立大學的研究結果顯示，肉類中的DDT等殺蟲劑殘留物的含量是植物的13倍,即食肉者身上的農藥殘留量可能比食素者高出13倍。更何況植物上的農藥殘留物可以洗滌，動物肉內的農藥殘留物則無法洗掉。
有一句話說，現在吃大閘蟹和河塘魚的都是勇敢的人。
農場主是一群可怕的人，他們成麻袋地往動物飼料和湖溏江河中傾瀉化學藥品，刺激畜禽魚蝦生長，強迫餵食、注射荷爾蒙、在飼料中加開胃藥、抗生素、鎮靜劑、防腐劑(這類含硝酸鹽的肉，喂貓都很危險)，根本不顧這些化學物質的致癌作用，這樣的肉，食肉者睜眼閉眼地享用了。
還有一種毒，叫肉毒。「肉毒極為害人！」北京人與動物環保科普中心的負責人張呂萍在目睹一次殺動物的場景後再一次呼籲人們警惕。
北京某地狗市。張呂萍形容是一個有鐵石心腸的人才能看的血腥地方。屠夫當著其他狗的面，將帶鋸齒的利器一把扣在某狗腦袋上，令其致昏，吊起來，一刀捅死，立即剝皮。鮮血淋漓的冒著熱氣的狗肉就掛在群狗面前。張呂萍清楚地看見同是天涯淪落狗從集體狂吠到沉默，狗眼含淚。眼神驚恐、悲傷、哀怨、憤怒、詛咒……「如果它們會說話的話」，她說：「它們一定在咒罵屠夫禽獸不如。
這樣的狗肉對人健康有百害而無一益。最可怕的是動物被殺時分泌一種毒素，這種毒素對人體非常有害，現代科學研究這是一種有害的腎上腺素物質。同樣，注水豬、牛、甲魚、雞等被殺時不僅分泌應急毒素，還有體內污水，如此肉食，談何安全。
癌症、瘋牛病、禽流感、口蹄疫、SARS等疾病，在張呂萍看來皆與動物肉毒直接關聯。都是動物冥冥之中的某種反抗。
癌症跟肉食正相關
這就是說，吃肉越多，越可能得癌。一個由協和醫院等單位的著名醫師組成的醫療委員會調查顯示，肉食與癌症有正相關。調查報告這樣寫道：「北京市癌症發病情況，1996年是1955年5.2倍。我們調查了城區的醫院、居民，上個世紀大腸癌患病比例是十萬分之十以下，八十年代十萬之二十，九十年代十萬之二十四，2001年十萬之六十點四五。為什麼城市裡的癌症病人越來越多？跟飲食有關，吃肉多了，不吃粗糧，纖維素少了……癌症的增長率跟肉食的增長率曲線相似……。
另一個醫學調查小組的報告說：「我國原是大腸癌的低發區，不足十萬分之十，可近二三十年來隨著食物結構的改變，肉食量的增加，發病率不斷上升，達到了十萬分之二十四點三一，相當於國際上中等發病水平。據研究估計，2000年以後，大腸癌發病人數將比八十年代高出1.45倍。上海地區大腸癌死亡率從1972年到1989年增加了75%，2000年以後，大腸癌發病數將比八十年代高出1.45倍。
「五成癌症跟飲食有關」。在「2004年天津市腫瘤防治宣傳周」上，專家如是說。「天津市癌症年新發病例為1.6萬，並呈增長和年輕化趨勢。據介紹，癌症儘管與遺傳因素有關，但主要還是由包括飲食在內環境因素引起，如吃肉多了，主食吃得精細了，缺乏纖維素，即粗糧、雜糧等食入少，導致大腸癌發病率的升高；高脂肪、高蛋白的攝入是乳腺癌、結直腸癌發病率上升的重要原因；約有75%的頭頸部癌是由飲酒和吸煙造成的……。
國外研究也證實，癌症跟肉食關係密切。根據一九九五年英國素食學會的研究報告發現，素食者早逝的機會只有非素食者的一半，且素食者較不會得心臟病和癌症，主要原因是素食者血中膽固醇含量低的緣故…… 肉里到底有什麼，為什麼會致癌？除了公認的醫學理論，許多學派和專家都把致癌物指向肉中之毒。上面已經說過，肉毒可怕，但這個事怎麼強調都不過。中國著名的環保專家、北京麋鹿苑負責人郭耕說：「我舉一條證據諸位就可明白：無論大小畜生被人捆縛要殺的時候，是多麼痛苦，多麼怨恨。既起了嗔恨心，毒素就會流遍全身，所以肉食多含有毒素。這種毒是很厲害的。比如餵乳的婦人，若是生氣，乳汁就含有毒素，嬰兒吃了就易害病。不信你若看到有嬰兒的婦女發怒生氣的時候，把她的乳汁擠出一點來放在太陽里曬一會，就變綠色，正常的乳汁被太陽曬是白色的。
素食是如何防癌的呢？美國德州大學安德森醫院的約翰遜博士經過多年埋頭研究，發現了一個事實。凡是平日攝取大量鉀的地區，人民患癌者總是偏低。原來人體細胞里，鉀的含量時常是鈉的十倍，細胞在分裂之時，鉀含量下降而鈉含量上升，癌細胞也不例外，每次細胞受傷時，鉀由細胞之中漏出來，癌細胞即開始繁殖。人患上了慢性病，若有辦法提高體內細胞的鉀含量，生癌的機會則減少。相反，老年人體內的鉀特別容易由細胞膜漏出來，所以患癌的機會隨年齡而增加。醫學研究進一步發現，如果在有些癌細胞的培養液中加進了鉀，它會突然變成正常細胞。老鼠的血癌細胞本來不能造血，可是將其培養液中的鉀提高到十倍以上時，就有造血的現象出現。由此證明，鉀和鈉的比例是癌細胞形成的關鍵…… 近年食療防癌的秘訣，正是根據這個原理，多鉀少鹽。食鹽和味精(一種鈉鹽)都含有大量的鈉，而蔬菜與豆類則含有大量的鉀，所以多吃蔬果豆類少吃鹽和味精，是防止癌症、血壓高、糖尿病的重要舉措。 。
上天讓我們吃素 這個說法流傳很多年，已經得到了許多醫學機構和專家的同意和默認。那就是從人的構造和機能上看，人可能更適宜吃素。因而有人說，人原來是一個素食動物，只是因為各種原因，人才吃起了肉，結果報應連連，百病叢生。
醫學界做過這樣的研究，比較食肉動物與人的腸子，以老虎為例，它的腸子看起來又短又直，沒有許多皺摺。我們知道，肉易腐敗，所以上天給老虎短的腸子，使肉的消化殘餘物不會在腸子停留太久。而人的腸子總共約30尺長，光是大腸就五尺長，接近老虎的三倍，因此人不宜吃肉類；因為肉類容易腐敗，在腸子的溫度下更易腐敗與發酵，這一點，我們可由草食動物的糞便沒有肉食者的那種臭味而想像到。腐爛的肉類在人的腸子里會生出多少致病菌毒就可想而知了。
至於草食動物如牛、羊，上天給了它們好幾個胃，因為他們只吃草，而草的纖維很多，消化時間長，且需要大量進食才能維持身體機能……所以它們有好幾個胃來反芻，腸子比人類還要長。上帝不要人吃草，我們有五穀、硬殼果、豆類、水果等為食物，這些食物的纖維素不及草那麼粗而難消化，不必反芻，所以一個胃就夠了. 再有一點，人的臼齒髮達，適合磨碎食物，也就是說，適合吃五穀、豆類；而食肉動物，門牙尖銳，犬牙交錯，明擺著要用於攫取生命，咬碎肌體……了解了這一點，人們或許明白人類為何會百病叢生了，因為人違背了大自然的意旨，吃了不該吃的東西。
經常有人擔心，素食營養不足。對於這個憂慮，素食者最常見的反應是笑而不答。他們可能樂於與肉食者比誰更健康。毫無疑問，從各個角度看起來素食者更健康：他們的身體更輕盈，他們的反應更敏捷，他們的腦力更充沛，他們更容易入睡，他們所需的睡眠時間更少，他們心情更開朗因而較少得抑鬱症，他們更少得感冒一旦得了好得更快，他們不容易缺鈣，更妙的是他們不容易得癌症、高血壓、糖尿病和老年痴呆症——老年痴呆症一個重要肇因就是肥肉導致的血管畸變。今年國家的一組數據顯示，北方比南方比例高，而女性多於男性。最危險的人群是北方上了年紀的婦女。她們正好是肥肉餡的購買常客…… 理論上講，素食能夠獲得比肉食更優質的營養。首先要打破人們的一個成見：肉類比素食蛋白質高。其實許多素食品的蛋白質比肉類含量高：比如，各種堅果、瓜籽中的蛋白質達30%，穀物約含10%，豆類中的蛋白質含量更高，近40%，是肉類的兩倍，豆皮的蛋白質更高達50%，且大豆中的蛋白是完全蛋白，更易為人體所吸收。
人們開玩笑，廣東人煲肉湯，還不如一個北方漢子吃饃(饅頭)壯。人們常常用肉類進補，其實，肉類不僅蛋白質不如豆類多，而且也是各種食物中最缺乏維生素和礦物質的。
豌豆、小麥、燕麥所含的鐵是牛肉的兩倍，幾乎每樣植物中的鐵質都比肉類高；肉類的鈣質也不如素食多：每百克食物中所含的鈣質,雞肉為5(毫克)，牛肉為8，豬肉為12，魚為30，豌豆為71，香菇為125，木耳為207，紫菜為850……中國人普遍缺鈣，或因愛吃肉而致鈣磷比例失調。
即使是肉類最擅長的脂肪，也總被素食蓋過。如核桃含油高達66.9%；花生達48.7%，芝麻達48.23%，黃豆達20.20%……脂肪酸共有13種，動物性油脂中含6種，植物性油脂卻含全部,且動物性脂肪為飽和脂肪，膽固醇含量高，易引發血管硬化、高血壓、心臟病，並利於癌細胞繁殖；植物性脂肪為非飽和脂肪，能促進膽汁酸排泄，減低膽固醇，避免心臟病和各種心血管病。
素食不缺營養，長壽的素食者本身就是最好的證明。
有一個美國醫學組織要對素食進行對比研究，肉食組好找極了，而要找到純粹的素食者並不太容易。於是他們到了中國的寺廟裡，到了四川和湖南偏僻的寺廟裡，一問不要緊，嚇了他們一大跳，那些老和尚，那些作為對照組的老和尚都多大年齡？平均80多歲。
吃素使身體強健。
肉食者有勁，素食者文弱，這種俗見可能有幾千年了。實際的情況恐怕會讓所有自認比素食者有勁的肉食者人大吃一驚(素食者並不會吃驚的，他們早就知道他們比肉食者更有勁) 與咱們的觀念大顛倒：奧運會似乎是素食者表現大力氣的地方，奧運會也不知什麼時候成了素食者雲集的地方。第一次奧林匹克運動會的游泳冠軍茂林羅斯就是個素食者，他的速度驚人，持久有力，是最負盛名的運動家，他的出現，掀起了西方的運動家吃素的風潮。
又過了幾十年，專門吃素的運動理論也出現了，這就是《素食者運動營養手冊》，作者麗莎。多芙嫚是邁阿密體育營養學家，她本身也參加馬拉松賽和三項鐵人運動，她大運動量的體育生涯從素食中大獲好處。她還是幾名奧運選手的教練。她說，對運動量大或是意在健身的人，素食很有效。
她並不誇大素食者的力量，她說：肉食者也能像素食者一樣有很好的爆發力，但爆發力之後，素食者開始顯現他耐久力的長處，素食者的耐力是肉食者遠遠比不上的。就像獵豹一撲之下抓不到羚羊的話，它就再也追不上羚羊了，這個肉食動物的跑王永遠要在耐力的比賽上敗下陣來的。
因而多芙嫚說，「奧運級的運動員或職業運動的選手並不一定要吃肉，吃素照樣可讓你成為彪悍的『運動機器』。
她在書中列出世界十七名頂尖運動員的訓練秘訣和三餐食譜，包括奧運角力選手康貝爾、六度拿到鐵人三項運動冠軍的史考特和職業美式足球選手席爾。這些人都是吃全素或者基本吃素(比如不吃肉，僅吃一點魚) 多芙嫚說，多吃植物有不少好處，其中之一就是蔬菜水果富含碳水化合物，「這對長跑或短跑增加衝力都有幫助。
讓國人掉眼鏡的是，世界最著名的中長跑之王，卡爾.劉易斯是一個嚴格的素食者，他回憶自己的運動生涯時說，「我發現一個人能不需要動物蛋白質而成為一名成功的運動員。事實上，我的賽道賽跑成績最好的一年是我吃嚴格素食的第一年。此外，通過繼續吃嚴格素食，我的體重在控制之中，我喜歡我看上去的樣子。(我知道這聽起來很傻，但是我們都希望喜歡我們看上去的樣子。)我喜歡吃很多，我感覺好極了。下面是我的故事。
食肉使人剽悍、使人孔武有力的觀念，可能來自遠古的野蠻時代，那時遊獵氏族、山匪海盜等食肉部族無素可吃，以肉裹腹，攻佔農耕文化的國度往往得手，素食者的和平性格總被肉食者的橫蠻氣勢壓住，像被視為「黃禍」的匈奴人和蒙古人在一千年內兩次席捲歐洲，讓這些「文明人」一次次被這些少食蔬菜、純粹肉食的部族所震撼。食肉者勇武的概念在人類的意念中也一次次加深。但就是這些大敗同樣是食肉民族西洋人的蒙古人，卻在十三世紀兩次敗在了食草民族日本人手下。據史載，那些很少吃肉僅吃一點生魚片、卻大量吃稻米和蔬菜的日本武士，猛悍勝過蒙古人，讓那些草原武者和高麗士兵無法近身，在日本沿海兵敗如山倒。蒙古人征服世界無敵手的進程在日本人這裡得到遏止。
大家都知道，古羅馬是一個富裕到糜爛的社會。即使奴隸也能吃到肉粥什麼的。但是在這個社會中最需要勇武、體力和靈敏的角鬥士，卻是素食者。在羅馬語中，角鬥士有一個另外的稱呼，「嚼大麥者」。這些角鬥士平常吃的都是粗麥麵包或者是泡過的大麥。電影《角鬥士》中真實地反映了他們的食物，那種黃黃的粘稠樣的東西大概是一種豌豆和燕麥混合的粥。要知道他們並不是因為受虐待而必須嚼那個大麥，角鬥士一般都是莊園主、富豪、甚至總督的寶貝，雖然他們是奴隸，但這是使他們臉上貼金，讓他們腰包鼓突的奴隸，就像現在英國城堡的主人養有高貴的純種馬一樣，雖然位在畜生，但如果需要可以比主人吃的還好。而那些羅馬奴隸嚼生大麥是因為要戰鬥，要在生死決鬥中衝出一線生機，他們有血的教訓，當然知道吃什麼對體力和勇猛的毅力更有好處。確實，我們很難想像一個飽食酒肉的人，能夠戰勝這些瘦硬如鐵的奴隸。另外說明一下，生食蔬菜和一些穀物已被許多中外營養學家和醫學家證實好處大過於熟食，因更能完好於天然養份。這也是他們生嚼大麥的原因。
還有一個例證能說明素食者的勇和健。那就是中國的少林武僧。因為影視作品的胡寫亂編，中國大眾一直以為，少林寺的和尚是「酒肉穿腸過，佛祖心中留」，這給這個名剎添了大「污點」了，法師們多次出來澄清，少林寺所有正式門徒都是素食者，嚴格按照佛教顯宗的規矩修持。的確，佛教第一大戒就是戒殺，連武僧們的武器都從沒有什麼刀劍的，最多是根棍，不以取人性命為要。吃肉必然要殺生，因而這個禪宗祖庭怎麼會公然養著一幫酒肉和尚，而破壞少林在佛教界的威儀呢？少林武士是素食者應確定無疑，他們的厲害，有耳必聞，有目共睹，這說明素食者能幹出比肉食者更輕騰、更猛烈、更堅健的活計。
吃素使人聰明
素食民族聰明還是肉食民族聰明？關於這一點曾有許多爭論。其實歷史明擺著那呢，自古以來，漢族就是一個素食或被稱為半素食的民族，它與周邊的那些食肉的氏族部落到底誰聰明，不言而喻。華章典籍、物美民豐，都在訴說著一個民族富有創造性的大腦活躍在天地間。即使在與食肉民族西方列強角力落敗的近代，一個西人聰敏還是一個華人聰敏的問題也是自有公論的。
印度因為信奉印度教的原因舉國吃素(當然除了穆斯林)印度人是否聰明也是自有公論的。在世界上，智慧之王——數學和哲學都被印度人把持。舉世公認，印度人最擅長數學，世界上許多數學大師都是出自印度，以至余習至今，印度成了軟體第一國；印度古典哲學超過了古希臘、古埃及，其研究事物的深邃和系統甚至超過了以黑格爾和尼採為代表的日爾曼(德國)哲學，其他國家更是不能望其頂背。
東方最有影響的宗教也多發自印度，佛教的智慧和深邃就不用說了，研究和信奉佛教的人，在入門後大都恍然大悟而感慨：太深邃了，太智慧了！確實，有位西方科學家(忘了名字了)說，越研究越覺得，現代科學不過在證實佛教早在三千年前的發現……更古老的印度教其體系與佛教一樣廣大而理性……西方廣泛流傳，耶穌在印度學習十幾年後回去而傳基督教…… 世界知識界至今最敬仰的古希臘哲學也是素食者締造，古希臘巨匠蘇格拉底、柏拉圖、畢達格拉斯全是嚴格的素食者…… 文藝復興以來的巨匠中，素食者也不少。我們過去多是略知他們的作品和政治傾向，而對影響他們整個人生的生命傾向知之甚少，這其實是他們最重要、最本質的一個層面。達芬奇、托爾斯泰、蕭伯納、甘地、愛因斯坦(很長一段時間嚴格食素)他們為什麼吃素？因為他們內心都有一種他們認為最神聖的愛和非暴力主義。很不幸，還有一個惡名昭著的人也是素食主義者，他就是希特勒，僅就素食對他智力的影響來說是勿庸置疑的。
以上這些最需要腦力去建造的智慧王國都是素食者所為，真是沒什麼話可說。
素食者的一個標誌就是頭腦靈活。嗜肉者的標誌是頭腦沉鈍。中國人曾經因太過靈活了而屢被西人防範。
不少人改為素食之後，發覺自己腦筋靈活了，想像力豐富了，領悟力提高了，思考敏捷了，有些記憶力增加了……總之，腦部的功能明顯漸入佳境，比年少年青時狀態更美妙。事實上，世界各地自少素食的兒童往往都智能特別高，由此可知，素食增進腦力，該是千真萬確的事了。
早在二千多年以前，我們的祖先也有同樣的觀察和判斷！「食肉，勇敢而悍；食谷，智能而巧」。這是《大戴禮記》里的話，白紙黑字，流傳了這麼多世代。吃素不到兩年
其一，突然發現可愛的動物被殺的場景，極其殘忍，血腥，他們也是生命，跟人一樣都是有父母
其二，同樣是生命，生命本應值得尊重
就憑這兩點足矣
素食主義者之歌-追心曲------優酷高清視頻
天吶…我都吃素11年了，因為人類就因該吃素！下面給你吃素的101個理由！如果你認為不充分，那麼請繼續執著的吃肉…
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101 Reasons Why I"m a Vegetarian
By Pamela Rice
Sixth Edition, 2003
Updated January 2005
1 Virtually all of the over 10 billion animals slaughtered for food in the U.S. every year are the product of a swift-moving assemblyline system, incorporating dangerous, unprecedented, and unsustainable methods of efficiency. If farmers were required by law to give their animals humane living conditions, including spacious quarters, clean surroundings, fresh air, sunlight, and opportunities for social interaction—if it were illegal simply to administer drugs to animals who would otherwise die from the environments they live in—cheap meat could never exist. Time and again, the industry fights proposed measures designed to improve the conditions endured by farmed animals—even slightly—some of which would cost only pennies more per animal. Ultimately, low prices have allowed demand to stay high and the industry to become highly concentrated. Over the past half century, farming in the U.S. has been allowed to grow into a grim corporate monstrosity, the scale of which is hard to comprehend or even believe.
2 When the Clean Water Act went into effect in 1972, the government exempted agriculture. One result: 35,000 river miles in just 22 states are polluted by feedlot operations. And today, an entrenched livestock industry, which produces several trillion pounds of manure per year, balks at regulation. In 2003, the government issued two reports. The first revealed that only a quarter of the nation"s largest dairies and hog operations were spreading their manure on enough land to mitigate toxic runoff. The second said that the EPA"s computer systems are grossly inadequate to track down farms lacking manure-management plans. As a result, millions of tons of waste are sent into our waterways, and the government is unable to control it.
3 After reviewing 4,500 scientific studies and papers on the relationship between cancer and lifestyle, a team of 15 scientists sponsored by two leading cancer research institutions advised those interested in reducing their risk of many types of cancer to consume a primarily vegetarian diet consisting of fruits, vegetables, cereals, and legumes. They declared that certain cancers can actually be prevented, with diet, weight management, and regular exercise having a 40 percent bearing on disease risk.
4 The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 70 percent of the world"s commercial fish stocks are fully exploited, overfished, or collapsed. Fishers, using rapacious techniques, such as sonar, driftnets, longlines, dredgers, and refrigerated fish-packing factories, are ultimately not only putting themselves out of business but rapidly destroying ocean ecosystems. In the case of longlining, fishers launch 4.5 million hooks every night. Overall, a quarter of the world"s fish catch comes from nontarget species; a third goes to feed livestock or farmed fish. Early in 1998, a meeting of 1,600 scientists sounded the clarion call that the oceans were in peril. Five years later, the Pew Oceans Commission blamed industrial-scale commercial fishing for depleting the Earth of 90 percent of the ocean"s largest predatory species found only 50 years ago.
5 The Humane Slaughter Act requires that mammals be rendered unconscious with one swift application of a stunning device before slaughter. Due to rapid line speeds, however, fully conscious animals who missed being stunned may be butchered while still conscious. Laborers, to their peril, will be forced to work on petrified creatures fighting for their lives. The legal designation of "animal" does not even apply to poultry. Consequently, birds destined for dinner plates are not afforded any humanely meaningful pre-slaughter stunning (see #72).
6 A meat diet dramatically raises your risk for heart attack, but in recent years you"re less likely to die from the trauma. Technology will probably save your life, but now you"re left to live with the consequences. In the case of congestive heart failure—an increasingly common outcome—your heart, now so damaged, is unable to circulate blood to the rest of your body adequately; this results in fluid build-up and organ damage. In the U.S., nearly 5 million people live with the condition, and about 550,000 new cases crop up every year. The disease is the leading cause of hospitalization among the elderly, and annual hospital bills attributed to it come to $26 billion.
7 Pigs are naturally anything but dirty and brutish. And if given half a chance will display high intelligence. Ask Professor Stanley Curtis of Pennsylvania State University. He taught several pigs to understand complex relationships between actions and objects in order to play video games. Curtis, along with his colleagues, found these creatures to be focused, creative, and innovative—equal in intelligence to chimpanzees. Similarly, other researchers have found chickens to show empathy (and to be smart as well), cows to respond to music, and fish to be as individualistic as dogs.
8 U.S. livestock consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population. On average, it takes 5.86 pounds of plant protein (grain and forage) to produce one pound of animal protein—a horrible waste when hunger pervades so many regions of the world (see #31). The meat industry does work to improve feed-to-flesh efficiency, but its improvements come at the expense of the animals via genetic tinkering and growth-enhancing drugs.
9 About 25 million pounds of antibiotics are fed to livestock every year primarily for growth promotion—almost eight times the amount administered to humans. Though perfectly legal, the practice is leading to the selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and adding to the general worldwide crisis of drug-resistant disease. The consumption of meat contaminated with these superbugs raises the risk for a rise in human illnesses that physicians are unable to treat.
10 Every year, Americans suffer 76 million illnesses, over 300,000 hospitalizations, and over 5,000 deaths from something they ate. That something was probably of animal origin. With the exception of E. coli O157:H7 and L. monocytogenes (listeria), dangerous bacteria are considered "inherent" to raw meat. Producers may legally sell infected meat, leaving it up to the consumer to neutralize the pathogens via cooking. Except in rare instances, neither the USDA nor the FDA has any regulatory powers on farms where pathogens originate.
11 Bypass surgery requires that your rib cage be opened, your heart stopped, and your body hooked up to an external pumping machine so a vein from some other part of your body can be removed and grafted as a replacement blood vessel to your heart. Memory, language ability, and spatial orientation are still impaired in 10 to 50 percent of bypass patients six months later. For some people these side effects never go away. Gloom and depression affect between a third and three-quarters of patients. Many will require a second operation. A vegetarian diet, regular exercise, and spiritual nourishment have been proven to reverse heart disease, the biggest killer in Western countries.
12 Over the last century, Midwestern farmers drained more than 105 million acres of wetlands, half of all that once were. In Iowa, most dramatically, but all across the nation"s middle states, prairies also have been essentially wiped out. Monotonous stretches of nitrogen-dependent and polluting feed crops—mostly corn and soybeans—have taken their place. Wetlands and prairies allow native plant species to flourish. They cleanse and filter pollutants from the water as well. To survive, they have no need for fertilizers; in fact, growth agents are likely to stress or kill them.
13 Eating a plant-based diet guards against disease, first in an active way, with complex carbohydrates, phytochemicals, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber, then by default. The more plant foods you eat, the less room you have for animal foods that clog arteries with cholesterol, strain kidneys with excess protein, and burden the heart with saturated fat. In 2003, a small but influential Canadian study found that a low-fat vegetarian diet, including soy, reduces cholesterol levels by about as much as the use of statin drugs.
14 Meat packing and poultry processing are notoriously hazardous and dangerous. Workers may be crushed by animals falling off the line. Poultry workers typically make a single movement up to 20,000 times a day and suffer repetitive stress disorders at 16 times the national average. Turnover at plants can be as high as 100 percent per year.
15 With so many fish species threatened with commercial extinction (see #4), governments try to regulate fishing gear, catch size, and fishing season, usually without success. Policing is expensive. Illegal fishing around the world is estimated at 25-50 percent of landed catch. A part of the problem lies with "flag-of-convenience" poachers, hailing from seemingly insignificant nations that have not signed on to international fishing treaties that regulate environmental conventions. Their boats, which catch about a quarter of the world"s fish, are actually owned by companies from signatory countries, often from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Such "legal" pirating of the seas doubled in the 1990s.
16 Factory hens today are forced to live in "battery" cages stacked in rows by the thousands. Each is confined to 48 to 86 square inches of floor space. (A standard 8-1/2" x 11" size paper is 91 square inches.) After months of confinement, necks are covered with blisters, wings bare, combs bloody, and feet torn. Manure fumes and rotting carcasses force poultry workers to wear gas masks. When the hens are spent, producers truck the mutilated birds to slaughter. This, or farmers gas them—often unevenly—in order to grind them up for chicken feed.
17 In 2003, Consumer Reports went to 60 cities in 8 states to purchase and test 400 packages of chicken and beef for bacterial contamination. It found that though the incidence of bacteria in chicken had decreased since its 1997 tests (75 percent then, compared to 50 percent in 2003), many more of the contaminated samples harbored antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella and campylobacter. The magazine also found 25 percent of the beef contaminated with listeria, a pernicious and elusive bug whose infection carries a high death rate. The pathogen is killed by cooking. But since it tends to infect cold cuts, store labels of course advertise that the product is "ready-to-eat."
18 An English study that compared the diets of 6,115 vegetarians and 5,015 meat eaters for 12 years found that the meatless diet yielded a 40 percent lower risk of cancer and a 20 percent lower risk of dying from any cause. After monitoring 2,000 vegetarians and near-vegetarians for 22 years, German researchers found that, compared with the general population, groups of people who eat little or no meat can expect to cut their death rates from diseases by 25 to 50 percent.
19 Half of every butchered cow and a third of every butchered pig becomes either by-product material or waste. In addition, about a billion animals die on U.S. factory farms each year before reaching slaughter. What"s an industry to do with all this death and gore? Call the renderer straightaway! Recycling, they call it. Lips are exported to Mexico for taco filling; horns are made into gelatin; other parts are fashioned into everything from cosmetics to drugs to aphrodisiacs. The rest is minced, pulverized, and boiled down for more household products and ingredients. Much is dried to a tacky brown powder to be mixed into animal feed. In 1997, feeding ruminant slaughterhouse by-product to cattle became illegal—an attempt to safeguard the public against mad cow disease (see #63). Both compliance and enforcement have shown themselves to be lacking. A 2001 FDA survey found hundreds of animal-feed companies in violation of the ban.
20 Essentially, if a farming practice is established to be "accepted," "common," "customary," or "normal"—no matter how inhumane—anticruelty statutes do not apply. Such a legal environment serves to grant meat producers carte blanche for the development of still other cruel practices and technologies. In general, any laws actually written to protect farmed animals are rarely enforced, and fines for violations are negligibly small. Basically, the meat industry enjoys a privilege unique in the world of jurisprudence. Instead of society judging which of its actions are to be legal or not, it determines this itself. Is there any wonder that precious little economic loss exists for the benefit of farmed animals?
21 In the mid-1970s, chicken processors argued that in order to keep up with skyrocketing demand they should be allowed merely to rinse off fecal matter from bird carcasses rather than to cut away affected parts. The government gave in to their request. A number of studies have since proved that rinsing carcasses, even up to 40 times, is ineffective at dislodging the filth. Moreover, the violent motion of defeathering rubber fingers not only works to squirt feces out from the chickens" bodies, it can push bacteria deep into crevices of birds" skin where no process is able to dislodge it.
22 Several of the world"s mightiest rivers no longer reach the sea, and aquifer levels everywhere are dropping precipitously. For these we can in large part blame the fivefold increase in worldwide meat production that took place over the past half-century, and the trend is far from over. Meat production is a water guzzler. Producing a pound of animal protein requires about 100 times as much water as producing a pound of vegetable protein. As Newsweek once put it, "the water that goes into a 1,000-pound steer would float a destroyer." Seventy percent of the water that is pulled from the world"s rivers, lakes, and underground wells goes to agriculture, and 40 percent of the world"s grain goes to feed animals for slaughter.
23 Castration makes bulls easier to handle. It also results in their meat being more marketable. There are three castration methods, two of which shut off the blood supply so that the testicles either are reabsorbed into the animal"s body or simply fall away after a couple of weeks. In a third method, the scrotum is cut so that the testicles can be pulled out. Anesthesia is rarely given before any of these procedures, and sometimes operations are botched. One livestock expert advises would-be emasculators, "Sloppy castration means lower profits."
24 In industrialized countries, as many as one person in three may be affected by foodborne illness each year, with children, pregnant women, the sick, the poor, and the elderly being the most at risk, according to the World Health Organization. Stacey A. Sawel, director of scientific and regulatory affairs for the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, tells us that "outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with produce are very rare. Centers for Disease Control data for 1986-1996 shows 3,227 outbreaks occurred from all food sources, but only 21...were associated with produce. And of these, almost half were due to cross contamination with raw meat products during food preparation."
25 The USDA releases updated dietary guidelines every five years, and, as always, it advises people to eat less meat. Of course it doesn"t use those exact words, "eat less meat." When it did, in 1979, the meat industry sounded such a hue and cry that the U.S. agency quickly retracted the statement. Reduce "saturated fat and cholesterol" it says now, something that means little or nothing to many people.
26 Birds are cheap and cages are expensive, so battery hens live out their dreary days in space just about the size of their bodies. No hen gets to run, build a nest, enjoy a cleansing dust bath, mate, protect a chick, forage in the sun, perch, fly, or even lift a wing. Instead, this creature will spend her time crouching and fending off the frantic feather pulling of cage mates. And every egg that is laid will roll away down the slope of a wire floor, which will also cripple her legs and feet.
27 The senseless waste of the world"s growing meat-centered diet is illustrated by a hypothetical statement put forth by the Population Reference Bureau: "If everyone adopted a vegetarian diet and no food were wasted, current [food] production would theoretically feed 10 billion people [56 percent more people than alive today], more than the projected population for the year 2050."
28 In 1997 a virus jumped bird to human for the first time in history. The avian influenza strain H5N1 eventually killed six people as well as entire chicken flocks in Hong Kong. Fearing the strain might be signaling the beginning of a pandemic (see #35), authorities slaughtered and buried 1.3 million poultry-market chickens in the city over a chaotic three-day period. Similarly, a pig virus directly infected 250 people in Malaysia in 1999. As a result, a million pigs were herded into pens and shot or beaten to death. Some pigs ended up being buried alive.
29 Today, gigantic open-air cesspools or holding pits of urine and feces are normally situated adjacent to or beneath the barns that hold thousands and even millions of factory animals. The stench that these emit is exceedingly more pungent than everyday farm odor—even miles away. It will hammer you, perhaps only intermittently like Chinese water torture. In one Illinois case, assessments on nearby homes were officially reduced by 10 to 30 percent.
30 A male calf born to a dairy cow: What does a farmer do with this by-product of the milk industry? If he is not kept for breeding stock or immediately slaughtered or factory-raised for meat, he will be raised for fancy veal. To this end, he is locked up in a stall and chained by his neck to prevent him from turning around for his entire life. He is fed a special diet without iron or roughage. He is injected with antibiotics and hormones to keep him alive and to make him grow. He is kept in darkness except for feeding time. The result? A nearly full-grown animal with flesh as tender and milky-white as a newborn"s. Somehow it makes some people happy.
31 An exploding human population combined with the world"s sagging ability to feed itself appear poised on a collision course. The Green Revolution, which provided the foodstuffs and feedstuffs for much of the recent growth, has clearly stalled out. Indeed, cereal availability per capita has been declining since 1984, and the promise of biotech is far from certain or free of risk. Today, 70 percent of grain in the U.S. and 40 percent of grain worldwide lavishly goes to feed livestock. And just as the world clamors for more grain to feed to animals (so they can be eaten), per-capita world cropland declined by 20 percent—this in the 1990s alone. The World Health Organization says 1.2 billion people in the world don"t get enough to eat. More meat production is definitely not the answer.
32 Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly toxic chemicals, once used widely in a number of industrial applications. Though their manufacture is now banned in the U.S. and other Western countries, their residues have become part of the food chain, lodged in the fat of fish, beef, pork, and milk. Various studies have linked prenatal exposure to PCBs—even tiny amounts—to impaired intellectual development in children. Women who plan to become pregnant are advised to avoid the fatty animal-based foods that contain them, because the chemicals can accumulate in their bodies for years.
33 Some U.S. farmers feed chicken manure to their livestock. No, it"s not illegal, and yes, the animals will grow by eating it. According to the FDA, the practice is safe if, during composting, the wastes are allowed to reach high enough temperatures to destroy harmful bacteria. The problem is, farmers often don"t take all the necessary steps in the composting process.
34 The late parent advisor Dr. Benjamin Spock maintained that cows" milk "causes internal blood loss, allergies, and indigestion and contributes to some cases of childhood diabetes." In the last edition of his famous baby book he recommended that after the age of two children essentially adhere to a vegan diet. But he did not recommend dairy milk for babies either. According to renowned nutrition researcher T. Colin Campbell, "Cows"-milk protein may be the single most significant chemical carcinogen to which humans are exposed."
35 Because of animal agriculture, the world sees a global pandemic of influenza (where tens of thousands of people die) three or four times per century. New subtypes originate in migratory birds, but factory conditions of domesticated animals allow the viruses to take hold. Pigs in particular, but now humans themselves (see #28), may act as hosts for both avian and human strains. Within pig or, in theory, human lungs the viruses can swap genetic material, creating new viruses that can be passed back to or between humans. Historically, Southern China has been the mixing bowl for flu to develop, since billions of pigs, domesticated ducks, and people all live in close proximity to one another. The next flu pandemic is overdue, experts warn.
36 Beef cattle are best suited to moist climates, such as those in Europe where their ancestors evolved. But U.S. ranchers in America"s West continue the destructive tradition of herding their animals on the nation"s most arid land. Grazing often takes place along riparian zones—the strips of land along rivers and streams where wild species of plants and animals concentrate and regenerate. These delicate ecosystems, which serve as natural purifiers of the water, are summarily trampled by the cows and contaminated by their manure. Native grasses long ago were overrun by heartier foreign varieties, inadvertently brought to this hemisphere on bovine hooves.
37 Adopting one of today"s high-protein fad diets may help you lose weight in the short run. But so might chemotherapy, food poisoning, or serious illness. If health is what you desire, eventually you"ll have to learn how to eat. Resoundingly, the American Heart Association and other major health organizations warn people against the Atkins Diet (just one example), because it can cause fatigue or dizziness and strain the kidneys. Often unbeknownst to the dieter, it will induce dehydration. Upping fat and lowering carbohydrate intake—part and parcel of these risky diets—have been found to impair brain function over time.
38 Genetics through single-trait selection has become as important a component of today"s intensive farming as drugs and confinement hardware. The animals themselves, right down to their DNA, must stand up to the rigors of the industrial process, both in life and in carcass form. They must produce at breakneck speeds and do so on as little feed as possible. And ultimately, the particular output they unwillingly give forth must please our final end user, the consumer, in texture, taste, uniformity, convenience, and price. Mutant genes that could never survive in the wild are cultivated to monstrous ends. Today"s hen produces 300 eggs per year; her wild forebears would have laid 2 dozen. Today"s cow yields a staggering 9.1 tons of milk per year on the average, whereas an annual 2.3 tons was the norm in 1940. Sows, breeding cows, and hens have been reduced to piglet-, calf-, and chick-making machines.
39 U.S. subsidies to ranchers on public lands amounts to about $500 million annually. One government program eliminates predators to livestock—real or anticipated—with steel-jaw leghold traps, firearms, cyanide, and poison gas to exterminate thousands of black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, foxes, and coyotes every year.
40 Though osteoporosis is a disease of calcium deficiency, it is not necessarily one of low calcium intake. The bone disorder is the result of too much dietary protein. Excesses can leach calcium from the bones. The typical meat-eating American is consuming at least twice as much protein as is advised for good health.
41 Young women who on average ingest 23 percent of their calories from animal fat—particularly from red meat and full-fat dairy products—are at a 33 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer than those women whose calorie intake from animal fat averages 12 percent, according to an 8-year study. Researchers looked at 90,000 women, ages 26 to 46, and reported in 2003 that the kind of fat, not the amount, was key. Non-hydrogenated vegetable fats, such as olive oil did not affect a woman"s cancer risk.
42 When faced with a flock of spent hens, an egg farmer knows he can induce production again by way of a forced molt—accomplished with starvation and water deprivation for periods of up to two weeks. No U.S. law prevents this, and in fact most hens are molted at least once in their lives. In 2000 McDonald"s announced that it would not purchase eggs from suppliers that employ the practice. It"s the least they could do.
43 Fish make vibratory sounds with various "calls" that researchers have identified as communicating alarm and aggravation. They possess fully formed nervous systems as well as complex social behaviors. They are also capable of learning complicated tasks. British researchers discovered in 2003 that fish have the cerebral mechanisms to feel pain. As one animal activist put it, "Fish are not merely vegetables that can swim." It does seem all too convenient for commercial and sport fishers to declare that fish do not feel pain.
44 In any factory-farm operation, a percentage of the animals will be sick or crippled. In the case of mammals, the industry labels them "downers." They will be dealt with conveniently. Veterinary care is not wasted on them. If unable to walk, a downer is likely to be dragged by chain or pushed by a tractor or forklift to slaughter. Such an animal may be left to starve or freeze to death. The downer phenomenon would be drastically reduced if all stockyards refused to receive and process them. In 2003, the appearance of one "mad cow" in the U.S. resulted in a rule that prohibits meat from ruminants to enter the human food supply. Let"s hope it means that owners are now more likely to euthenize their disabled animals back on the ranch.
45 Jim Mason and Peter Singer wrote in their book Animal Factories, "Instead of hired hands, the factory farmer employs pumps, fans, switches, slatted or wire floors, and automatic feeding and watering hardware." As with any other capital-intensive system, managers are concerned with the "cost of input and volume of output....The difference is that in animal factories the product is a living creature."
46 Cattle thrive best on grass and hay. But to give beef its signature marbling and to speed growth, ranchers fatten their animals with a high-grain (mostly corn) diet. The rich feed causes abscesses to form on the livers of 75 percent of the animals, forcing antibiotic use—a practice that raises the risk for the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (see #94).
47 If you like the idea of being welcome at the places where your food is produced, don"t count on the local poultry grower allowing you to see his birds any time soon. Just barely holding onto life in their drugged-up, overbred, and chronically immuno-deficient state, chickens and turkeys in today"s factory systems must be protected from outside infection. If farmers are even slightly lax in applying rigorous measures of "biosecurity," minor infections can escalate to mass outbreak, sometimes forcing the destruction of millions of birds.
48 The livestock industry euphemistically refers to football-field-size outdoor manure pits as "lagoons." But these giant cesspools of feces and urine, which percolate with bacteria, wormy parasites, and viruses, essentially need to be designated as sites of hazardous industrial waste, and regulated as such. The waste can be 10 to 100 times as concentrated as human waste. The National Resources Defense Council documented at least 1,000 manure spills and at least 200 fish kills in 10 states from 1995 to 1998.
49 Eating fish from coral reefs is like burning the Mona Lisa for kindling. Reefs are home to 25 percent of all known marine fish species. Yet a burgeoning demand from restaurants for live coral-reef fish has created lucrative incentives for unsustainable fishing, typically with cyanide. Divers first dissolve concentrated tablets of the poison into plastic squirt bottles. Once the prey is stunned, full immobilization tends not to take place until after the fish has had a chance to burrow back into the reef. The diver will extract his catch with destructive tools. Some reefs are over a million years old. Yet 20 percent have been destroyed in just the last several decades, in large part by fishing.
50 According to a European study of 400,000 people, a high-fiber diet can slash the risk for deadly cancers by as much as 40 percent. Because of its ability to satiate, fiber helps people to lose weight. One study found that when diabetics eat copious amounts of fiber, they are able to control their blood-sugar levels significantly. Because only plant foods contain fiber most Americans don"t get enough of the substance to fend off disease.
51 Eastern North Carolina today is home to 10 million factory-farmed pigs. Each one, on average, produces two to four times the waste of a human. A survey in 1998 found 1,000 abandoned waste pits in the state, the result of a sudden plunge in pork prices. A year later, Hurricane Floyd inundated many of the pits, sending much of the waste into the Pamlico Sound. There it contaminated marine nurseries that replenish the fish that inhabit the entire eastern seaboard.
52 Animal agriculture routinely mutilates farmed animals for its own convenience and often simply out of habit. Debeaking, branding, castration, ear notching, wing and comb removal, dehorning, teeth clipping, and tail and toe docking are ever-present tasks on today"s farm and ranch. Untrained workers, not veterinarians, perform the surgeries, employing only restraint, not anesthesia.
53 Male chicks are a bothersome expense to the egg producer. Chick sexers must be employed to pick them out for diversion to expedient deaths. No law protects the little ones as they are dumped in trash bins to die by crushing, suffocation, starvation, or exposure.
54 Fish and shellfish farming, or aquaculture, is no less disruptive to the environment than taking fish from the wild. ? Aquaculture shoreline pens are a major reason for the decimation of mangrove forests, vital habitats that wild fish need to reproduce. Mangroves are proven shields against the ravages of tsunami waves. ? Some farmed species will not breed in captivity, so fish farmers must acquire juveniles from the wild. The ability of these species to replenish their numbers in nature is perilously reduced. ? Farmed fish often escape into the wild, corrupting the genetic purity of wild species and spreading disease. ? So-called biomass fishing—done with fine nets—is employed to derive the feed. Such a method breaks with the prudent tradition of using loosely wrought nets, which allow juvenile fish to escape and replenish the species. Biomass fishing extracts fish indiscriminately and unsustainably, threatening ecosystems. ? Huge amounts of polluting nitrogenous waste emanate from fish farms.
55 The growing adoption of meat diets in the developing world threatens to wreak financial disaster on fledgling economies. Without health-care infrastructures in place, the inevitable need for high-tech medical procedures puts undue strain on national coffers.
56 Women put their babies at risk for irreparable brain damage when they eat seafood high in mercury while pregnant, and even beforehand. According to the EPA, about 630,000 newborns in the United States every year—roughly 15 percent of all—may be exposed to dangerous levels of mercury in the womb. Heavy fish eaters, themselves, can easily fall victim to the debilitating effects of mercury poisoning.
57 Hoof-and-mouth disease is rarely fatal for livestock, but it remains a death sentence nonetheless. When blisters form on hooves and lips, and growth slows because of fever, economic dictates prescribe execution and incineration. In 2001, Great Britain responded to an outbreak by destroying nearly 6 million mostly healthy cattle, sheep, and pigs at a cost of (U.S.)$9 billion to save its export trade. There were only 2,030 known cases of the disease. The balance were exterminated to provide buffers to contain the outbreak.
58 If examples of lawlessness are what you seek, the meat industry provides fertile ground for such a quest. In February 2000, USA Today broke a not-atypical story about an IBP slaughterhouse in Nebraska. The Justice Department was accusing it of emitting up to 1,800 pounds of hydrogen sulfide a day—18 times the level that is to be regulated. Some of the townspeople walked around with tanks of oxygen, but most were just gagging. H2S corrodes the lungs, destroying a person"s ability to breathe. One expert described the poison"s effects: "It"s this progressive loss of brain," he explained. The chemical is to blame for 70 percent of all workers employed in hog barns suffering from bronchitis. Not surprisingly, the USA Today story noted that IBP had a 20-year history of environmental misconduct.
59 Genetic manipulation through single-trait selection has already created monsters as well as monstrous suffering for farmed animals. Cloning threatens to jack up that misery yet another notch, that is if this perfect monoculture of the most freakish, super-producing specimens takes hold. Cloning for production agriculture is, albeit, a ways off, provided it becomes commercially viable at all. Meanwhile, as the technique is perfected, cloned animals suffer premature deaths and deformities, and the resultant meat and milk are all but guaranteed to enter the human food supply.
60 In 1982, E. coli O157:H7 poisoning was rare. In 1999, the USDA revealed that during the summer the deadly strain infects half the cattle on America"s feedlots. Today"s confined cattle live in their own excrement, which is the carrier of the bug. Caked-on manure will aerosol its way to edible portions at the slaughterhouse where line speeds of 300 animals per hour cause mishaps. Ground beef today is made up of mixtures of hundreds or even thousands of animals. The grinding process brings surface pathogens to patty interiors that may never be cooked adequately. A university study found that O157:H7 can now also be harbored in the interior of a solid piece of meat.
61 From the animal-feed breadbasket of the nation"s Midwest, massive amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, and manure runoff travel down the Mississippi River and end up in the Gulf of Mexico. This high-nutrient mix causes an ecological chain reaction that ultimately ends with microscopic organisms robbing the bottom of the ocean of oxygen. Marine life must relocate or suffocate. The phenomenon is known as hypoxia. Scientists have dubbed affected areas "dead zones." Each summer the Gulf"s dead zone grows to the size of a small U.S. state. It would be hard to tolerate such ecological ruin if such an area on land were so big and so devoid of life.
62 In what is still the most comprehensive study of diet and life-style ever made, the China Project found that the ingestion of relatively small amounts of animal protein are linked to chronic disease. The findings from this grand epidemiological study are especially compelling because they allowed meaningful comparisons between populations with similar genetic backgrounds, yet with nonhomogeneous diets and lifestyles. All together, the China Study provides the ultimate vegetarian vindication.
63 One by one we"re hearing of people downed by the very mysterious new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a brain-eating affliction that experts say is the human version of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. At press time, the number of definite or probable nvCJD cases (dead and alive) amounts to 147—a relatively small number. Dread about the disease arises from its ghastly nature. Over a prolonged period, victims display involuntary movements and appear insane. The theory is, these people became infected with the brain-wasting disease after eating beef from cows who had been fed brain and nerve tissue of scrapie-infected sheep. The disease has an undetermined though apparently long incubation period and so may some day become much more widespread. Projections run as high as half a million human victims over time. Though feeding ruminant remains back to ruminants (cows to cows) was outlawed in the U.S. in 1997, the practice of recycling animal parts back to livestock has been going on for decades.
64 Though considered more healthful than beef (not exactly a stellar endorsement), fish is still a high-fat, high-calorie, fiberless food, imbued with artery-clogging cholesterol. More than a quarter of the nation"s lakes at any one time post advisories warning consumers that the fish may be contaminated (see #32 and #56). According to one expert quoted in a 1992 Time article, you could drink water from a polluted lake over a lifetime and not absorb the chemical contamination you would get from just one fish meal.
65 When researchers employed videocameras in the kitchens of 100 homes to watch residents prepare designated pathogen-prone dishes, they were shocked to find the study participants undercooked the meat 42 percent of the time, risked cross-contamination of deadly pathogens to raw foods numerous times, and even put their young ones in danger—in one case returning a raw-egg-infected baby bottle to the mouth of a child. The meat industry claims it does not have to provide pathogen-free products, despite the fact that bacteria in animal foods have become increasingly deadly and ubiquitous.
66 From farm to table, animal foods are a filthy business. Antidotes to the many pathogens they harbor are an ever-burgeoning industry. ? On the farm, there are ionizing systems to reduce pathogen-laden dust. ? In the slaughterhouse, there are steam, saline and acidic solutions, ultra-high pressure, competitive exclusion (which adds benign bacteria to crowd out the lethal kinds), electrolyzed water, liquid nitrogen, ozone gas, and, of course, the nuke-based food irradiation. ? In the supermarket, detection tabs monitor food temperature. Other detection devices include scat scanners and fiber-optic pathogen sensors that use vibrating quartz crystals. ? In the kitchen, a silver-coated cutting board kills food bacteria. ? Then, if you still get sick, you can take a drug to absorb the toxicity. What"ll they think up next?
67 Cows tend to want to be milked to unload their burden and, when in heat, to receive a bull naturally. Still, according to the Handbook of Livestock Management, "Two or more people may be needed to force a cow into her [milking] parlor." Similarly, the book notes, "A cow in heat may require two or more persons to move her from her group." Once she is pried away, she will be tethered in a stall with a swinging gate behind her, allowing access to the adjacent bull pen. Stock men designate the stall as the breeding rack. Animal activists call it the rape rack.
68 Today the poultry industry is a vertically integrated oligopoly, meaning that a few giant chicken companies control production from chick hatching to grocery-store delivery. Squeezed into the arrangement is the contract grower. The big company owns the birds; the grower supplies the farm hands and the factory confinement hardware. The situation appears inviting to the grower when she signs her first contract and goes into debt by several hundred thousand dollars. It"s not long, however, before she finds that the multi-billion-dollar corporation she"s dealing with is calling all the shots, and that the debt she"s incurred has reduced her to little better than indentured servitude. And now, as more stringent federal manure-handling regulations begin to be instituted, even more burden is likely to be heaped on to the growers, leaving the chicken conglomerates off the hook.
69 About 22 percent of human-generated emissions of methane is released by the world"s 2.4 billion belching ruminant livestock. This adds up to 80 million tons per year of a potent greenhouse gas associated with global warming. Meanwhile, ranchers and feed-grain farmers contribute significantly to the clearing of the Amazon rainforests, which otherwise work to reverse Earth"s warming trends by naturally releasing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide. Because of the nitrogen from the petrochemical fertilizers, the methane from decomposing vegetation, and the nitrous oxide from acidification, the modern field of corn (primary feed crop) emits a global warming effect not unlike a Los Angeles freeway.
70 Up against the powerful meat industry, USDA inspectors are more and more facing hostile and even violent working environments. A 2000 survey of 6 percent of the meat inspection force revealed that almost half chose not to report animal feces, vomit, metal shards, and other contaminants, weekly or monthly. A Freedom of Information Act finding revealed in 1998 that seven meat plants were allowed to operate, even after each had received more than a thousand citations.
71 Today"s turkeys have been selectively bred to such an extent that their huge breasts make it impossible for them to accomplish the sex act on their own. The industry must artificially inseminate them. The job is nearly as dehumanizing for the workers—who must work rapidly for long hours and low wages—as it is deplorable for the tortured breeder birds, who are essentially raped once or twice a week for 12 to 16 months until they are sent to slaughter.
72 In most large commercial chicken slaughter plants the inverted heads of doomed birds are first plunged into an electrified brine bath. The electric current is set at a voltage just high enough to immobilize the birds and to promote bleedout without hemorrhage. The birds are not only sentient during slaughter but must also suffer the excruciating shock. The current serves to minimize inconvenient flailing that would interfere with the slaughter process.
73 Legally, the term free-range is virtually meaningless. The federal government has only the vague requirement that the animals, from which such meat is derived, have access to the outdoors. This could mean one small opening for thousands of birds. There is nothing in the law to prevent these "free-range" animals from receiving the same cruel treatment imposed on other factory-farmed animals. Moreover, Consumer Reports found free-range poultry actually more contaminated with salmonella and campylobacter than other poultry.
74 In 2000, New York State"s Department of Environmental Conservation and its Department of Health released a flyer called "Eating Sport Fish." The advice speaks for itself: No one should eat more than one meal of fish per week from any of the state"s fresh waters; chemical contaminants may be a problem; trim all fat; don"t consume cooking liquids. On the other hand, if you still want to enjoy the "fun" of sport fishing but don"t want to contaminate yourself, the flyer recommends catch and release. But don"t tear out the hook—cut its leader. Also, avoid playing fish to exhaustion.
75 Okinawa has the healthiest and longest-lived people in the world, boasting the highest percentage of people who live to 100 years old. The super-seniors found there also tend to retain their mental keenness, and few need to live in nursing homes. No surprise: They eat very little food of animal origin, according to a 25-year study on the island. Genes could take some of the credit, although those of the younger generation, who have adopted Western eating habits, are, in general, projected to not outlive their parents.
76 As markets for animal-based foods become more global, "carnivore conflicts" increasingly threaten international peace. In just the first month after a "mad cow" was discovered in Canada, the beef industry there estimated that import bans cost it (U.S.)$410 million. In 2001, hoof-and-mouth disease (see #57) instantly resulted in countries all over the world severing trade with the entire European Union, although the disease was mostly confined to England. Meanwhile, trade wars simmer between the U.S. and the European Union over hormones in beef. Worldwide, varying sanitary standards in meat production leave nations at odds. In 1997 the United Nations reported that over 100 countries were involved in fishing disputes.
77 The population explosion should not be thought of exclusively in terms of people—not when the combined weight of the world"s 1.2 billion domesticated cattle exceeds that of the entire human population. Cattle disrupt ecosystems on over half the world"s land mass. In the past half century alone more than 60 percent of the world"s rangeland has been damaged by overgrazing, the most pervasive cause of desertification.
78 It is estimated that 40 to 50 percent of U.S. dairy cows are infected with mastitis at any one time. The painful udder infection is considered a man-made condition. Cows get it by improper care, poor milking procedures, overmilking, and improperly functioning milking machines. The genetically engineered bovine growth hormone Bovine Somatotropin (bST), which boosts milk yields, is also linked to mastitis.
79 Animal foods are high in sodium, which causes the blood to retain water. They also cause plaque to build up in the arteries, narrowing the flow area for blood. Combine these phenomena and you have a recipe for a disease that afflicts about 50 million Americans: high blood pressure. You can take calcium channel blockers and diuretics to control it, but studies warn that you risk losing intellectual function if you do so.
80 In the early twentieth century man learned how to extract nitrogen from the air, cheaply and in large quantities. The discovery ultimately allowed 2 billion more people to inhabit the Earth and has given humans the luxury of feeding crops to livestock. Yet what gives the world abundance has, by way of runoff, poisoned waterways from the China countryside to the Ohio Valley. (Excess nitrogen causes algae to grow, robbing waterways of oxygen.) Waterways in North America and Europe have 20 times the nitrogen they did before the Industrial Revolution. With a world today overflowing with meat eaters, even human sewage has become more nitrogen-rich. To produce a gram of meat you need over 15 grams of nitrogen; to produce a gram of wheat flour, only 3 grams.
81 Food animals are transported in all weather. When it is cold, animals may freeze right to the sides of trucks or become frozen in the urine and feces that build up on truck floors. In hot weather, heat stress kills many. Losses, however, are figured into the cost of doing business. According to swine specialist Kenneth B. Kephart, "Even with a zero death rate that might be associated with providing more space on a truck, the hogs that we save would not be enough to pay for the increased transportation costs of hauling fewer hogs on a load."
82 When meat, fish, or poultry is barbecued, dripped fat over the open flame sends up plumes of smoke that coat the food with carcinogens. Other unhealthful chemicals are created just by extended cooking times. Chemists are telling meat eaters today to keep those grill times down. Even environmentalists are saying that restaurant grilling is an important source of soot and smog. But you still need to cook your meat thoroughly: How else are you going to kill all of those nasty bacteria?
83 As a result of the introduction of cattle to this hemisphere, major forest fires in the American West occur today at the rate of one every three years, where earlier they may have occurred only once in a century. Historically, ranchers suppressed "cool" grass fires on the bovines" behalf, allowing tinderboxes of dense foliage to build up below taller trees. Factor in cheatgrass, a non-native plant that could not have taken root in this hemisphere without overgrazed lands. This prolific weed provides dry, papery kindling in early summer, perfectly conducive to massive forest fires.
84 Negotiating truck on- and off-ramps can be a cruel challenge for large mammals bred for muscle without attendant skeletal strength. Broken bones are common. Likewise, the bones of egg-laying hens are especially fragile, weakened by a life of intense egg production. Industry research has revealed that by slaughter time over one in four will have broken bones. And since chicken catchers—the laborers who gather up birds into transport cages for slaughter—are poorly paid by the job, not the hour, they are invariably swift and brutal on the birds.
85 Clog up your arteries on a diet loaded with saturated animal fat year after year and you risk a heart attack or stroke. Of course, you can opt to avert these afflictions with an expensive, though now-routine, operation known as angioplasty. Performed with a balloon-tipped catheter, it works to flattens plaque against artery walls, thus opening up passageways for blood flow. (Often it needs to be repeated.) A whole-foods vegetarian diet—along with regular exercise—can have the same effect.
86 More than half of the nation"s seafood companies do not follow federal food-safety guidelines. Regulators from the FDA visit processors only once a year to oversee essentially voluntary company sanitary measures. Often, inspections entail nothing more than an overview of company paperwork. Moreover, three-quarters of all fish consumed in the U.S. are imported. Only a few of the largest foreign processing plants are ever seen by U.S. inspectors.
87 Joel Fuhrman, M.D., who has cured hundreds of people from chronic diseases with no-nonsense vegetarian diet plans, says that it is impossible to devise a diet that conforms to the recommendations in the scientific literature about food and health if animal foods are included in significant quantities. Sure, meats contain nutrients, but plant foods give you much more nutrition for your calorie.
88 Just as smokestack emissions result in acid rain, toxic fumes from decomposing livestock waste on factory farms become poisonous to fish when returned to the Earth via rainfall. The errant ammonia also ravages terrestrial ecosystems because certain plant species that thrive on nitrogen are favored over those, such as wild prairie flowers, that don"t. Fallout can degrade environments as far away as 300 miles.
89 Eating meat must, more and more, be considered risky behavior, as humans increasingly contract diseases from animals: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Nipah virus, influenza, and now SARS can all be counted as examples. "Exotic," and often endangered, animal cuisine, in particular, provides the conduit for a potentially deadly disease. In China, so-called wet markets display caged and invariably sickly creatures, such as cobras, civet cats, and anteaters, for consumers who want that "taste of the wild." In Africa, the bushmeat trade not only threatens the very existence of our closest relatives—the larger primates—it is blamed for the spread of Ebola and AIDS. Logging, which allows people into pristine forests, and contemporary air travel continue to deftly facilitated both.
90 Even if meat eaters are spared the big killers that can cut life short (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer), they may be robbing themselves of good health just the same. A meat diet is sure to lead to nagging conditions and ailments. A whole-foods, high-fiber vegetarian diet, full of grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, is just the ticket to ease arthritis pain, cool irritable-bowel disorders, mitigate common back pain, relieve cold and allergy symptoms, and lower risk for gallstones, kidney stones, and heartburn. But perhaps the greatest gift of all from a vegetarian diet is a life free of constipation!
91 At some slaughterhouses, drains and sewers become backed up with guts and coagulated blood. The pools that develop may rise to workers" ankles. Whole heads of shackled animals may even be dragged through them. The muck may splash up onto the animals, spreading contamination.
92 As fishers find that their usual catch has been diminished by overfishing, they are likely to turn to species lower on the aquatic food chain. Knowingly or not, consumers are putting fish that would otherwise be food for endangered fish on their own dinner plates. If the trend continues, experts predict marine food webs will collapse in 25 to 35 years (see #4).
93 In nature, swine avoid filth and will trek and root over 9 miles in a night. Yet factory internment brings a breeding sow cold, strawless floors, noxious filth, deafening noise, and space barely bigger than her own body. This highly intelligent creature will be driven insane as she endures repeated pregnancies via artificial insemination. Her body will be pinned in place to expose her teats to her piglets. When her productive capacity wanes, she will be sent to slaughter.
94 To a great extent, it"s the high-energy starch of corn feed that makes beef cattle grow to slaughter weight so quickly—14 to 16 months today, versus the traditional 4 to 5 years on grass (see #46). In terms of energy concentration, today"s feed has been compared to Snickers bars. As a consequence, feedlot manure is too nitrogen rich to be used as fertilizer. And it is so laced with hormones and other pharmaceuticals that fish downstream can be found with strange sexual characteristics.
95 Except for a single decade from time to time, the climate above America"s Ogalalla aquifer is bone-dry. Thanks to titanic amounts of water tapped from this ancient underground lake, however, for the last fifty years the land has been blanketed with thirsty feed grains. Farmers in some years have irrigated their land with more water than the annual flow of the Colorado River. Since this aquifer was originally the gift of a glacier in another age, today"s rainfall has essentially no recharging effect. Consequently, the experts give only fifty years before this phenomenal creation of the natural world is gone forever.
96 A 25-percent decline in heart disease in Poland in the early 1990s coincided with the country"s switch to a market economy that ended government subsidies to meat. A switch primarily to vegetable fats and the increased importation of fruit were also seen as factors in the decline, according to a report made by a team of multinational researchers. The authors of the report noted that the decline was "apparently without precedent in peacetime."
97 To produce foie gras, male ducks are force-fed 6 or 7 pounds of grain three times a day with an air-driven feeder tube. This torturous process goes on for 28 days until the ducks" livers, from which the paté is made, bloat to 6 to 12 times their normal size. About 10 percent of the ducks don"t make it to slaughter. They die when their stomachs burst.
98 Every year, 24,000 fishers worldwide die on the job, making fishing the most dangerous occupation in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. In the U.S., a fisherman is 16 times as likely to die on the job as a policeman or fireman. On one day in 2003, more than 200 fishers were drowned after nearly 60 Bangladeshi fishing boats sank during a storm. As fish become increasingly scarce, thanks to unsustainable practices, fishers must take more risks just getting to fishing grounds worth the trip.
99 Every day 600 people in the U.S. die so suddenly from cardiac arrest that they don"t even make it to the hospital. Of the victims, 90 percent have two or more arteries narrowed by atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), a disease inexorably linked to a meat-based diet.
100 Vegetarians are believed to be less likely to suffer from certain cancers, stroke, and hardening of the arteries because their blood tends to contain high levels of salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. A Scottish study found vegetarian subjects with levels of salicylic acid 12 times as high as meat- and fish-eating subjects. The chemical is a powerful anti-inflammatory agent found in abundance in fruits and vegetables.
101 A symposium of scientists in the mid-1990s predicted that energy shortages, exhausted land, scarce water, and a doubling population will impose more of a plant-based diet onto America"s dinner tables by 2050. They acknowledged that this diet, born of scarcity, would "actually be a healthier one." Surely, the sooner we all learn to enjoy it the better!
Copyright 2005 ? Pamela Rice.因為覺得 動物植物 都有生命 想像自己被壓倒性力量強迫失去生命 被殘忍弄死還各種花樣解剖 煮食 真的好難過，都覺得 麵粉是骨灰 ︶︿︶
要是自己會光合作用或者是自養生物就好了
當我真正意識到自己嘴裡的肉曾經是活生生的生命時，就再也吃不下去了。
後來通過網路了解了肉工廠和牛奶廠後真的。。。想哭。。。覺得可怕。。更可怕的是我曾經也是這些人的幫凶
我現在拒絕一切動物製品。
窮
山裡人，對海鮮沒興趣。。。一次吃韓餐，辣白菜五花肉，突然吃出了肉腥味兒，於是戒豬肉了。。。接著到了某次吃牛排的時刻，又吃出了不可描述的味道，於是戒牛肉了。。。後來啊，外賣叫了只烤雞，吃了四分之一聞著烤雞的味道突然想吐。。。我不是什麼保護動物協會愛好者，也不是什麼養生協會資深會員，曾經的我無肉不歡，而現在的我依然以站在食物鏈頂端自豪，並奉行著及時行樂的生活準則，只是我的身體感官跟我說：你tm這輩子的肉吃到頭了！【心塞塞的。。。】
朋友們都勸我，讓我別吃素了，說不定我吃肉就能找到對象了。我就納悶了，難道我要找一個殺豬的女漢子
說一個偶然間聽到的吧。
一個妹子說她朋友原來養了只狗，後來病死了，太難過了就決定一年內吃素，後來一年過後覺得肉好難吃就徹底改成吃素了。。。
從小就不吃雞胸，魚以外的任何肉類。唯一吃的兩種肉類也談不上喜歡。
我決定吃素是在18歲時，至今已十年有餘。
家人在身邊的時候會啰嗦營養素之類的問題，自己生活之後才開始可以完全控制每天的菜譜。
我的大學天天就是吃食堂里最便宜的那些素菜度過的。
至於為什麼選擇吃素，應該沒有某個特定的契機。
最早的印象是在初中上課時解剖魚。每兩個人一組，每組分配到一條活魚。後來我對那節課的印象就是我從頭哭到尾，給我同組的同學添了不少麻煩。
大學報志願的時候，其實我非常想選擇生物相關的專業，想過一輩子投身於動植物保護。可看了課程設置，知道有解剖課的時候，就果斷放棄了生物這個夢想。
沒有多偉大，其實只是在逃避。
食素可以冠上很多政治正確的標籤，比如善良，比如環保減少碳排。但我知道即使沒有這些標籤，依然不會選擇肉食。
在煮白菜跟蒸螃蟹，在拔草跟殺豬，我真真切切在後者體會到更多痛苦。
雖然把情感投射到動物身上的共情聽起來是很不理智的，但社會化動物產生共情也不是什麼新的理論，願世間對食素者多一點理解。
我為什麼食素？其實就是讓自己心裡好過一點兒。
沒有嚴格食素，
僅僅因為難以下口
尤其是動物身體的明確部位
比如鴨脖，鴨舌，每次都會在腦中想，我咬了一截鴨脖子在嘴巴里
魚也不吃，看到魚就覺得怕，眼睛太可怕了
豬肉羊肉牛肉偶爾吃一點點還得看做法
其他肉吃的更少了
總之就是太丑了太接受不了是絕對不會吃的，心理原因和其他無關。
不吃不會是因為肉的味道，而是因為肉是這樣的肉
我為什麼要是乾淨素？重新面對這個問題，自己又有了進一步的認知。
2016年的1月6日，在心裡跟自己發願說從今天開始要食乾淨素，愣是沒有在哥哥面前說出來這個決定。那時怕自己不夠堅定，怕自己吃東西受阻礙，怕吃不到愛吃的壽司、麵包、奶油，擔心的理由一條接一條。回到自己一個人，還是盡量去克服，直到現在一切都過得很自然，擔心的問題也有了解決方法，真的不算什麼。
回到最初，為什麼走近素食？這要多謝我哥，源源不斷的給我傳播這顆種子，也多謝自己，對這件事情挺在意，和很多人一樣，知道吃素好，健康，對皮膚好，還不長胖…今年5月來到上海，這個問題的答案在我這裡得到了延伸深…
吃素是為了不殺生，吃素是為了遠離自己以往犯下的不好的因，而可能發生的果，吃素是為了讓自己靜心，心安，是為了讓自己排出毒素，一身輕鬆…
之前看過（地球公民）（萬物一體）電影的畫面全部真實記錄！萬物皆有靈，只是每個靈魂的面具不一樣，沒有哪個生命一生下來就該被吃掉。吃素最重要的一步就是守五戒！殺盜淫妄酒，每個靈魂都帶有情緒，他們被殺的時候那種絕望，害怕，恐懼，痛到骨子裡的聲音大概只有他們族人可以體會，殊不知我們把他們吃進肚子里，其實不是肉，是他們的怨恨和痛苦的一切，所有不好的負的東西，這樣的東西，你要靠什麼去代謝它？很老的一個廣告，「沒有買賣就沒有殺害」現在才明白這廣告的深意！我們人類喜歡自然死亡，動物也一樣，喜歡自然死亡。
吃素讓我明白了很多道理，最根本的因果關係，這個是我看了（俞凈意公遇灶神記）才恍然大悟，看完我就特別注意自己的言行舉止，我們人無時無刻都要為自己說過的話，做過的事承擔後果，這一刻你正在做的事情一定是有原由的，現在能做的，不去看過去，因為已經成過去，將來想變成什麼樣，現在必須重視起來。「預知前世因，今生受者是。預知來世果，今生做者是」有付出就一定有回報，這個付出好與不好它都會回報。你付出愛，就會得到愛，付出包容，就會被他人包容，你付出憎恨，就會被別人所憎恨… 你付出的是什麼得到的就是相對應的…不可小視。
吃素一段時間會讓你六根慢慢變得清靜，內心安靜，以前的我遇到點事情就會很躁動，心煩意亂，現在雖沒有達到那麼心靜，但是自己內心已經會刻意去不煩不燥，學會思考了，我想這就是進步…
很多人問我是不是信仰什麼佛，我想說我吃素不是為了信仰什麼，而是一種慈悲，尊重任何生命，雞鴨牛羊等等～同樣生命也會尊重你.
吃素一段時間朋友問我以後怎麼辦，總不能一直這樣，以後結婚了怎麼辦…真的，吃素讓我良心安穩，更加心安。讓人身心舒暢，一身輕鬆～為何要停止呢！？
天生不喜歡吃肉，說不清楚為什麼。
如果非要說出吃肉的不好的感覺，有這麼幾點：
1. 想到那些可愛的動物被屠宰，難過。
2. 看到生肉覺得血腥，噁心。
3. 做得不好的肉食要比素菜難吃的多。
4. 油膩。
天生的
成為習慣
覺得肉噁心
吃也噁心
味道也噁心
吃桌餐總是尷尬
斷奶之後從來沒有吃過一點肉，除了雞蛋，只要是會動的東西雞鴨魚鵝水裡的海里的天上飛的我都不吃，吃了就吐，噁心，吐。。。
身體還行，除了運動不好平時也不怎麼生病，抵抗力還不錯。
我也不知道我為啥不吃肉，斷奶之後開始學吃飯就不吃，一喂我我就吐。。。
炸雞之類的聞著覺得蠻香，但是熬的湯就會覺得很噁心。。。
好奇怪。。。是不是病呢。。。
just喜歡。不想把吃素一個再普通不過的行為提高到某些意義，譬如道德，譬如環保，譬如健康。
為了這些而拒絕吃肉然而內心渴望...個人覺得沒啥意思。想吃就吃唄。
不過可以先體驗一段時間素食，這樣可能會更清晰的知道自己到底喜歡的是什麼。
酒肉穿腸過，該是什麼就什麼。
人是雜食性的動物 不過因為有條件選擇才可以選擇吃什麼 我們進化到食物鏈的頂端 自己可以選擇吃什麼 別人也可以選擇吃什麼 吃肉吃素開心就好 宛如兩種宗教 不要想著洗腦別人吃什麼 最好了
有的人味覺比較敏感，對食物的味道分辨的很清楚，當他吃到打激素、吃藥的豬肉後會感受到那種臭味。我自己也能吃到肉的臭味，所以經常看到肉就感到噁心。
我吃素3年了，是因為肉類、魚類很不安全，而且吃肉吃多了身體是弱酸性的容易生病。
吃素這麼長時間，很少感冒，2年才感冒一次，身體很輕鬆，腿腳、腰背不容易酸，每天充滿活力，一天連續爬山走路7個多小時都不會覺得很累，而且原先經常長痘痘現在也沒有了，原先臉上的斑塊也淡了很多，原先天天口乾舌燥也不會了。
而且，吃素也是環保的，既能減少養殖動物所消耗的糧食，也能減少環境污染。
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