There are many social norms that are going around affecting everybody’s choice of food. One social norm that has affected my family is vegetarianism. So many people around me and my family have become vegetarians either because they believe it is a healthier lifestyle than eating mean or because they are against animal cruelty. My mom used to eat meat, but one day she decided to try vegetarianism because she was always extremely against the mistreatment of animals. That was almost 4 years ago and she has not eaten meat since. She was affected by the people around her trying to get everybody to become vegetarians and she adds to the social norm by trying to get people to take over the vegetarian lifestyle.
Vegetarianism can be connected to many societal issues some of them include obesity, deforestation, and nutrition. When people eat too much meat, they tend to be less healthy and most of them become obese. So vegetarians tend to be healthier in the long run. If people eat less meat, there would also be less deforestation because a huge amount of land is currently being used for livestock to graze. If there were less people eating the meat from livestock, there would be no need to expand the land to raise the livestock. It also says in the lesson that since livestock are not as efficient as plants when it comes to the energy transfer, there would need to be more plants eaten by the livestock in order for us to gain enough of the needed energy
Hi Eric! My name is Neil and you can find my blog post here: https://wp.me/p3RCAy-bMt
I had a similar situation when my brother decided to become a vegan. My entire family give vegetarianism a try. You brought up many interesting points about health relating to vegetarianism and shifting from meat diets that I did not mention in my blog post. But I really think that it is necessary to take into consideration the maltreatment of animals as one of the main reasons to potentially switch to plant based systems (or insect based systems). Humans can still consume the livestock, and by creating systems that guarantee their happiness, the production of these animals would decrease and so would the health detriments as there would be less animals to consume.
I think another notable advantage to reduced meat intake is the impact on the energy pyramid. The energy pyramid states that plants make energy and everything that eats plants only get 10% of the energy plants make. Animals that eat herbivores only get 10% of the energy from herbivores or 1% of the energy of plants. This pattern follows up every step of the food pyramid. By eating more grown food, we are reducing our total energy amount and decreasing the amount of land that takes to support us.