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Growing up I never noticed many vegetarian products. None of my friends were vegetarian at the time, and none of my parents’ friends were either, creating a little meat-eating bubble for me. It wasn’t until I reached middle school, and some of my friends started talking about becoming vegetarian as a way to lose weight, or as a dieting technique. I never really understood this. At this age, to me, being vegetarian meant that you didn’t want to hurt animals, not that you wanted to lose weight. Of course, all my vegetarian friends had to eventually quit the diet because they were not balancing their meals and had many nutritional deficiencies.  

When I was younger, I always thought about becoming vegetarian, but never thought I could do it because I loved eating meat too much, and I did not like the available meat-alternatives at the time. Then, as I grew older, I realized that I needed to change my diet for my health, and with some research I found that cutting meat out of my diet would have numerous health benefits. It was around this time I that I really started paying attention to the popularity of vegetarianism, I started noticing more meat-alternatives during my Sunday shopping trips with my mom and started watching informative documentaries about the meat and dairy industry. 

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Once I decided that I would be following a vegetarian (pescatarian) diet I started trying new foods, different restaurants, and a variety of cuisines. Switching to this diet allowed me to try many new things, but also take into consideration how popular vegetarianism must be for the market to be this popular. 

The older I got, and the more research I did helped me understand how popular vegetarianism had become. Environmental and ethical concerns have grown over the past century, and so has the number of vegetarians.  

The effect a vegetarian diet has on health had already been discovered, even before I was born, so I was curious why the number of vegetarians (especially in the United States) had grown. When I had the opportunity to write a research paper based off food, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to focus on a vegetarian diet. In my paper I discussed how vegetarianism has become more popular, and how ethical, ecologic, and social reasons accompany health benefits in explaining why more people are switching to the diet.

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After finishing my research, I believe that more people follow a vegetarian or low-meat diet not just because of health reasons, but because of the ones listed above. In today’s world there is growing concern for our impact on the environment/climate change, and the treatment of animals, which has led more people away from meat diets. 

Now most of my friends are vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian, not because they are concerned with weight loss, but with the impact their diets have on the world. We have also learned how to balance our meals to prevent nutritional deficiencies.