英语口语-素食主义者.doc

A: Hey, dude! What are you looking at?B:Hey,nice to meet you! I am reading a magazine about vegetarians. Are you a vegetarian?A: Yes I am!C:Why?A:First, Health concerns: A vegetarian diet can be a balanced diet filled with nutritious vegetables which can be alkaline-forming and health-building. Harvard researched the eating habits of 110,000 adults for over 20 years found that a one 3-ounce serving of red meat daily was associated with a 13 percent greater chance of dying over the course of the study. A vegetarian diet can reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. Second, Spiritual reasons: Commitment to non-violent food; not supporting the killing and suffering of animals. Hinduism and Buddhism hold vegetarianism as an ideal way to promote nonviolence and spiritual fulfillment. Seventh Day Adventists and Jains are vegetarians. Seventh Day Adventists are among the healthiest people in the world today.Third, Personal choice: Sometimes for no explainable reason, a person just finds that they simply do not want to eat meat. Whenever they see it they have no interest in eating it so they never include it in their meals.Finally, Food safety: Close to 5,000 Americans die of food-borne diseases every year. Food poisoning is mostly from animal products. Factory farms, slaughterhouses, and meat packing plants are extremely unsanitary places.B: I dont want to be a vegetarian. The main reason is because I like meat more than I like vegetable. There are some other reasons such as, I dont think vegetarian is health. It is hard to stay health as a vegetarian. You have to constantly reminding yourself to take the nutrition that is lacking from the vegetables. Another reason would be because I think it is not easy to be a vegetarian. Not every restaurants provide vegetarian meals. A lot of times, vegetarian end up stay home for most of their meals. Especially when you are traveling or out of the town, you dont always know where do they provide vegetarian meals. And are you a vegetarian?C:Yes,there are some reasons that support me as a vegetarian. First, Animal rights: Animals raised for meat in factory farms live in truly abysmal conditions and are treated badly prior to and during slaughter. Also, the animals are often given drugs to make them grow bigger, producing more meat. This is not healthy to animals or humans. Animals have feelings and a personality just like humans! Second, Environmental reasons: Meat production is the creating destruction of our natural resources and causing pollution, producing more greenhouse gases than all the cars in the world. Read The Food Revolution by John Robbins to become enlightened on this subject. Also check out our article “Nice Cow Baaad Cow Effects.”Third, Political reasons:If resources were diverted from meat production, there could be enough food to feed everyone on the earth. Producing meat is wasteful; it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat. According to the United Nations, raising animals for food (land for grazing and land to grow feed crops) now uses 30 percent of the Earths land mass.Finally, Economic reasons : In much of the world, people do not eat meat because it costs more than beans or rice. Meat is a special-occasion dish if its ever eaten. As societies become more affluent they start eating more meat. The China Study goes into much detail about how the health of a nation declines as they become wealthy enough to eat large portions of meat.B: What Do Vegetarians Eat?A: Contrary to what most meat eaters think, vegetarians dont just eat salad or simply eat the meat and potato meal with out the meat, or the hamburger without the bun.A wise vegetarian eats a wide variety of vegetables with lots of whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds and maybe a little dairy and egg.B: Where are you going to get your iron?C: Dried beans, lentils, spinach, Swiss chard, molasses and dried fruit are especially good sources of iron and better on a per calorie basis than meat. Iron absorption is increased when iron foods are combined with foods containing vitamin C. B: How about calcium?A: Green vegetables are filled with calcium (spinach, kale, okra, broccoli, green beans, collard greens), and so are almonds, sunflower seeds and dried beans. Two tablespoons of black strap molasses has 400 mg of calcium. You get as much or more calcium in 4 ounces of firm tofu or 3/4 cup of collard greens as you will in one cup of cows milk.B: Where will you get your protein?C: Often people think that plants are devoid of protein and even many vegetarians believe that they have to eat eggs, cheese or beans to get enough. Whole grains, legumes, vegetables, seeds, and nuts all contain essential and nonessential amino acids. Here is a fact: all plant foods have protein in them. Even fruit has protein in it!B: You see, this article says there are 8 kinds of vegetarians. Vegan:Eats only plant products; does not eat any animal products at all, not even honey. Lacto-vegetarian:Eats all fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products. Ovo-vegetarian:Eats eggs along with a plant-based diet. Lacto-ovo vegetarian:Eats both dairy products and eggs. Fruitarian:Eats a vegan diet that is mostly raw fruit, grains and nuts. They believe only plant foods that can be harvested without killing the plant should be eaten. Macrobiotic:The goal is to create a balance between ying (positive) foods and yang (negative) foods. There are ten levels of diet; not all levels