Vegetarian Diets - Essay Example

In looking at the dietary construction of a vegetarian lifestyle, the purpose of the choice is as important as the results of that choice. The choice to avoid animal products can have benefits to the body and also contribute positively to the environmental impact that processing animal products has on the Earth. There are categories of vegetarianism in which food choices are eliminated according to the decisions that an individual makes about their eating habits. Maurer defines a lifestyle that still includes some animal products such as fish and dairy as a semi-vegetarian lifestyle.

An ovo-lacto vegetarian will not consume fish, but still consume eggs and dairy. A vegan will eat nothing that comes from animals and limit their intake to those products that come from plant life. Vegans will typically not use any product that comes from an animal for any purpose in their life, including wearing clothing that has an animal based textile. The choice to be vegan is very often as much a social choice as it is a nutritional choice. Becoming fully vegan is very difficult in the modern world as even something as simple as a magazine will use gluten as a part of the process of creating the photographs within its pages (Maurer xxi).

Maurer contends that vegetarianism should become social because vegetarian groups are essential to having the latest information on ways in which animal products are used in daily life. Although the social issues that surround vegetarianism are important, Maurer states that “In North America, most people begin the path to vegetarianism for health reasons” (4). She further quotes from a study done by Yankelovich, Clancy and Shulman conducted in 1992 in which 46% of those interviewed chose vegetarianism for health reasons, 15% for animal rights reasons, 12 percent for other ethical reasons, and the remaining for