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Steamboat Springs — The holidays: a time focused on family, friends and (mostly) food.

Everyone looks forward to what is commonly referred to as "Turkey Day," but what about the elusive bunch that break the holiday tradition and (gasp) don't eat animals?

Vegetarians account for about 2.5 percent of the country's population. I joined this community of nonmeat eaters about three months ago.

When first making this decision, I had no noble cause or intelligent justification - my only reasoning was that I didn't really like meat and I thought it would be cool to call myself a vegetarian.

As I continued down this path, I discovered real reasons why people decide to become vegetarians. There generally are three of them: the animals, your health and the environment.

Many people refuse to participate in meat-eating because they disagree with the treatment of the animals. Factory farming often is an issue, and there have been many cases of animal misuse and abuse. For a perfect example, visit www.goveg.com and watch the video called "Meet Your Meat."

Eating meat to excess can be bad for your health, and can lead to things such as kidney defects and colon cancer.

Also, the amount of pesticides, antibiotics, steroids and hormones in factory-farmed food is outrageous. The Total Diet Study by the Food and Drug Administration uncovered that bacon had 48 different pesticide residues, ground beef had 82 residues, fast food hamburgers had 113 residues and hot dogs had 123 residues.

The environment also is helped because the space taken up for growing food for the animals requires farmland where rainforest used to be, as well as massive amounts of water used to grow those crops.

People need to not look at vegetarians as burdensome people who simply need to be tolerated and fed a salad. Instead, look at them as people who are standing up for their beliefs.

This can take form in many ways: offering more vegetarian choices, listening to why that person made the meatless choice or even becoming a vegetarian yourself.

In the meantime, I'll focus on the family and friends aspect of Thanksgiving - and eat my "Tofurkey" in peace.