Just 2 weeks ago a vegetarian told me that fish displays no emotion so its okay to eat. Same with eggs....to me an animal is an animal, whether running or swimming, its a life and its ridiculous for us to say that we shouldn't eat animals......UNLESS, they are being tortured from birth to death just so we can taste "good food", or they never see daylight, are used as worthless products for profits and are treated as if they don't deserve to live unless they serving us for some reason.
Just want to add something else......MOST vegetarians are EXTREMELY unhealthy people due to what they eat. Most vegetarians actually eat
very little veggies and think that excluding meat from ones diet makes you vegetarian by default - I was one of them. What happens for most, is that we drop out the meat products and add in extra other stuff to make up the difference, like, bread, pasta, cheese, sugar, chips, etc.....This was a long journey for me.
I have been vegetarian for about 3 years then, went over to veganism for a long while, then went to over to raw food for a while, etc.....and in the end, just decided to drop all the labelling. I can tell everyone on here that eating about a 60%-70% raw fruit and veg diet made me feel the biggest difference of all the above diets (this is what I strive for in terms of diet). More energy, better overall mood, no tired spells after lunch, more energy, easy waking up in the morning, no more joint pains in the morning, and did I mention more energy :-)....also there's no guilt that animals had to SUFFER for your plate. If they weren't suffering, Id probably have some meat occasionally, but I would never support the practice that's happening everywhere now, including South Africa.
I would advise those wanting to go "veg", to do so but know that changing your diet and becoming vegetarian is only the 1st step towards becoming healthier as you will later learn that its not what label you are that makes you healthier. You can be vegetarian and order 2 portions of extra large frys from Mc Donalds and that's what a lot of vegetarians still do. I changed over because of animal right reasons and not for health and I'm glad I did, eventually, with all the learning and switching diets, degenerative diseases, become nothing more than a choice once you know why and what to eat.
As for benefits.....there's one big one......
You gradually embody, a different body and your thinking changes......and eventually you realise that its not about diet at all but your life actually changes because you are living closer to nature. Your daily choices change, and the world you experience around you all change for the better. You literally feel physically different and react to situations differently. Your body isn't trying to clean up the mess you swallowed for lunch anymore so you start healing from within and this can be felt. There's practically no heated oils in you body, no cholesterol and lots of water based alkaline veg to neutralize the acid in your blood. You will notice you skin become soft and smooth again (can be noticed within 24hours by just adding 3 glasses of wheatgrass powdered drink to you daily diet on an empty stomach - or any other alkaline drink) - you will literally see and feel a difference in your skin within 1 day if you drink this thrice a day on an empty stomach.
The switch for me was a back and forth movement - It takes a while to get off your addictions and I still see how far I can push it sometimes (chocolate/sugar addiction).
There is also a lot of mis-info on the web. Nuts are not really good for us and very hard to digest unless its soaked overnight to get rid of the inhibitors. Soy is poison, and all the other so called health options, aren't really healthy - gojis and cacao included although I still eat them. You will discover that you left the meat eating box and just got into the Vegetarian box, still being told by the Health boards in different magazines or internet, what a vegetarian should eat and what not to. When I started out, I thought nuts and soy were good and used them as a replacement to get protein. I was so wrong....and just to give an example of a 60 - 70% raw diet, this is what I had for the entire day yesterday, I usually don't have a structured time to eat anymore because the food is quick to prepare.......I was off work so I did eat a lot more than usual though.
Before Breakfast: Glass of Structured water mixed with powder wheat grass + Orange (STRUCTURED WATER COSTS R35 FOR 14 liters)
Breakfast : Cooked oats with brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, goji berries
Snack : Bananas + kiwi + orange + seeds (pumpkin, sesame and almonds(the only alkaline nut)
Lunch : Raw Choc smoothie (3Bananas, 1orange, 1apple, tbsp Raw cacao, tbsp vanilla essence, tbsp raw organic peanut butter, a few dates, glass of water, handful of soaked almonds) - for a chocoholic, this is the best lunch ever, the ingrediants make around 3 to 4 glasses of drink.
Snack : Dates, goji berries, apple (seed mix)
Dinner : Raw green salad (Lettuce, tomato, dates, radish, lots of mushrooms, dried chillies, cayenne pepper, yellow, green and red pepper, carrots, lots of avo, cilantro, mixed herbs, thyme, oregano.)....and salad dressing which is made by mixing 1 part raw unfiltered apple cider viniger with 1 part olive oil.
This is roughly what I have daily + usually have 2 glasses of fresh veg juice during the day, either bought or made at home.
To anyone interested, here's a link to some very good info.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRFl4ERBOrs
Sorry for going way off topic.