It’s an exciting week for this vegetarian!  Meg and I off to San Fran this weekend to celebrate World Vegetarian Day.  As this is my first time participating, I am definitely looking forward to the food, lectures and events that are scheduled.  Here’s the website if you would like to check it out http://www.sfvs.org/wvd/. 

This week, I’m going to change things up a bit.  Instead of sending out information on the animal, health and environmental impact of eating factory farmed animals, I thought I would focus on a few vegetarian restaurants in San Diego, the benefits to eating organic, humanely raised farm animals and participating in a more sustainable food chain.

A great website to check out some good veg restaurants in town is http://www.happycow.net/north_america/usa/california/san_diego/index.html .  This website currently lists 20 restaurants and 11 whole food (not necessarily "Whole Foods") stores and locations.  It also contains customer reviews for most of the restaurants.  My favorites are Sipz Fusion (lots of mock meats) and Spread (fresh food and menu daily).  I’ve also heard that Jyoti-Bihanga is a nice place for lunch.  Most of these places would be a good choice for dinner on your veg days.  But, you don’t have to go to a veg restaurant to get veg food; some flavors such as Mexican, Indian, Thai (and other asian) foods, Subway (try the VegiMax patty), etc., also offer excellent vegetarian selections.

Next, eating organic, humanely raised cows, pigs and chickens makes a huge difference in the life of the animals, the quality of the meat and the health of YOU!  Although there may be an incremental cost in buying meats raised in this manner, the payoff is worth the cost.  Sustainably-raised animals are treated humanely and are permitted to carry out natural behaviors such as rooting in the dirt and pecking the ground.  Small-scale, less mechanized, more bio-diverse organic farming operations have been shown to use 60% less fossil fuel per unit of food than conventional industrial farms.  In addition to being raised without synthetic hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, sustainable food is more nutritious than food produced by industrial agriculture.

Keeping with the theme of sustainability, here is an excellent resource to answer questions on maintaining a sustainable lifestyle.  http://www.sustainabletable.org/home/ .  This website will look up grocery stores within a radius of your zip-code that subscribe to this practice.  It also details tons of other information that will help us to make more informed decisions about what we eat, where it comes from and how the food was produced.  I mean let’s face it…we put more research into buying a car or a video camera than we do with the food we eat.  Trust me!  I am far from perfect in this regard, but I know that if I can make the right decision most of the time…then I’ll make a positive impact.

Take care!  Have a great week, prepare a vegetarian meal or go to a good restaurant on October 1^st.   Until next week.

Author Information -  During his spare time Eric writes for and maintains wannaveg.com. For his day job he works for an electronics company in San Diego, CA. Eric has been a vegetarian for about 10 years and believes that going 'green' and reducing meat consumption go hand-in-hand.