VEGETARIANISM IS VERY GOOD AND NEEDED

by: Alda Salviana

Vegetarian is the name of the people that only eat vegetables and do not eat the food that made of meat, bird, ducks, chickens, seafood, and eggs. Vegetarianism is the life and the eat-style. Now, vegetarianism has become a life style of lots of people around the world. There are some types of vegetarianism, there are semi vegetarianism that consumed only vegetables and ‘white meat’ (fowls, eggs, and less of seafood), the second one is vegetarianism with egg, and the last is pure vegetarianism that only consumed vegetables. Vegetarianism is very good and we need to be vegetarian, at least we can learn not to eat ‘red meat’ (cows, sheep, goat and pigs), and why it is so important to do? Well, there are so many reasons about that. The biggest reasons are vegetarianism gives us many benefits more than the disadvantages one. The benefits are; vegetarianism is healthy for physically and mentally, cheaper than non-vegetarian one, and even more, vegetarianism can reduce global warming also.

Vegetarianism is very healthy not only physically but also mentally. Many people think that vegetarianism is not healthy enough because people think that we will get lack of nutrients like protein, vitamins, and get sick because of that. Well, those perceptions are wrong. In fact, protein that needed for child 0-6 age is just 10gr, for a man is 25gr, and for a woman 48gr per day, and those protein can fulfilled by vegetables, like soybean, tempe, and tofu. One slice of tempe (4x1x1 cm) is enough to fulfilled our protein need and it provides vitamin B12 also. More over, with eat more vegetables and less of meat can decrease the risk of cholesterol, heart coroner, osteoporosis, and hypertension. Because vegetarians eat vegetables more than meat so, besides they get healthy body, but also can get slimmer. Besides physically, vegetarianism is good for our mental too. It can help us to control our emotion. Vegetarianism can help us to be patient and care more about world and animals’ life. For examples, vegetarian must not eat meet, so they control their emotion and be patient for not eat meat, then they care about animal’s life more than before, because they already realize that animals have a life too.

People know that vegetarianism is cheaper than non-vegetarian one. We can see that when we buy 500gr of meat, we can buy more vegetables in the same cost. To eat three times a day, vegetarians spend less of money than non-vegetarian one, because vegetarians just eat vegetables and add some eggs, they do not need meat as their first food. We also know that 1 tempe is cheaper than 100gr meat of course. The little disadvantage is just maybe we get bored because there are not enough variant of vegetarian food, but sometimes we can also buy vegetarian food (like meat but made from vegetables), or we can make vegetarian food by our self or from the recipe, so we will not get bored with vegetarian food.

Many people do not realize that become vegetarian can help to reduce global warming. Now, many vegetarian associations persuade people to become vegetarian because they concern about global warming. FAO said that 1/5 gasses of green house effect are come from breeding animals’ fesses. The fesses contain NO2, CO2, and other gasses that may harm our earth and can increase global warming, it is more then the pollution from cars and motorcycles. Vegetarian can reduce those gasses effect until 50% (more ore less 1.2 ton of CO2 a year), it is more effective than to reduce the use of cars and motorcycle. More over, based on the research, 1ham (hamburger) uses 1.5-7.2 m² rainforest. The forests are cutting down to make a barn field. So, imagine if one man eats 1kg ham a week, how many forests will be cutting down? Slowly but sure, our rainforest will be end.

In short, based on the fact above, I can say that vegetarianism is very good for us, because vegetarianism not only make us healthy but also can reduce global warming and save our earth. So, why don’t we try to be vegetarian? At least we can eat more vegetables and less of meat, we can try from not eat meet and we can change it with eggs and fish.