More than lettuce & tofu

在健康成为时尚的今天, 越来越多的人尝试吃素, 其最大的理由是"吃素可以健康". 素食者称素食后身轻智明, 深受其益; 旁观者心有所动, 跃跃欲试; 当然也大有视素食主义不以为然者.



Everyone wants to eat and live healthily. More and more people nowadays are trying to reduce the amount of meat and animal oils in their diet or even cut them out completely. Vegetarianism seems to have become a modern fashion. The younger generation try it in pursuit of a perfect figure; the older generation choose a vegetarian diet for health reasons; and middle-aged people's reasons are a mixture of the two. Some people even turn vegetarian simply out of curiosity. What drives someone to be a vegetarian, and what are the advantages of being a vegetarian?

A vegetarian is a person who does not consume animal flesh (including poultry and seafood) nor products made from dead animals but may or may not eat dairy products and eggs.

There are various motivations for being vegetarian, including environmental protection, personal health, personal finance and animal protection. Evidence is also mounting that the healthiest diets are loaded with plant foods (vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains) and short on animal products (meat, fish, poultry, and dairy products), especially fatty ones.

Want to find out about someone you know who has benefited from being a vegetarian? Listen to the story of this British expat living in Xiamen.



Only for monks?
By Philip Hand

When she heard that I had become a vegetarian, my Chinese waipo (actually my best friend's grandmother) was delighted at first. "Ni chi zhai le," she exclaimed in her thick Wuyishan accent, "You're eating a monk's diet." This was not strictly true, as I still eat eggs and dairy products and drink alcohol. But Buddhist vegetarianism and my vegetarianism do have some common points. They both come from a desire not to cause harm to animals.

My line of reasoning begins from the idea that it is wrong to kill animals for pleasure. I think most people would accept that killing or harming a dog (or cow or sheep or any animal) simply because "it's fun" is immoral. If it is wrong to kill for one kind of pleasure, then it seems to me that it is wrong to kill for any kind of pleasure - and that includes the pleasure of tasty food. There is no need for me to eat meat: I can get all the nutrition I need from a vegetarian diet. Therefore the only reason I eat meat is for pleasure, and that is wrong.

This argument had been turning over in my mind for a while when I started university. It wasn't any single event or person that triggered my decision to give up meat, just a combination of circumstances. I felt as though my life was in a bit of a rut and wanted to make a positive change, so over the 1999 Christmas holiday I ate my last ever turkey dinner, and started a new diet for the new millennium.

At university I joined the vegetarian society, and there met a few people with different reasons for being veggie. One girl, a vet, was just horrified by the suffering of animals on the commercial farms she saw. She didn't object to killing animals in itself, but was vegetarian because she thought some of the practices used in the meat industry were terrible. Another friend was worried about the chemicals used in food processing and feeding livestock, so he chose to eat only a limited range of foods, including fresh and canned vegetables, tofu, bread, etc. Another member of the society was only a part-time vegetarian. He sometimes ate meat, but simply preferred the taste of vegetarian food. Despite all these different reasons and approaches to vegetarianism, we were able to find common ground in our love of good veggie food.

For me, vegetarianism is a moral issue, and I see it as important to try to spread vegetarianism. However, I have learned through bitter experience that it is almost impossible to change someone's mind by arguing with him or her. I tried to persuade friends and family that my point of view was correct, but only succeeded in making them stick even more rigidly to their positions. It is much better to show people the benefits of vegetarian food, and let them come to their own conclusions.



Recommended vegetarian restaurants:
Nanputuo Vegetarian 南菩陀素食馆
Tianhe vegetarian(Celestial Lotus) 天荷素食馆
Dafang Vegetarian 大方素食馆
Gongde Vegetarian 功德素食馆
Bailudong Vegetarian 白鹿洞素食馆
Huxiyan Vegetarian 虎溪岩素食馆
Sophie's Veg Cafe 索菲素食西餐厅

Health garden

Singing makes for safer driving
歌声相伴行车安全
Motorists who enjoy a sing-along while driving tend to concentrate more and fall asleep less than their silent counterparts. However, drivers should avoid overly rousing tunes or complex rhythms that can divert attention away from the road. Singing while driving stimulates not only the mind, but also the body, which in turn produces heightened alertness and reduces fatigue. Music is more effective than silence, conversation or talk radio for achieving an optimal state of alertness.



Chinese doctors detect HIV virus in human eyes
艾滋病毒眼中藏
Doctors in the Peking Union Medical College Hospital have found the HIV virus in an AIDS patient's eyes. This is the first time Chinese doctors have detected the virus which causes the fatal disease in human eyes. The finding shows that even if an AIDS patient's blood plasma HIV test were negative, it would not necessarily mean he or she was cured because the virus might remain in other places in the body.

Experts urge Chinese people to change diet
中国人饮食结构要改变
Nutrition experts in Beijing urged the Chinese people to adjust their diet structure by eating more vegetables and fruit and taking in less salt and sweet food. Although the intake of salt is reducing, Chinese people's diets still fail to meet the "reduced salt" standard proposed by the WHO. To keep fit, Chinese nutrition experts urge people to curb their intake of pork and salt, eat more poultry, vegetable and fruit and do more exercise.

Concern over early puberty
口红中雌激素促早熟
Girls as young as three years old are being found to have enlarged breasts, a sign of early puberty. Their mothers' cosmetics, which contain hormones, may be to blame. Some cosmetics contain estrogen, which can delay skin aging. A child's skin absorbs much more than an adult's, so the estrogen in the cosmetics enter the child's body in relatively high concentrations, possibly causing early puberty. Early puberty is defined as girls having enlarged breasts before they are eight years old or having periods before they are 10.

Japanese women top the world in average life span
日本妇女寿命全球居首
Japanese women topped the world in average life span for the 20th straight year in 2004. The average life span for Japanese women was 85.59 years. Hong Kong women came second, with a life expectancy of 84.3 years on average in 2003, followed by Switzerland and France.

Vocagbulary
fatigue 疲乏
puberty 青春期
plasma 血浆
estrogen 雌激素