Austin & Vegetarianism

Sadie Smiles, 23-year-old graduate student in University of Texas at Austin, is originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania and has been in Austin for about one year. She has been a vegetarian for more than ten years.

 

“Austin is a great city to experience both traditional American culture and newer and more diversified elements of society.”

Austin, the capital of Texas, is soaring in its development both economically and culturally. It is one of the biggest cities in the United States. Compared to other big cities, Austin has most of the common features of being a big city; nonetheless, there is something unique in it.

Like Sadie mentioned, “Austin has to do a lot with sort of hip, urban, new-age, sort of like everybody wants to be healthy. I think Austin is sort of like this cool, modern, and healthy city. ”

Apart from those modern terms she applied to describe the city, she mentioned couple of times of “healthy.” No wonder, being a faithful vegetarian, she should be paying more attention to this aspect than other people might. In her words, Austin is a “healthy city.” It stimulates my thoughts, how come?

 

“I think the food here is awesome. Since I’m a vegan, it’s like really refreshing to be in a city where there are a lot of vegan options.”

Considering the aspect of food, although it is well-known that Texas is famous for its barbecue; Austin, being the capital of the state, has wide-open arms and shows hospitality and more tolerance to the people who come here, who stay here, and who decide to live here.  Though it might seem inconsequential, Austin has provided more options to vegetarians.

As Sadie remarked, “Although some may argue that eating animals is natural, I think, the way we raise animals for food is unhealthy. Since we get most our meat from factory farms, the food industry is way more industrial than ever intended.”

Many other vegetarians propose that, to besiege and raise a large scale of animal in farms or factories, is immoral. Humans are at a higher level of the food chain, which is the reason that we recognize that it is part of nature to eat less intelligent animals. But the way we treat animals has changed. Before, our ancestors were using arrowheads, knives and tools that were invented, to hunt animals in order to get the meat. But look at present, people force animals into cages or farms, give them hormones or other chemicals in order to make them grow faster and bigger. The business drive leads this to happen which is not part of nature at all.

Like what Sadie mentioned, “I think that our growing population has led to bigger and more problematic methods of mass farming, and people are turning to vegetarianism as a way to combat this.”

There are actually significant vegetarian residents in Austin corresponding to the statistic I found from the US national Public Policy Polling Survey 2013. Austin ranks the top 10 vegetarian cities in the United States and the whole percentage in the country for vegetarian is thirteen. It is a big number with no doubts.

 “Americans face large increase of obesity and heart related issues and eliminating meat from a diet is a good step to improve your health.”

Certainly we have not found any strict proofs yet to demonstrate that lots of crucial diseases have a direct link to the consumption of meat. However, the scientists confirm that meat definitely contains more fat than vegetables, especially saturated fat, which the human body does not need too much for daily intake. And the cholesterol is only found in animal products. Apparently, those facts can increase the risk of developing these diseases: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, kidney stone, arthritis etc.

“The more meat we raise for food, the faster we deplete a lot of natural resources. We also use a lot of unhealthy gas when we transport large quantities of meat across the country.”

It seems to me, Sadie got enthusiastic explaining to me her point of view on vegetarian topic. To be a listener, I can absolutely feel her strong emotions towards this.

Nowadays, when we are talking about the environment issue, we talk about the climate change, the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide. But she put forward to a new perspective of this topic, which I feel very excited about.

 “Being in Texas, Austin is lucky to have access to a lot of local farms. Grocers are able to get organic food without traveling far; therefore the amount of healthy vegetarian food in Austin is plentiful. The culture of Austin makes these organic options popular, so it has become a city that welcomes vegetarians.”