I don't think there is any real social pressure on me to eat meat. Once in a while I get a jerk who isn't one of my friends trying to explain to me the "error of my ways". But it's pretty easy to shrug that off, with an equally obscene response of something like "animals are my friends, and you don't eat your friends do you?". Ha.
But the real reason is I can get by fine without eating meat and would be viciously sick I'm sure if I ever attempted to eat meat now.
Maybe meat is understimate and it's our western life style that cause the illnesses.
Meat + bad carbs + no exercise = health problems
But for sure being a vegetarian or something in the middle is healthy. As long as you continue biking and avoid fast absorbing carbs
Good luck
Besides, there are the obvious other health-related reasons to not eat factory-farmed meat, which most of our meat is. For that I can only recommend reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Saffran Foer. It was what pushed me over the line into becoming a vegetarian.
I'm now trying to eat a more equilibrated diet, lentils, beans but still meat in the diet.
Also, watch out for this phenomenon: after not eating meat for some time (a month should suffice), other food (especially vegetables) start to taste differently - start to taste better. It's quite possible you might never go back to eating meat again.
