Over the past few years, a lot of people have made the change and switched to a vegetarian lifestyle!

It is an increasing popular lifestyle, with teenagers making up the highest proportion of those who have switched.

As it’s World Vegetarian Day, and if you are thinking of making the change, here are 10 reasons why you should!

1. Studies show that a plant-based diet can actually increase the body’s metabolism. This causes the body to burn calories up to 16% faster, than it would if it was also on a meat based diet.
2. It is argued that humans are actually naturally herbivores, for example our molars are similar to those of a herbivore in shape and structure.
3. Several researchers advise that a vegetarian based diet, can feed more people than a meat based diet. An example of this, is approx 20,000 potatoes can grow on one acre of land. Compared to, only around 165 lbs of beef can be produced on the same amount of land.
4. Approx 25 gallons of water is used to produce 1 lb of wheat. Whereas, at least 2,500 gallons of water is used to produce 1 lb of meat. It is said that becoming vegetarian reduces the strain on the environment.
5. The lifestyle of vegetarianism begun in ancient India. Currently, 70% of the world’s vegetarians are Indian. And there are more vegetarians in India, than any other country around the world.
6. Vegetarians only have slightly lower protein, than those of meat eaters. It is wildly spread that if you are vegetarian you have low protein, but the difference is actually not as big as you may think!
7. Many people become vegetarians to avoid animal cruelty, they do not believe animals are killed in the most humane way, especially if they cannot be stunned properly before death.
8. Plants yield 10 times more protein per acre than meat.
9. Ironically, the original actor who played Ronald McDonald for McDonald’s takeaway, is now a vegetarian!
10. Poultry are not included in the Humane Slaughter Act, meaning it is not required to stun these animals before slaughter.

 

A few weeks back we offered our services to help a lost pet…..of the feathered variety. May seem odd, cat charity helping an escaped birdie but here at MK Cat Rescue we’re all about team-work and we were happy to help when we saw MK Vets- Lost and found pets and members of Dog Squad MK asking for help to capture Polly. Big thank you to Debbie and Claire for helping with this little adventure.

Some of you may remember that we run a competition a few months ago to win a pet portrait by the very talented Julie Cox at Franklin Pet Portraits.

We received lots of entries and raised over £100 – so thank you to everyone who entered!

The lucky winner was Helen Jones, who sent Julie a photo of her dog… as you can see, Julie’s drawing is really rather wonderful and a great likeness to the original photograph. We’re really impressed!

Congrats to Helen, and thank you once again to Julie.

If you’d like to commission a portrait of one of your pets for yourself or as a gift, you can email Julie here »

More examples of her work…

For those following the story of the kittens and 5 abandoned adults….Debbie one of our volunteers managed to track down and trap the other kitten late last night….whilst we’re pretty impressed with Debbie’s determination to find it – think its fair to say that the kitten wasn’t particular impressed!