May 16 2009
Think Vegetarians Odd?
One week now, without red meat or fowl.
I used to think vegetarians were rare (no pun), but it seems that vegetarianism has existed for centuries!
Leonardo da Vinci, Plato, Socrates, Plutarch, and Pythagoras were all vegetarians. (This is based on their writings.)
Albert Einstein, Voltaire, Van Gogh, Henry David Thoreau, Albert Schweitzer (at the end of his life), Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Leo Tolstoy.
In recent years, many celebrities have become known for their vegetarian ways. Often times, they use their celebrity status to promote causes, like animal rights and so on, like Pamela Sue Anderson.
Did you know that all four Beatles were vegetarian? Paul, John, George and Ringo. Incidentally, Linda McCartney, Heather Mills (McCartney), and Yoko Ono (Lennon) too.
There are a lot of musicians who list their preference as all-veggie, including Michael Jackson, Carrie Underwood, Ruben Studdard, Avril Lavigne, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, K D Lang, Leona Lewis, Tommy Lee, Pink, and Seal.
Actors are prominent in their veggie-ness too, including Robert Redford, Mary Tyler Moore, Hayden Panettiere, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Winslet, Sandra Oh, Diane Keaton, Vanessa Williams, Lisa Kudrow, Alyssa Milano, Anne Hathaway, Bernadette Peters, Brad Pitt, Brooke Shields, Candace Bergen, Christina Applegate, Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, Pierce Brosnan and Woody Harrelson.
Then there are those who don’t fit into any of the above categories but are prominent in the public eye, including Ariana Huffington, Ellen Degeneres, Vanna White, Deepak Chopra, the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, and Paramahansa Yogananda.
The fact of the matter is there are hundreds of people whose names or work are familiar to you and me. They are famous for many reasons, and a vegetarian diet is just one aspect of their lives that gets attention.
I researched this in order to become more “assimilated” with the veggie diet, and feel like I am not so “out-of-the-mainstream” as I used to think. This will take some time, however, it is not automatic. I may falter, but I will not fail. My health is at stake.
