Point/counterpoint: Should you become vegetarian?

Image: Carnivore and Vegetarian

You definitely should try it

By Carlos Andrés Méndez 

Have you ever thought about going veggie? In trying something different? Well, this is time to give a yes for these questions. There are so many reasons to become a vegetarian. Some people choose to follow this type of diet due to becoming healthier, avoiding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or even because of more personal reasons such as religion, animal rights and environmental concerns. When you are completely sure about having this lifestyle you will have to choose which foods are you going to avoid and also come up with a plan to make sure that you receive all the nutrients and minerals your body needs.

One of the best reasons to become a vegetarian is simply that you will do the earth a favor. The production of pollution will decrease. However, is not even 0,001% the change you will make because of the amount of people found on earth, but the change has to start somewhere. Meat industry is having an extremely bad effect on the environment and according to US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), animal and chemical waste floods from factory farms caused an amount of 173,000 miles of polluted rivers and other contaminated water bodies. Proving that agricultural activities cause a rise in pollution including pesticides, plowing, fertilizing, constructed animal facilities, harvesting and irrigation.

Through different studies, researchers have found out that individuals who have a diet based on vegetables have lower blood pressure than the ones who eat meat. Plant foods are considered to be low on fats, sodium and cholesterol, which in fact can produce a positive effect on your blood pressure, helping to prevent sickness at an older age. Also, a lot of fruits and vegetables have a big concentration of potassium, which reduces blood pressure.

I really hope someday you try becoming a vegetarian or if you already are, congratulations, keep this healthy life.

You absolutely shouldn’t try it

By Daniela Campos Barbosa 

Nowadays people take the topic of diets and eating healthy seriously. But there are many things people don't know yet. So, this has created a lot of discussions about whether people have to be vegetarian or not. So here I am going to present the argument of the benefits of not being vegetarian.

Being vegetarian brings some health issues. Like for example insufficiency of iron. This creates anemia, (deleted) word a condition that affects the transportation of oxygen in the blood. Therefore, eating meat is essential for our lives.

Additionally, meat helps with the digestion of our bodies as it produces some amino acids that our body can’t produce (deleted words) by itself. Furthermore, eating meat doesn’t mean only red meat (change sentence), but also the chicken and fish, so taking these two meat more into account “The good fatty acids known as omega-3 in seafood keep the heart healthy and reduce the worry of cardiovascular malfunctions.” but fatty acids do not just help with the hearth health also helps with hardens your hair, it creates a protective layer on the skin that protects from the sun, and more important is that “ various fishes, promotes cognitive and brain growth. It helps to improve concentration and general functioning of the brain”. These types of benefits that meat give use are not known by people.

These are things that we don’t know but that is important before turning into a vegetarian person. A lot of people think that being vegetarian is the best lifestyle to have the best health, but it doesn’t, meat also has a really important role in our bodies as the iron that it’s better to consume it by the meat and not by supplements, also the growth of our brains, the protection of our skin. We can come to the conclusion that meat is essential for our daily lifestyles. That’s why people shouldn’t become a vegetarian as they can suffer health issues.