• I find it easier to eat less harmful fat being a vegetarian
• I find it easier to eat more "fiber", vitamins, minerals and other good nutrients, being a vegetarian
• vegetarianism has been associated with being at lower risk for many health problems and cancers (provided that the vegetarians maintain a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet of course)
• although fatty, poor quality meat can be cheap, buying healthy vegetarian foods is almost always significantly less expensive than buying high quality meat-based foods, particularly in restaurants
• by being lower on the food chain, and avoiding eating the flesh and fats of animals (which have accumulated many toxic substances and unnatural amounts of hormones, antibiotics, etc. over the animal's lifetime) I am exposing my body to fewer unnatural, possibly harmful biologically active chemicals and toxic substances.

  When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings. -William Clifford Roberts, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Cardiology -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

• In our culture, much of the meat eaten is "processed", so you really don't know what part of the animal you're eating, or how that animal was raised and slaughtered. Vegetarian food tends to be closer to its roots - more like its natural state. It is easier to trace a vegetable back to where it was produced, and know you are getting a wholesome food without strange chemicals added.
• Dead animals decay quickly. In order to keep meat from decaying, it has to be processed very carefully, or preserved using chemicals or certain sterilization processes. Vegetables don't need that kind of special treatment. You're much less likely to get food poisoning from a vegetarian diet.

• by being lower on the food chain, I am not contributing to the very wasteful practice of raising livestock. Although some domestication of animals may be necessary for human survival, most people leading typical "american" or "western" lifestyles eat far more meat, dairy and protein than they need to to be healthy. Livestock consume water, grains, and require pasture. Of the grains that are fed to an animal, only about 1% of that energy makes it into the meat people eat. What a waste! Water and grains could be used much more efficiently to feed people directly, and pasture could be returned to its wild state. If most of the land that is currently used for pasture or growing food to feed livestock allowed to return to its natural state, it would have a dramatic effect on our national and global landscape and the habitats of many animals, plants and fish, many of which are threatened and endangered. It could eliminate the need to destroy old-growth and precious rainforests, which ruins places like Madagascar, and many parts of Central and South America, transforming a lush forest into a moonscape in just a few years. Even the reefs and other sealife are decimated when run-off hits the oceans.

  If we didn't need to raise so many cattle, millions of acres of old growth forests and rainforests could be spared. Clearing land for pasture, logging and inappropriate farming is a quick way to rob all future generations of an irreplacable part of our biological diversity and heritage, all for a few bucks. For more information, I encourage you to read this document and others. Also, here is a citation I found on Medline for an interesting article about this.

• although I acknowledge that most living things kill other living things in order to eat, I don't believe in raising and killing animals wastefully when there are healthier, easier and more efficient alternatives. I refuse to eat the flesh of an animal that died after minutes or hours of suffering (think - fish often suffocate slowly on a heap on a boat or are torn apart by seines, animals are often hung, shot, slain and bled, shellfish and crustaceans are boiled alive, shall I go on?) when it is wholly unnecessary. If I needed to eat animals to survive, I would. I don't, so why should I? How could I consider myself a responsible living citizen of this planet, if I stole the lives of others, for no reason? How far away from this is murder?

You must become the change you wish to see in others. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

I don't think this makes me a hipocrite. I would like to help needy children, but I'm not going to adopt all the children in Vermont who need homes. I'd like to feed the hungry. I'm not taking the next plane to a famine area to help people, but I do give a percentage of my income to charities that do just that. I'd like to save what's left of the wilderness, in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and everywhere.. yet I'm not out there tying myself to a tree or campaigning against the superpowers.

I do what I can, what is within my means. I think that threshold is different for different people. For some, they may give money to an organization, and then spend the rest of their lives working against it or voting against it without even knowing it. For some, they may give up red meat, or try to buy organic food whenever possible. Some people may choose to eat vegetarian 4 nights a week, or never have meat for lunch. Some folks may volunteer at a local non-profit organization, or sponsor activities they believe in. Some may join the Peace Corps, and some may indeed be on the next plane, and live and breathe their cause. I think that much could be accomplished by encouraging everyone to take steps they feel comfortable with, and trying to live for what they believe in, in a long-term, sustainable way.

Here are some random unsorted links having to do with vegetarianism:

• Northern American Vegetarian Society
• Veggies Unite!
• What is vegetarian eating?, a basic introduction
• Vegetarian Diets for Infants and Young Children
• Cooking Advice for New (or Hungry) Vegetarian/Vegans
• Vitamin chart from the Canadian Diabetes Association
• commercial scare-tactic based mineral (element) chart
• Protein Myths
• Frequently Asked Questions about vegetarianism
• EnviroLink
• One person's threshold on animal rights
• Vegetarian info from a Dietetics Department at Burnaby Hospital, B.C., CA.
• Vegitarianism, Good Idea, or Not?
• Food For Thought, chapter 10 of The Secrets of the Sphinx, an undescribably odd book

There are a zillion other sources of information on vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, recipes, reasons for practicing, guidelines, and nutritional requirements. Pick your favorite web search engine and go at it!