Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

[binary solo]

hershel_layton said:

Over the summer I've been working on my eating habits, and I've started to see more and more online articles about vegetarian and vegan diets. 

 

Just curious, but for anyone who is a vegetarian/vegan(or tried to be one), do you think it's worth the sacrifices that are made(i.e no meat and whatnot)?

 

If being a vegetarian improves my life, I'll probably do over a course of one month. Won't be young forever, so it's smart for me to plan for the future.

If you are looking to improve your diet, and maybe lose weight, you're going to have to make sacrifices of some kind. But also don;t make the mistake of believing that if you go vegetarian or vegan you are going to be healthier. As an experiment I adopted a vegan diet for about 3 months, but I was totally open to eating junk food, as long as there was no animal product in it, like potato chips, and dark chocolate. Just to see if merely cutting out animal products would cause me to lose weight or feel better.

it had 3 interesting effects:

1) I found myself not missing the animal products I really like, at all. I didn't miss chicken or hamburgers or cheese. Not a bit, not even on day 1. This was mostly because I allowed myself to eat "vegan" junk food which meant I was able to indulge in food vices. And vegan pizza done right is really good.

2) I had voluminous and glorious poop. Damn it was marvelous. Perfect consistency and plenty of it, it really made me feel I was cleaning out the waste. That experience alone makes it almost worth it.

3) I gained weight. I kind of expected to gain weight. But it is proof that you can't simply become vegan or vegetarian and expect to see benefits in terms of weight. You still have to manage your diet with weight in mind, if that's one of the reasons you are considering the change.

Over all, I could easily see myself adopting a mostly vegan diet if I was living alone. My wife and son don't want to adopt a mostly vegan diet and I can't be arsed with the hastle of managing different dietary demans in one household. As someone who is not philosophically opposed to the consumption of animal products I would never be a totally strict vegan or vegetarian. If I'm going out for a meal or going to a friend's for dinner I would probably just go with the flow.

I do think animal products are a bigger drain on the earth's resources and a much less efficient way of propducing food than eating plant products only. So significantly reducing your consumption of animal products is better for sustainability and for an ever growing population to be able to adequately feed itself in the long term.