Flexitarians are healthy and happy

Flexitarians are people who mostly eat a plant based diet and occasionally eat animal products. A recent article in The National explores this trend in healthy eating:

In 2003, the American Dialect Association declared flexitarian its most useful word of the year, defining it as "a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat". Registered dietitian and the author of The Flexitarian Diet, Dawn Jackson Blatner, elaborates further: "Flexitarian is the combination of two words: flexible and vegetarian. This is an eating style for someone who wants to eat a mostly plant-based diet - and get the health benefits - without having to be 100 per cent strict with the rules. It's an eating philosophy that is pro-plants, not anti-meat."

It does make sense. When you commit to vegetarianism or go to the extreme of becoming a vegan, for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, it doesn't always work out in certain real life situations. Suppose there is a shortage of fresh fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, and no whole grains or pulses.....would you then eat pasta, pizza, pies, cakes, just because they don't contain animal products? If you do that then you'll turn into a FAT vegetarian because these things are all made from refined flour.

At the other extreme are people who eat meat everyday. All the studies show that this habit is the leading cause of heart disease and hypertension, not to mention obesity. Such people would be leading a more healthy and happy life if they added more fresh fruit, veggies, and whole grains to their diet. A Gallup survey on the eating habits of British people in 1988 revealed that only 5.5 per cent of the population avoided red meat. Twenty years later the number of people reducing the amount of meat they eat, rose to as much as 45 per cent!

Over in the United States, data from the USDA shows that Americans will consume 12.2 per cent less meat and poultry in 2012 that they did in 2007. This rising movement of flexitarians includes people who are including more healthy eating options into their daily diet. It creates a middle ground where the obvious health benefits of plant-based diets can marry the practical necessity of sometimes eating animal products. Reducing the amount of meat, and not cutting it out altogether, does reduce the burden on the environment and the cruelty inflicted on animals.