Vegetarian Food Provider

Frankly, any food stalls will do.  Just exclude the meat portion.

In any case that you need to enjoy or host a special vegetarian meal, here's a good site with a list of references.

What type of Vegetarian are you?

Vegan -- This diet includes fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, seeds, and nuts. All animal sources of protein — including meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, and other dairy products — are excluded from the diet.

Lactovegetarian -- This diet includes dairy products in addition to the foods listed above in the vegan diet. Meat, poultry, fish, and eggs are excluded from the diet.

Lacto-ovovegetarian -- This diet includes dairy products and eggs in addition to the foods listed above in the vegan diet. Meat, poultry, and fish are excluded from the diet.

Source: http://my.clevelandclinic.org

Turning into a Vegetarian

Before you turn to a vegetarian, make sure you get your facts right. Make sure you know where to source for the nutritions once found in the meats in your daily intakes, eg. protein (in meat). Otherwise malnutrition may follow, so is the idea of being a Vegetarian is just as well

For a start up, check out this useful site with a list of alternative sources of protein that you can find in daily foods like nuts, beans and grains. If you are not that particular about food, I believe you only need to replace the 'meat' in your typical meal with other protein-rich food. For the rest keep it the same with healthy vegetables and fruits.

You may feel awkward at first, but try to exclude any meat related from your breakfast. I usually have milk, bread, sometimes egg for my breakfast so not much change of meal routine. If you should eat lots of breakfast to start your day right I suggest more wholemeal breads instead.

Lunch - there was a discussion about eating more lunch and less dinner. For my case, when I started out I really felt uncomfortable and lack of energy. Until I figured it out, I split my meal into several (smaller) intakes. So there you go, lunch (part 1), afternoon tea break (part 2) with/without a part3, and so on.

Dinner - I included a portion of meat here until I get used to without meat. When I included meat portion in my lunch, it tends to make me surfeit and sleepy. There is no relation between eating meat makes people doze off though, guess it's just in me. You can switch as you like, lunch with meat and dinner without.

When you are ready, pretend to go without meat for entire day, until you get used to it. Enjoy.

Imbalance Ecosystem

Eating Meat = Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Rising = Imbalance of Ecosystem?

It does not matter what kind of non-meat eater you are, what matters most is the awareness of the after effect and action taken.

I was once shared a view that the food chain was pretty healthy in the olden days. Animal eats animal, animal eats plant, plant re-grows and so on. In the modern days however, human breeds animal as source of food, to be consumed. We know the equation, if there is an input, there must be an output. In this case, there are so many new resources, so much input, but where does the output go?

Some are recycled, some are burnt or simply dumped into the trash site or even into the sea. This plays an important part in the carbon dioxide (CO2) rising.

In some worse scenarios, there is not even any breeding process. We over-consume what the mother-earth gives without considering the consequences. For instance, with the growing demands of fish will result in more fish catching. Demands could mean anything, whether it is consuming as in eating, ordered for other purposes, etc, that also increase the sale and supply. Subsequently more and more fish will be caught to meet the demands. 

Catching fish requires effort, time, transportation, tools, etc, which in turn creates the needs of energy. What is the source energy? Fuel for transportation, whatever resources used to maintain the fish caught, to keep it fresh, etc. All of these can be summed up to energy usage. Energy usage definition itself has already a minimum contribution to the Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Not to mention the burning of gasoline, let alone the gas emission during the process. As the results of the catching, there will be no balance to the ecosystem and subsequent consequences will follow.

Think about the overgrowing demands of timber. With more trees being cut down, where will the forest lives go? Without shelter it will be extreme hard to maintain lives, and also more vulnerable to the attack of other predators. Subsequently with the growing of upper chain carnivore, and less on the lower chain, the entire ecosystem will soon die out.

I find this quote interesting, written by the environmentalist Bill McKibben in his article Where We Go, Changing Climate (National Geographic), “remember, the last time a huge asteroid plunked into the Earth, extinguishing huge numbers of species? This time we’re the asteroid”. There is so much true in this.

Our excuses have always sounded whiny, “If I have to cut down the meat intake myself, it will not do any difference while there are so many people out there who do not care.” Remember the art of influence. We eat meat because we are brought up to eat meat. We are made to believe we need meat, the best source of nutrition and energy. With only vegetable, we will not survive for long. These are all myth. You should have heard lots of encouragement and advices to eat less meat for some similar reasons, but I will not just stop there.