Many children are born into families which are vegetarian for cultural, religious, health, ethical or economical reasons. But are they getting the nutrients they need for growth and development?
If GST was added to meat, the government could raise billions of dollars in revenue while also encouraging shoppers to eat more veggies - a lipsmacking prospect for public health and the environment.
The morality of which animals we can and can’t eat doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Advice to favour plant-based foods and reduce meat intake should now be considered part of healthy dietary advice given by doctors and nutritionists.
Marc Phu/Flickr
If I say “Christmas dinner”, perhaps the following image is conjured up: a large table groaning under the weight of roast potatoes, parsnips, peas, Brussels sprouts, a jug of gravy, and in the centre “the…
Your mum was right: it’s good for you to eat your veggies. Yet a recent survey found one in four Australians ate none in a typical day.
shashinjutsu/Flickr
The way we currently produce food around the world contributes up to 20-30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for 70% of all human water use. But is it possible to eat well and take…
Vegetarians have a lower risk of some chronic diseases such as hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease and diabetes.
Image from shutterstock.com
Ethical and environmental considerations are often the prompt for adopting a meat-free diet. But better health may also push some towards vegetarianism, with a new study showing vegetarians have a lower…
The horse meat scandal seems to be more about the taboo issue of eating our pets than actual health concerns.
Fredrik von Erichsen/AAP
Imagine the following scenario. You go into your local sandwich shop for lunch and order a roast beef on rye with a dash of mustard. As you bite into the sandwich you notice something is not right. The…
Grain agriculture devastates ecosystems, but who is the grain grown for?
Peter Castleton
More and more, the animals we kill for food are dining at the human table. Increasingly, we feed them on grain, soybeans and fish meal. Recently, Professor Mike Archer published an article on The Conversation…
Being vegetarian saves cows’ lives, but threatens the future of other sentient creatures.
nunro
This article was published in 2011. A follow-up article refuted its claims. The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and…
When discussing animal welfare, it’s hard to look at it from the animal’s perspective.
phik
Which is the greater deprivation for an animal: to live a good-quality life abbreviated at less than its natural term by painless slaughter for meat, or to never live at all? How much of an animal’s life…
In his 2011 ASSA Cunningham Lecture this month, food policy expert Professor Tim Lang suggested that we “experiment” with alternative diets to reduce our meat and dairy consumption. Lang suggested that…
Legendary British singer Morrissey is well-known for his activist vegetarianism.
AAP
A qualification of how much I love Morrissey’s music needs to be made. Merely thinking about There is a Light cuts me raw; I adopted It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore as a power anthem the second I heard…
Netherlands has moved to ban ritual slaughter without stunning but is killing an animal for food ever ethical?
Flickr/Nick Saltmarsh
Ritual slaughter is an important part of Islamic and Jewish belief systems but, as recent TV footage showing cattle being butchered in Indonesian abattoirs demonstrated, there is great variation across…
It may be “humane”, but is it ethical?
Virginia Zuluaga/Flickr
Does a painless death harm an animal? Is it wrong to painlessly kill an animal? These questions go to heart of the ethics of meat eating and humane slaughter, yet they have been largely absent in most…