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01-24-2006, 12:31 AM
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Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism is the practice of not eating meat, including beef, poultry, or their by-products, with or without the use of dairy products or eggs. The exclusion may also extend to products derived from animal carcasses, such as lard, tallow, gelatin, rennet and cochineal. Some who follow the diet also choose to refrain from wearing products that involve the death of animals, such as leather, silk, feather, and fur. It should be noted that although many vegetarians abstain from all animal by-products, others make exceptions in their diet and attire. Vegetarians may consume dairy products; a stricter diet is veganism and the strictest is fruitarianism.
Vegetarianism has been common in the Indian subcontinent, since possibly the 2nd millennium BC for spiritual reasons, such as ahimsa (nonviolence) and reducing bad karmic influences. Hinduism preaches that it is the ideal diet for spiritual progress and Jainism, which claims between eight to ten million adherants, enjoins all its followers to be vegetarian. Buddhist monks of Mahayana school have also historically practiced vegetarianism. In looking for parallels in Jewish and Christian antiquity for these practices, some Christian vegetarians feel a kinship with Nazirite, Essene and Ebionite practices. Many Hindu scriptures advocate the diet. The secular literature of Tirukural in Tamil Nadu, India, proclaimed over 2000 years ago: "Perceptive souls who have abandoned passion will not feed on flesh abandoned by life. How can he practise true compassion, he who eats the flesh of an animal to fatten his own flesh?" Vegetarians in Europe used to be called "Pythagoreans" [2], after the philosopher Pythagoras and his followers, who abstained from meat in the 6th century BC. These people followed a vegetarian diet for nutritional and ethical reasons. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Pythagoras said: "As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." In 1847, the first Vegetarian Society in Ramsgate, England, agreed that a "vegetarian" — from the Latin uegetus "lively", and suggestive of the English word "vegetable" — was a person who refuses to consume flesh of any kind. Seventh-Day Adventists and Rastafarians, denominations founded in the 19th and 20th centuries, are also frequently vegetarian. African Hebrew Israelites only eat an organic vegetarian diet that also excludes dairy products such as milk. Recent trends Indian vegetarians, primarily lacto-vegetarians, are estimated to make up more than 70% of the world's vegetarians. They make up 20 to 30% of the population in India, while occasional meat-eaters make up another 30%. [4] Most Asian countries had a predominantly vegetarian diet until the past few decades, when increasing industrialization and westernization changed that. A famous vegetarian group is the Hunzas that reside near the Himalayas. These people are believed to live to be over a 100 years old and have an exclusively vegetarian diet. In the Western world, the popularity of vegetarianism steadily grew over the 20th century as a result of nutritional, ethical, and more recently, environmental concerns. In the U.S., as of 2000, 2.5 to 3% said they never eat meat [5], which may mean they are vegetarian, while 5 to 6% said they do not eat meat [6]. This represents an increase over the last decade [7] and a great increase since 1950 when vegetarianism was very rare, although per-capita meat consumption has increased considerably since then, as the price of meat has fallen due to factory farming, and the average income has risen. 
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