Sure there are many overweight vegetarians, but those are the pople who eat only junk. Chips and cookies and candy. They would be overweight no matter the diet they chose.
But then there are vegetarians such as my self who eat healther and try new things when they get out of the meat + side dish = meal box.
If God put animals on the planet just to look pretty and keep us company, then why did he put them here at all?
I know I don't have a horse in this race, as it's not my theology we are talking about here, but this is my 2 cents:
The Goddess created the animals for the very same reason she created us: To learn, to live, to grow and eventually to die. To think that animals are just earthly decorations is to assume that she made us "better" then them. I think that's just ego. Just becuase we have "progress" does not make us better. In a lot of way it makes us terrible monsters. Look at what we are doing to the Earth. We are the only creatures to ravage it with our greed.
Go sit with some cats, listen to the dolphins, watch the deer. These creatures are more like us then you think. They have families, they have fears, the have hopes, they love, they grieve their fallen family, they help the sick, the list goes on.
I feel that the animals were ment to be our guides, our neighbours, our inspiration and our friends. Not a resource we can exploit untill it's ruined.
And I feel it's this human centric thinking that is respnsible for the shape the Earth is in today. If we though the animals were just is important as us, if we valued every rock, tree and creature, if we actually saw the Earth as a living breathing entitly, and entity that feels, then how could we go on like we do, with our SUVs and our slaughterhouses and our bull dozers and nuclear power plants? It's bad enough that we bomb people we have labeled "wrong" or "bad", but to destroy something innocent, to destroy something so pure would be impossible.
But we're doing it everyday. Everyday a little bit more of the Earth dies. And I wonder what we will do when She is lost?