Why Go Vegan? 3 Reasons to Transform Your Diet and Lifestyle
More and more people are embracing plant-based living for the animals, for better health, and a more sustainable future. Let’s learn more about it!
Why Go Vegan? 3 Reasons to Transform Your Diet and Lifestyle
- For the animals.
Choosing to be more compassionate toward animals and helping the animal liberation movement is one of the main reasons why people become vegan.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 80 billion animals (not including fish) are slaughtered for meat EACH YEAR. This number does not include the additional deaths that occur during the production process such as the male baby chicks killed through large, high-speed grinders in the egg industry, among many others.
Ever since I learned about the horrors that animals experience in these industries, I started seeing them as unique and sentient creatures that have their own voice and the right to live life free from abuse and exploitation.
However, most individuals are not aware of these practices. Aside from their confinement in stressful, unsanitary, and crowded quarters where they can barely move, animals are subjected to physical alterations such as painful mutilations/amputations, tail docking, beak trimming, teeth clipping, branding, tagging, and castration which cause prolonged pain that lasts for weeks up to months.
(Read more here: 9 Cruel Yet Legal Farming Practices and Inhumane Practices on Factory Farms)
Veganism also extends beyond the animal agriculture industry. Animals are routinely exploited in the fashion industry for their fur, skin, and feathers. Aside from this, animals such as mice, rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, primates, and others are also subjected to painful experiments for animal testing in beauty and other consumer products. In these laboratories, they are locked inside cages where they suffer from pain, stress, frustration, and loneliness.
(Read more here: We Animals Org.’s Top 10 Images of Animal Testing Victims and Their Stories)
Animals cannot speak up for themselves. Their only hope is for us to speak up for them, to take a stand against animal cruelty, and to advocate for their liberation and well-being.
- For its benefits to your health.
Vegan diets that are well-planned and properly researched can be highly beneficial for your health. It is even recognized by the British Dietetic Association and the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as a suitable diet for every age and stage of life.
In addition to this, a study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine stated that plant-based diets are typically low in saturated fats and dietary cholesterol. Minimally processed vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds are rich in antioxidants, fiber, and other nutrients needed in order to live a healthy life.
As observed in both observational studies and randomized controlled interventions, plant-based diets have resulted in positive health attributes and have also been associated with a lower risk of incidence for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as a decreased likelihood of various types of cancer, among many others. YAY plant-powered bodies!
- For a more sustainable future and its positive impact on the environment and communities.
In the animal agriculture and fashion industries, large numbers of animals are bred and slaughtered in a concentrated area which means a large amount of waste produced and dumped onto our environment and communities. This heavily compromises the health and well-being of people living near these industries, particularly the marginalized groups including the Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.
Due to the massive global scale of these industries, it does not come as a surprise that they are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, toxic waste pollution, deforestation, water pollution, habitat loss, species extinction, among many others.
In Brazil alone, over a hundred million acres of land is used to grow soya beans for other countries’ livestock feed. Rather than growing food for themselves, impoverished populations are also driven to grow cash crops for livestock feed which only contributes to worsen food insecurity, malnutrition, and poverty.
For vegan diets, on the other hand, considerably lower quantities of crops and water are required which makes it one of the most effective ways to reduce our impact on the environment! 💚
