1. Vegetarianism is logical! Research indicates that over 60% of the UK population objects to factory farming and 90% objects to killing animals for fur. Vegetarianism takes this reasoning to its logical conclusion.
2. Vegetarians make great athletes! Sporting veggie/vegans include Sally Eastall, Carl Lewis, Martina Navratilova, Bill Pearl (Mr Universe) and footballer Robbie Earle. A Complan Report recorded that 9% of athletes were vegetarian.
3. Eating meat causes suffering, fear, social deprivation, loss of natural environment, loss of liberty, mutilation and illness to millions of animals every year. Vegetarianism, on the other hand, does not.
4. Vegetarianism is a tried and tested diet - a diet to be trusted. Individuals and entire religions have abstained from eating meat for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci in the fifteenth century said 'The day will come when men look upon the murder of animals as we now look upon the murder of men.'
5. Vegetarian food can build muscle just as well as meat. Vegetarians are certainly not weedy and weak. If you have any doubts, take another look at these three vegetarians - elephant, rhinoceros & gorilla. Meat isn't macho. Al Beckles , Andreas Cahling, Cory Everson, Louis Freitas, Sharon Hounsell, Lindford McFarquar, Bill Pearl all veggie and all body builders!
6. Vegetarian food is brain food, if the company of the following is anything to go by - Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein. Be a veggie and feel your brain swell.
7. A vegetarian diet is the only diet that doesn't mind being transported around. Many animals spend thousands of miles on the road to hell. The transportation of animals over vast distances from the farm to the slaughterhouse will never end while we depend on meat for food. Becoming a vegetarian is the most effective step you can take to end this cruel practice.
8. Vegetarian foods are sexy! Aphrodisiacs from the vegetable kingdom encourage the existence of a greater variety of wildlife.
9. Vegetarian food is so healthy that going veggie can even give nurses a well-earned break. Medical research shows that lifelong vegetarians visit hospital 22% less often than meat eaters and that once confined to hospital they spend a shorter time there than meat eaters.
10. Veggies save the NHS. In economic terms it has been calculated that a lifelong vegetarian on average saves the NHS £45,722!
11. Vegetarians free up the land. Our entire globe is being taken over by cattle farming. This means less public space, less room for wildlife and increasingly overcrowded cities. A meat-based diet takes up four times as much space as a vegetarian diet. Make some space - go veggie!
12. Producing vegetarian food makes a more efficient use of available land and resources. An acre of quality land can produce 10,000 pounds of green beans, 30,000 pounds of carrots, 50,000 pounds of tomatoes but only 250 pounds of beef. Meat - a waste of space.
13. Vegetarianism is the future of food. There are approximately 4 million vegetarians in the UK today, in 1945 the figure stood at 100,000. At the present rate of growth we will all be vegetarian by the year 2030. Don't be left behind!
14. Eating meat causes pain and suffering. Painless slaughter is a myth; it will never be achieved. A great reason to be a vegetarian is that it is a step towards ending the painful slaughter of animals.
15. Revive the countryside! If we all turned vegetarian the countryside would be a more interesting place. There would be more room for animals in their natural habitat, while fruit and vegetable crops encourage the existence of a greater variety of wildlife.
16. Born to eat meat? When was the last time you took a bite out of a live pig or hunted down a chicken? As omnivores we can survive both on a meat-based or vegetable-based diet. We have a choice the right choice is a vegetarian one. Our choice of diet is not about being natural but about making the right choice.
17. Vegetarians reduce suffering. Animals are sentient beings. Many have complex emotions and can suffer pain. Eating meat causes suffering and distress, this can be reduced by going vegetarian.
18. You can still eat your favourite foods. Even the traditional meat eater obsessed with burgers and sausages can survive on a vegetarian diet. There is a huge range of meat substitutes and alternatives readily available, including burgers, sausages and even veggie bacon.
19. A simple three letter reason - BSE.
20. Heart warming. Coronary heart disease is the biggest killer in the UK. Studies have revealed that mortality from heart disease is an amazing 30% less amongst vegetarians.
21. Release the pressure. Vegetarians have lower blood pressure than meat eaters. High blood pressure can contribute to heart disease, strokes and kidney failure.
22. Clear out your colon. There is a direct correlation between a diet high in animal fat and colon cancer. Vegetarians have a high fibre diet and increased consumption of fruit and vegetables. This combination provides protection against diseases of the colon.
23. Breast protection. The National Cancer Research Institute in Tokyo has concluded that women who consume meat daily have an almost four times greater risk of getting breast cancer than those who don't eat meat.
24. Prostate cancer is a growing problem is elderly men. A link between meat eating and prostate cancer has been identified.
25. Osteoporosis. Evidence is mounting that osteoporosis and associated hip fracture may be linked to high animal protein intake. The best way of avoiding this is to go vegetarian.
26. What a lot of gall. Gall stones are composed of cholesterol, bile pigments and calcium salts and can be extremely painful. A study in 1985 found that non-vegetarians are almost twice as likely to develop them as vegetarians.
27. Meat eats the rainforest. Tropical rainforest destruction is a huge environmental problem. The forests of the world are being felled, partly as a result of loggers and our expanding human population, but also to create pasture lands to rear livestock. Millions of acres of life-sustaining forest continue to be felled to create cattle ranches and to grow feed for livestock.
28. Vegetarianism reduces methane. Methane gas is one of the key gases that is polluting the atmosphere. Livestock produces 15-20 per cent of all methane in the world, thus causing about 3% of global warming from all greenhouse gases. This is the result of the sheer numbers of cattle bred around the world. Becoming a vegetarian reduces global methane and gives your nose a break!
29. Goodbye ozone. Ozone layer depletion is caused partly by the huge quantities of methane gas emitted by livestock. A depleted ozone layer results in higher rates of ultraviolet B radiation and increased incidences of skin cancer.
30. Help our suffering seas. Vegetarians do not eat fish. Become a vegetarian and reduce the impact your diet has on our suffering seas. Fish feel pain and suffer a slow, suffocating death. Each veggie will save at least half a tonne of fish during their lifetime.
31. End fish factory farming. Most of us now realise that there is something fundamentally wrong with factory farming. Sadly, fish are also victims of this farming system. Salmon, for instance, are often farmed in floating cages where movement is severely restricted. Become a vegetarian and help end this practice.
32. Fat busting. A vegetarian diet has the right kind of fat. In the UK we eat too much saturated animal fat and too little unsaturated vegetable fat. Saturated animal fat is linked to heart disease and other illnesses. Eat the right fat by eating veggie.
33. Reduce cancer risk. Studies have shown that a vegetarian diet can reduce your chance of suffering from a variety of cancer types by up to 40%. This was the result of a 13-year study of 11,000 people by Oxford University (1995).
34. Grain saving. Becoming a vegetarian makes sense in terms of distribution of food resources. The rearing of livestock for food is extremely wasteful. Despite the fact that thousands of children die of malnutrition every day, the majority of grain is eaten not by humans, but by cows. In the US 70% of grain is consumed by livestock.
35. Meat deserters help prevent a desert. 52 million acres of land are affected by desertification each year. The worst hit areas are the main cattle producing regions.
36. No problem with protein. We all need protein and the good news is veggie food is stuffed with the stuff. Good sources are pulses, beans, cheese, free-range eggs, rice and pasta. Dietary advice now makes it clear that protein is not a problem for vegetarians.
37. Iron - can't get enough of the stuff? Fortunately you can get plenty being a vegetarian. Iron is needed for healthy red blood cells, which carry oxygen around the body. Iron is found in wholemeal bread, leafy green vegetables, dried fruit, nuts, seeds - The absorption of iron is improved by consuming plenty of vitamin C. Nutritionally a vegetarian diet has everything needed for healthy living.
38. You deserve a life saving badge. A life long veggie saves around 760 chickens, 5 cows, 20 pigs, 29 sheep, 46 turkeys, 15 ducks, 7 rabbits and over half a tonne of fish. Think what effect over 4 million UK vegetarians can have.
39. A great reason to go veggie is that it's the perfect diet for the whole family. The diet provides all the nutrients needed for normal growth and development (COMA 1994), for children and infants.
40. 1 million people in the UK suffer from diabetes. Vegetarians due to their relative leanness, high intake of complex carbohydrates and fibre and low intake of saturated fat have been found to have a lower risk of type II diabetes (non-insulin dependent).
41. Your door to civilisation. If we want to live in a civilised world, a vegetarian diet is an important step. A diet that avoids suffering, barbarity and exploitation must be a step towards an enlightened civilised existence.
42. Just say NO. Drugs, when they are hidden in the carcasses of animals are not much fun at all. Meat at every stage is filled with drugs that are inevitably passed on to humans. The effects are unknown. Antibiotics, growth promoters, and prostaglandins are all found in meat and could be harmful to humans. If you don't want to consume them, then don't eat the meat
43. Rediscover your taste buds. Your taste buds will be revived when you become a vegetarian, discover what you have been missing as flavours become more tantalising and distinctive.
44. Muddy waters. The most serious polluter of water in the UK is agriculture and especially factory farming. Waste from around 600 million animals is ending up in our water. Just one example - a typical battery egg factory with 60,000 hens produces around 165,000 pounds of excrement each and every week. The dumping of this waste inevitably ends up in our water system. Going veggie is an effective measure you can take to help clean up our water supply.
45. Acid rain, not a pleasant thought or reality. Manure produced by the billions of livestock in the world, gives off ammonia into the atmosphere, which is one of the principle causes of acid rain. More veggies = less acid rain.
46. What's your poison? The majority of food poisoning cases are associated with meat production. As many as 95% of reported cases of food poisoning are a result of consuming meat or dairy products.
47. Rashers of bacon. For some bizarre reason meat eaters often find the hardest thing to give up is the bacon butty. Fear not, vegetarian cuisine has the answer. Cheating bacon is now readily available that tastes and cooks like bacon, but without a piglet in sight.
48. Research reveals that meat eaters are more than twice as likely to develop senile dementia than their vegetarian counterparts.
49. A vegetarian diet is believed by many to help slow the ageing process.
50. As a vegetarian you can join The Vegetarian Society and make the most of celebrations such as National Vegetarian Week and take part in World Vegetarian Day.

Consumer Challenge - September 20
1. Does anyone know a good reason to eat meat?
2. 50 Reasons why it makes sense to be a vegetarian
3. Background notes on issues affecting the meat industry over the past twelve months