One of my favorite movies is “Julie and Julia” with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. I love this movie and to be perfectly honest, who doesn’t love a movie that completely revolves around food? In the movie Adams’ character decides to spend an entire year cooking her way through Julia Child’s French cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Each day she tries her hand at recreating French cuisine, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.
At the beginning of this semester, I remembered this movie and thought how fun it would be to do my own little challenge. While I had no desire to try to conquer the art of French cooking, I did want to challenge myself to eat an entire vegetarian diet for one semester. I had done it before, but only to avoid having to eat the mystery meat in the cafeteria. This time I wanted to do it to challenge myself to a healthier lifestyle.
Then came the girl’s night out at Chili’s and the honey chipotle chicken. You see where this is going.
So my vegetarian ways fell to the wayside. I failed the challenge and due to my weakness, PETA will continue to target their campaigns toward people like me. That being said, I have challenged myself to eat meat only twice a week, a challenge that I have been successful at thus far.
According to Vegetariantimes.com, 7.3 million Americans are vegetarians, 22.8 million are vegetarian-inclined (that’s me) and only one million are completely vegan. It seems to be a growing trend.
So why are people trading in their 100 percent farm-bred angus beef patties for veggie patties? Well, statistics show that 47 percent of vegetarians eat a vegetarian diet because of their concerns for the environment, 39 percent for natural approaches to wellness, 31 percent for food-safety concerns, 25 percent for weight-loss and 24 percent to try to maintain weight.
According to a study done in 1998 by researchers at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Oxford, England, vegetarians were found to have a 24 percent lower risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease than people who ate meat.
Also, vegetarian diets are lower in saturated fats, which the Center for Disease Control advises to avoid since saturated fats have been linked to chronic disease, specifically coronary heart disease.
If that is not enough to persuade you to put down your chicken leg, nutraingredients.com says men who eat vegetarian diets live an average of 9.5 years longer than meat devouring males, along with vegetarian women living an average of 6.1 years longer. Sounds like a legitimate reason to me to change one’s diet.
So while I may not be a go-green-save-the-rain-forest hippie, I do have enough sense to try to take care of myself. I may not have enough willpower in me to completely give up meat yet, but I am off to a better start.
