An Experiment in Scotch

In this day and age of increas­ing obe­sity, poor health and gen­uine con­cern for our envi­ron­ment, I”m con­stantly sur­prised that more peo­ple aren”t turn­ing to veg­e­tar­i­an­ism as a way to address these issues. Given our evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory, it seems to me that veg­e­tar­i­an­ism is more likely to be advan­ta­geous to our phys­i­cal well-being and some­thing that more closely resem­bles the evo­lu­tion­ary envi­ron­ment in which we devel­oped. In this essay, I hope to con­vince you that veg­e­tar­i­an­ism is a viable dietary lifestyle and one that will lead to a greater under­stand­ing of vegetarianism.

First, a def­i­n­i­tion or two: Veg­e­tar­i­ans do not eat meat, fish, and poul­try. Veg­ans take things one step fur­ther, abstain­ing from eat­ing or uti­liz­ing any ani­mal prod­uct. In my expe­ri­ence, veg­ans make their choices more on a moral or eth­i­cal basis, while veg­e­tar­i­ans tend to be going meat­less for more self­ish, healthy rea­sons. I am actu­ally a lacto-ovo veg­e­tar­ian.

Coro­nary heart dis­ease remains the lead­ing cause of death in the United States and because a veg­e­tar­ian diet has been shown to lower the inci­dence of coro­nary heart dis­ease, the health ben­e­fits of mak­ing a switch to a veg­e­tar­ian diet are unques­tion­able. Lower inci­dences of obe­sity and dia­betes are also tied directly to a veg­e­tar­ian diet.

One of the dif­fi­cul­ties that peo­ple have in switch­ing to a veg­e­tar­ian diet is actu­ally find­ing options to the meat they might be used to hav­ing, espe­cially in a restau­rant set­ting. How­ever, these days it is highly com­mon to find mul­ti­ple veg­e­tar­ian options on almost any menu that you run into as the mar­ket has proven to retail­ers that this sege­ment of the pop­u­la­tion is growing.

Over­all, as we become more in tune with our body and make more con­certed attempts to increase our health and our well-being, I believe that veg­e­tar­i­an­ism will become preva­lent through­out our society.