What is Flexitarianism?
What does it mean to be “Flexitarian”? The word originated from the 1990’s and describes someone that consumes mainly plant-based foods with occasional meat or fish. It is a combination of the words “flexible” and “vegetarian.” In simple terms, flexitarian eating is the reduction of meat.
Health Benefits
With flexitarianism, you receive similar benefits as you would if you were a vegetarian. It can reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and help with weight loss. Consuming anything in excess can be bad for your health, so meat reduction alleviates issues like high cholesterol and more.
Environmental Benefits
By reducing meat consumption, you might be helping improve the environment. The way meat is produced emits a lot of greenhouse gases that are negatively affecting our planet. Reducing meat consumption is one step closer to lowering the emission of greenhouse gases. It is also one step closer to maybe eliminating meat entirely from your diet.
Flexitarian Criticism
You might be wondering, why be flexitarian when you can just be full-on vegetarian? How can you be semi-vegetarian? There are others that ask the same questions. The arguments for a flexitarian diet could easily be used for a vegetarian diet. The only difference is that flexitarians still consume all types of meats, just rarely. There is no counter-argument
against this, except for the fact that they wanted to have a name to define this type of diet.
Flexitarianism is still a positive step towards healthier living that also benefits the environment. Even though some might be opposed to the term, it’s too late to go back now. Flexitarianism is being talked about more and more. For some, eliminating meat entirely might sound too hard, so opting for flexitarianism is still beneficial for those that want to improve their health and environment.
