About a year ago, I asked myself a question: "Knowing what I know, why am I not a vegetarian?" After all, I'm one of the green guys (я один из тех, кто за «чистую зеленую планету»): I grew up with hippie parents (родители хиппи) in a log cabin (бревенчатый домик). I started a site called TreeHugger (я создал сайт «Обними дерево») -- I care about this stuff (мне не все равно на это). I knew that eating a mere (простой) hamburger a day can increase (может вызвать) my risk of dying by a third (на треть). Cruelty (жестокость, зверство): I knew that the 10 billion animals we raise each year for meat are raised in factory farm conditions (в условия ферм) that we, hypocritically (лицемерно), wouldn't even consider for (не стали бы рассмаотривать) our own cats, dogs and other pets. Environmentally (с точки зрения окружающей среды), meat, amazingly (поразительно), causes (вызывает) more emissions (выбросов) than all of transportation combined (вместе взятые): cars, trains, planes, buses, boats, all of it. And beef production (производство говядины) uses 100 times the water (использует в сто раз больше воды) that most vegetables do.
I also knew that I'm not alone. We as a society are eating twice as much meat as (в два раза больше мяса) we did in the 50s. So what was once the special little side treat (особое угощение, на краешке тарелки) now is the main, much more regular (основное, намного более регулярное). So really, any of these angles (любой из этих аспектов) should have been enough to convince me to go vegetarian (был бы достаточным, чтобы убедить меня стать вегетарианцем). Yet, there I was -- chk, chk, chk -- tucking into (с упоением вкушать) a big old steak.
So why was I stalling (медлить, тормозить)? I realized that what I was being pitched (то, чем меня пиарили) was a binary solution (бинарное решение, или-или). It was either you're a meat eater (мясоед) or you're a vegetarian, and I guess I just wasn't quite ready. Imagine your last hamburger. So my common sense (в общем смысле), my good intentions (добрые намерения), were in conflict with (конфликтовали с) my taste buds (вкусовые рецепты). And I'd commit to doing it later (я бы решился на это позже), and not surprisingly, later never came. Sound familiar?
So I wondered, might there be (может быть есть) a third solution? And I thought about it, and I came up with one (я пришел к одной такой идеи). I've been doing it for the last year, and it's great. It's called weekday veg (вегетарианец). The name says it all (из названия все понятно): Nothing with a face Monday through Friday. On the weekend, your choice. Simple. If you want to take it to the next level (перейти на следующий уровень), remember, the major culprits (преступники) in terms of (с точки зрения) environmental damage and health are red and processed meats (переработанное мясо). So you want to swap those out with (заменить это на) some good, sustainably (не нанося ущерба окружающей среде) harvested (собранный урожай) fish. It's structured (структурно, понятно), so it ends up being simple to remember (в итоге это легко запомнить), and it's okay to break it here and there. After all, cutting (сокращение) five days a week is cutting 70 percent of your meat intake (потребление мяса).
The program has been great, weekday veg. My footprint's smaller, I'm lessening pollution, I feel better about the animals, I'm even saving money. Best of all, I'm healthier, I know that I'm going to live longer, and I've even lost a little weight.
So, please ask yourselves, for your health, for your pocketbook, for the environment, for the animals: What's stopping you from giving weekday veg a shot? (Что останавливает вас от того, чтобы попробовать вегетарианство по будням) After all, if all of us ate half as much meat (в два раза меньше мяса), it would be like half of us were vegetarians.