It is highly probable that anybody reading this column is, or knows someone who is, a vegetarian of some sort. A decade ago, that likely wouldn’t have been the case, but deciding to go meat free has become an increasingly popular choice. Restaurants and grocery stores are responding with new products and menu choices that appeal to the changing appetites of their clientele. Inevitably, the question that soon follows a change in eating habits is why and what exactly does it mean to “go veg”? The answer to these questions may surprise, confuse, and perhaps even inspire you.

The main reason why the eating of meat has become the target of environmentalists is really quite simple. Depending on the type of animal and the conditions that it was raised, it takes many times more energy to produce a unit of food from an animal than from grains or vegetables. So, for example, if you wanted to get one pound of beef, you would have to feed the cow over 30 pounds of food and provide several hundred litres of water, not to mention invest the years that it could take until that product becomes available for consumption. Thus, if you actually ate lower on the food chain, it would be a more efficient use of resources since instead of feeding all of that grain and water to a cow or a pig, you could actually feed it to people.

In addition, bovine flatulence released from a cow’s nether regions is a significant greenhouse gas, while the concentrated waste of large factory farms can be hard to dispose of and forested land that is cleared for pastures contributes to deforestation. All of this combined makes it obvious that meat and meat production is a very costly and inefficient use of our food and land. When we live in a world where literally millions of people are starving, it is hard to justify most large scale meat production.

Additional reasons to avoid some or all meat products range from health aspects, to ethical considerations, to even cost considerations. Because most meat that is sold these days comes from large factory farms that emphasize size and production over health and wellness, the beef, chicken, pork, and fish that you are buying is often raised in conditions that many would find troubling. The fact is the local farmer with a few head of cattle and a couple of chickens is not the likely supplier of the patty in your fast food hamburger.

Generally, meat tends to be more expensive than grains or vegetables and there are certainly questions about disease and medications that can be prevalent in the meat industry. Mad cow disease, E. coli outbreaks and bovine growth hormone, to name a few, are just some of the recent issues that have plagued and exposed the problems that can be associated with raising and processing animals for consumption. As a result, for any of the above reasons, more and more people are reducing some or all of their meat consumption.

But not all vegetarians are the same. Depending on the reasons and the depth of your conversion, you will be further subdivided into vegetarian sub-categories. Red meat vegetarians don’t eat red meat (obviously), but still eat fish, chicken, milk, and eggs. Pescatarians eat only fish. Vegans eat no animal products at all (including milk products) while vegetarians don’t eat any kind of meat but often still eat cheese and other animal-related products. Frontier vegetarians eat only wild meat, while raw food activists only eat uncooked vegetables.

Generally speaking, switching to a vegetarian diet for most people is simply a matter of personal choice. Human beings are naturally omnivores, but there really is no reason why a normal, healthy person needs to have meat in their diet. As long as you eat healthy with a variety of choices from a variety of different food groups, it is easy to get all the nutrients, calories, vitamins and yes even protein from a vegetarian diet, although it does require a little more work and time to make sure that you are getting everything you need. In fact there are many places in the world (like parts of India) where most of the population is vegetarian.

Like any movement, vegetarianism has a variety of levels of commitment. Even those who have made a choice to eat less or no meat question each others beliefs and values. More moderate voices recognize that making a choice to move to a vegetarian diet is a difficult one made even more problematic if you live in a small town or any distance from a large urban centre or don’t have the time to carefully plan your daily and weekly menu. Some vegetarians choose to be more militant in their beliefs and berate others who do not share their values and mock those that can’t or won’t completely cut out meat and meat products from their diets.

However, organizations like the Suzuki Foundation are more understanding. While not shying away from encouraging people to go to a plant-based diet, their idea is to focus on trying to build understanding and support by simply challenging everyone to just eat one less meat-based meal a week. Like so many ecological issues, if everyone just did something, regardless of how small, the exponential effect would have a huge impact.

The information and reasoning behind the value of a vegetarian diet is extensive and hard to dismiss. The production of meat has changed from the idyllic family farm raising a few animals on a pasture to a factory farm run like a business with thousands of animals in concentrated feedlots. It is time that we all stopped and considered the fact that, by simply changing our diet, we could start to do our part to live in a more ecologically responsible way.