Most people just won’t become vegetarians maybe because humans are basically omnivores; we eat both animals and plants. Less than one percent of the world’s populations avoids animal flesh and less than one-tenth of one percent are bonafide vegans who do not eat anything related to animals such as eggs or dairy products.
Let’s consider our digestive systems. Our teeth consist of twenty premolars and molars, eight incisors, and four canine teeth. The premolars and molars are geared for eating grains. The incisors are meant for cutting of more vegetable foods. The canine teeth are suited for tearing of animal food. If you do this math literally, we would eat grains, vegetables, and animal foods in the ratio of 5:2:1. Overall, we would predominantly be eating vegetables and grains.
If we look at our intestinal tracts, we find carnivores, that live on flesh, with intestines 3-5 times their body length. Herbivores, who live on grass and plants, have intestines that are 20-22 times their body length. Humans have intestines that are 22 to 26 feet long. If we say from head to tail that we are about 3 feet long (legs not included), then our intestines are 6-8 times our body length. So we end up in between the carnivores and herbivores. Again this fits with our being omnivores.
Most people have the gnawing belief that they should be gnawing more vegetables, but we still have difficulty doing it. Diets adjusted to more vegetables generally lead to weight loss. A study comparing vegetarians with meat-eaters showed vegetarians with 40 percent less mortality from cancer or heart disease.
We need to make friends with vegetables. Salads are nice, but just eating lettuce all the time is boring and monotonous. Many of us need to get to the grocery store and see the varieties of vegetables. To whet you interests, explore the many other leafy vegetables besides lettuce; for example, kale, mustard greens, watercress, Chinese cabbage, kohlrabi and white stem cabbage.
Vegetables that appear to help dissolve fat are radish, daikon, turnip, onion, scallions, leek and shiitake mushrooms.
Then there’s the cabbage family with broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and red cabbage.
Finally, we can’t forget the root veggies: carrot, parsnip, rutabaga, burdock root (gobo), lotus root. Also the squashes: acorn, butternut, kabocha, pumpkin, spaghetti squash.
Start at your own level when eating more vegetables. If you don’t eat much more than salads, try adding other veggies even if they’re frozen. If all you eat now are frozen veggies, try adding fresh produce. Just about any veggie will submit to the recipe of sauteeing with sesame oil and adding tamari soy sauce to taste at the end. Try it with broccoli, carrots, and onions and say “Ono!”, not “Oh, no!”