Reasons for becoming vegetarian generally include improving health, showing compassion to animals, and decreasing pollution. An important reason that is often overlooked is that vegetarian diets can reduce the potential for violence and war. World peace, or any other kind of peace, depends greatly on the attitude of the mind.
Vegetarianism can bring about the right mental attitude for peace.
In this world of lusts and hatred, greed and anger, force and violence, vegetarianism holds forth a way of life which, if practiced universally, can lead to a better, juster, and more peaceful community of nations. Richard J. Barnet, a director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and author of The Lean Years, an analysis of resource scarcities, believes that by the end of the century the anger and despair of hungry people could lead to acts of terrorism and economic class wars. Nuclear fission is now in the hands of even the developing countries in many of which hunger and famine are most serious. The Jewish tradition mandates a special obligation to work for peace. The Bible does not command that people merely love peace or merely seek peace but that they actively pursue peace.