Is it possible to have a healthy pregnancy and baby on a vegetarian diet?  I have been a vegetarian for about twenty years and have lived to write about it on the Green Baby Guide.  Still, many people seem surprised that I’d continue living meat-free once I had a baby on the way.  Why do I do it?  Here are two reasons:

It’s cheap.  We are full-time vegetarians and rarely spend more than $150 a month on groceries for a couple and a toddler, allotting $60 to organic vegetables and the rest to whole grains, nuts, cheeses, and fruit.  A family our size would shell out $368 on the USDA’s “thrifty plan.”   Instead of relying on coupons and other cost-cutting tricks, we save by skipping the meat. 

I’m conserving resources.  Aside from my thriftiness (and childhood pickiness), I’d always told people I avoided meat “for the environment.”  I knew that eating lower on the food chain was more efficient, but didn’t look into it much further.  I was surprised to learn that livestock (and the grain to feed livestock) takes up a whopping thirty percent of our land’s surface, taking over what used to be wilderness and Amazon rainforests. [1]  Most of us are aware that cars are big polluters–livestock creates eighteen percent more greenhouse gasses than all of our transportation methods put together! 

What are your reasons for avoiding meat?  Did you have a vegetarian pregnancy?  Do you plan to raise your kids as vegetarians?  Raising my daughter vegetarian has worked for me (so far, anyway).  For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, head on over to We are THAT Family.

[1] According to a 2006  report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization