Well, I guess the overwhelming number of us in support of Meatless Mondays were expecting a column like Nate Rushing’s Thursday’s column sooner or later.
To begin with, a meat-based diet can be arguably extremely unhealthy, unnecessary and inefficient, and the benefits from a vegan or vegetarian diet can, and for the most part do, outweigh those of a meat-based diet. Meatless Monday promotes all the benefits of a vegetarian diet, many of which a large majority of students were previously unaware.
Just to clarify a few points, the Meatless Mondays movement does not say a meat-based
diet is completely unhealthy. The movement is saying a vegetarian diet has more health benefits. Multiple studies have concluded a vegetarian diet can result in a lower body mass index as well as lesser chance of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, various forms of cancer and even Alzheimer’s disease.
A vegetarian or vegan diet also contains all the essential vitamins and minerals needed, including B-12, which can be found in cereals, some vegetables and soy foods.
As for “cutting out the middle man,” a cow’s diet under natural circumstances is grass-based, but in the factory farming conditions where your meat is produced, a cow is not fed a grass-based diet. Instead they find the cheapest feed available, which in most cases is corn.
Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gases than automobiles and livestock farming pollutes the water more than all other activities combined.
There are many universities across the country that already implement some form of Meatless Monday, including Yale, Columbia, Harvard and Johns Hopkins University.
UF deserves to join these prestigious universities in this initiative.
It is the goal of the Meatless Monday campaign to bring healthy dietary choices to the UF campus while giving students the ethical and sustainable food they deserve.
Editor's note: This letter refers to this column.
