Recent surveys show that about 3.2 percent of American adults are vegetarians, with an additional 10 percent saying they practice a largely vegetarian diet. While these numbers may seem small percentage wise, the vegetarians and vegetarian-inclined represent 7.3 and 22.8 million people respectively. Together, that's almost the entire population of America's neighbors to the north, Canada!

There are a lot of reasons for people to consider a vegetarian diet, and with so many people online thanks to satellite Internet, pro-vegetarian information is spreading rapidly throughout the country.

The most well known reason, perhaps, is an interest in animal rights. Some just cannot stand the idea of eating an animal that was once a living, breathing being with a personality and sensitivity to pain. They see a lamb chop and imagine cute sheep bleating and grazing on a hillside. They see a fried and battered drumstick and imagine a proud rooster crowing at dawn on a farm. They see a hot dog and can't understand how eating part of a pig would be any different than eating part of a pet, like a dog or cat or hamster. Others object to the way animals are treated in the nation's slaughterhouses after reading accounts and seeing videos of beatings and throat-slittings and cramped cages with their satellite Internet connections.

Others are concerned with matters of health. As the country's waistline expands, many believe that the average American's large consumption of animal products like hamburgers, bacon, and sausages may contribute to packing on the pounds, not to mention common problems like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Plant-based foods tend to be lower in calorie and higher in vitamin and mineral content than most meats. What's more, some vegetarians believe that people weren't evolved to eat meat whatsoever, pointing to human beings' dull, plant-chomping teeth and long intestines that have difficulty digesting animal flesh. While mainstream doctors and scientists may not support such theories, adherents of such ideas use satellite Internet to broadcast their philosophies.

Another reason that so many people have adopted vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diets is out of concern for the environment. The factory farming industry in the United States has exploded over the past 50 years, and contributes largely to environmental problems in the country, such as decreased air, soil, and water quality, and information about these problems has spread like wildfire with the ubiquity of satellite Internet. In order to feed the animals, considerable amounts of fertilizers and pesticides are used. Some estimate that 8 percent of potable water in the world is used for animal production. What's more, the extreme amount of manure that these animals produce must be disposed of because, unlike on older, pastoral farms, the animals cannot simply deposit it onto the land where they graze and let it naturally fertilize the grass. Instead, these animals live on concrete floors in metal barns, and so the manure must be cleaned out. About 1 billion tons of cow manure is produced in the United States each year, representing 51-118 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Many believe that eating a plant-based diet will help reverse these trends, because if meat production becomes less profitable, fewer companies will attempt to do it.