I and my two fellow intern reporters are interviewing Al at Good Earth in Fairfax, a market for organic, natural foods that aren’t GMOs. 

I ask Al how he would advise anyone who is going vegetarian for the first time what they should do. He says  that going vegetarian is the #1 best thing you could do for our planet. Cows cost the planet a lot of resources that are saved by eating vegetarian. Vegetarianism lessens your eco-footprint. Al says that at first a prospective vegetarian should gradually phase out all meat. Al found that when he was younger, he was a "meat and potatoes boy, then in my 20s I had a realization and stopped eating meat."
Then I ask whether he thinks Vegetarianism is a social or personal thing.  Al believes It could be both, but he thinks it is more of a societal thing because the American society is very meat based. I think that it is personal because unless you were raised with vegetarians, then you don’t grow up being a vegetarian.
To lighten the atmosphere, I ask what is his favorite food is in the store. I am interested because for many people, health food can be intimidating. Al says he really likes the wok prepared food because it has so many varieties of things to put in, from vegetables to meat. He also likes to eat the salads, big green ones, every day. In fact, he lost weight that he had gained on a vacation eating mainly those salads.

Vegetarianism and veganism are my favorite "causes" because I am one of them and also because it helps the environment.  Eating meat contributes to greenhouse gases and has been linked to cancer, heart disease, and many other diseases like gout. Vegetarians and vegans have been shown to live longer and have reduced risk of diseases by studies from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. For those who can’t live without meat, there are fake meats available that taste like the real thing.
A study by Harvard showed that regular meat consumption raised colon cancer risk by 300 percent. In today’s world of high cancer, diabetes, and heart disease rates there may seem that there is nothing to do to prevent these. What many people don’t know is that there is a way to avoid these diseases. The journal Cancer, Epidemology, Biomarkers, and Prevention,  did a recent study where they looked at  69,000 people  for  more than four years, finding that vegans had a sixteen percent decreased risk of all cancers. Dr Caldwell Esselstyn published a book on how to defeat heart disease permanently, citing his twelve year study on critical heart disease patients who were in such poor physical condition that they could not walk the length of a city block without needing to sit down. All of the members of the study reversed their heart disease in less than a year on a vegan diet.    Other studies have shown that  non meat eaters are forty percent less likely to develop cancer than meat eaters.

On the environment, vegetarians and vegans have much less of an impact than meat eaters. Cows that are later rendered into beef and hamburgers are one of the greatest causes of methane levels in the atmosphere. Methane is a recognized contributor to global warming and climate change. Farmed animals including pigs are the top consumers of water in the US according to PETA- that is more water than the city of Los Angeles which is in a desert. Being Vegetarian or Vegan  means that you will not contribute to the crisis of global warming, be less at risk of cancer, and live longer.

Blog by Sarah Denis, EarthScope Reporter