Odds are that you are not a vegetarian.  True, it is much easier to find vegetarian and vegan restaurants (particularly on the coasts) than ten years ago, supermarkets now regularly display meat substitutes next to the traditional deli, and even Burger King offers a veggie burger.  Still, the real numbers of vegetarians appears to be quite miniscule.  There is very little reliable research on the proportion of vegetarians in the United States, but most statistical parsing sets it at about 3%...not exactly a revolution.

Perhaps owing to this minority status it is, maybe not surprisingly, common to encounter omnivores (and even many herbivores) that do not fully understand the tenets, lifestyle, or principles of vegetarianism.  While the fundamental principle is pretty well understood (i.e., don’t eat meat), even this can be sketchy; does fish count as meat?;  Why exactly don’t you eat meat?; Can you survive on plants alone?  I had a conversation with Dr. Terri Lisagor about the details of vegetarianism.  This is meant as a very basic primer to the justifications and options available to a vegetarian.

The motivations given by vegetarians tend to generalize into three main branches; health, environment, and ethics (the argument is often made that vegetarian diets are also cheaper, but this point is not so cut and dry).  While the reasons are clearly more varied and nuanced than this, so are the actual “vegetarian lifestyles” lived by people.  There are many classifications of vegetarianism; vegan, lacto, ovo, lacto-ovo, strict vegetarianism, pescetarianism, and multiple combinations thereof.

Vegetarianism as a general phrase can mean simply that someone eats only vegetables, but it usually includes dairy, whey, fish, and other animal-based products like gelatin.  Lacto vegetarian specifies that dairy is included, while ovo-vegetarians eat eggs.  Lacto-ovo, of course, includes both, while pescetarians accommodate fish into their diets.  Vegans adhere to diets that are strictly free of animal products altogether; this is the most difficult of these dietary disciplines.  Combinations of these diets are extremely frequent, with varying health effects.

The last fifty years have seen the discussion of whether an all-vegetable diet is health, shift to one of how exactly to take advantage of the health benefits.  The vegetarian diet is approved by the American Heart Association and the American Dietetic Association consider a vegetarian diet adequate for proper nutrition.  Meat-based diets are statistically more likely to produce hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and food poisoning.  Combined with exercise, a vegetarian diet produces lower blood cholesterol levels, blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and mortality.  In addition, the mystery of exactly what constitutes meat in popular food is a concern for many who, as the popularity of organic foods is rising, are interested to know exactly what they are eating.

The environment is increasingly found to be affected directly by livestock.  The volume of methane released from farm animals and their waste  now exceedsthat of automobiles in the United States, and top the list of the EPA’s statistics on emissions.  The land use and water systems utilized in maintaining city-sized populations of animals slated for slaughter also have a deleterious environmental effect.

The nutritional soundness  of a vegetarian diet and environmental impact of the meat industry buttress the justification of vegetarians motivated on ethical grounds.  For many vegetarians, the treatment of animals in factory farms is appalling enough to justify boycotting the industry.  Chicken farms that grow oversized chickens and stuff them into undersized cages, pigs that eat their dead, and so on.  Additionally, the increasing likelihood of eating genetically modified meats has curbed many people’s consumption of flesh.

The meat industry is viewed as miscreant by much of the vegetarian and vegan communities, and much is said about the relationship between the government and the meat industry lobby.  Subsidies for meat and farm products have outstripped the government-approved diet.

However, agro-giants like Montsanto are also on the bad side of vegetarians because of very aggressive promotion and use of genetically modified seed stock.

Combinations of  these and many other reasons motivate vegetarians to change or maintain their diets.  Such a small minority of dietary preference is still supported by an ever-growing and increasingly popular industry of vegetarian restaurants.  While new restaurants are springing up all the time, some have been around for some time.  Here is a profile on one of my favorites, Leonor’s in North Hollywood.  If you don’t happen to live in one of the vegetarian-friendly regions, you can also cook uop some veggies for yourself.  Here are some suggestions.