Why should we become vegan? I share with you what goes on in a mind of an omnivore and insatiable researcher. I unravel the shocking truth about the meat industry and question whether humans are close to extinction!
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Just thinking about the reason why I became vegan in the first place takes me back to not so long ago actually.
Maybe it was a natural transition for me since I was always obsessed with health.
However, I was caught in the same belief, like many other people and even people in the health industry, that meat is an essential part of a healthy eating regime.
But with a lot of buzz going on about Veganism, which basically eliminates one of the major part of our so-called balanced diet, ‘meat’, and as an insatiable conspiracy addict, I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about.
Why should we become vegan?
Help save the planet. Going vegan is the quickest AND EASIEST way we, as individuals, can reverse the catastrophic damage to the environment caused by animal agriculture. We are on the border of human extinction. Scientists and environmentalists from around the world blames animal agriculture for the cause.
The meat industry has become so unsustainable due to the demand of meat to meet the needs of our every growing population of our planet.
According to Worldwatch institute, in a journal they wrote, “Is meat sustainable”, they quoted;
“human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease”.
Whoa whoa whoa … I know, if you’re right at the beginning of your vegan journey, the paragraphs above would come at a bit of a shock to you. Yes it ain’t all about feeling sorry for the animals, it is far more than that. So let’s first take a step back.
Why were people jumping on this vegan bandwagon?
I assumed that it was just the next fad like all these diets that go in and out of fashion.
And when celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande publicly boasted being vegan, let’s face it, we, or shall I say I, always assumed that it was some kind of marketing trend. And as usual, I’d dismiss these trends straight away.
However, as I went further into my research, not only did I start bumping into more and more people who were turning vegan… they looked like “normal” people to me! I mean not the hippy flowery stereotypes but more like the Joe Bloggs down the road, just-like-me.
But what I was about to discover was not what I had expected at all.
I had opened pandora’s box and fell straight into a huge rabbit hole. I came to the shocking discovery that I’ve been getting it wrong all this time.
Is eating meat healthy?
I didn’t consider our family unhealthy as I have been a health fanatic for a long time and thought that the small amount of meat that I cooked for our family was “Healthy”.
However, as I delved deeper into this mission, I actually found out that eating animal products, especially processed meats in huge amounts has been categorised in the same dangerous bucket as smoking!
And that eating meat is the number one cause of diabetes! NOT sugar, MEAT!
It was really tempting to stop here. ‘Do I really want to give up my comfort food; the infamous “burgers”? for a salad? Not so exciting huh?
But as usual, my curiosity got the better of me, and I forged on in my quest.
My first discovery was that every one of the meat products I loved so much put my health at risk.
Many studies conclusively agrees and clearly warns about the dangers of consuming foods with a high content of saturated fat.
In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) broke the news that they had ‘sufficient evidence’ that processed meat causes cancer, and red meat being the ‘probable’ culprit.
According to Diabetes UK, bowel cancer is directly linked to red and processed meat, pork was considered red too. These foods put the eaters at risk of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke and countless cardiac diseases.
Top of that list of foods was beef, lamb, pork, poultry, and lard.
Avoiding meat and dairy products can even REDUCE your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease!
It was quite shocking to discover that all the foods I craved so much are top of the life-shortening food pile!
Dying didn’t quite do it for me...
Although, many studies seem to support the fact that meat in a very small quantities were still good for your health, secretly, despite the evidence so far, I was still looking for a way to salvage my ‘fish finger fridays or midweek lazy burger nights.’
The quest continued…
One thing I thought, maybe I could play the joker card, “How about the protein?.”
Surely, being vegan was not sustainable because I would die of protein deficiency right? After all, we were taught to love these foods as kids because of the indispensability of the protein they provide.
Unfortunately, erroneous assumption that has been passed for ages was shattered when I saw evidence from the World Resources Institute which categorically illustrates that people are consuming about one third more meat than the average daily adult requirement.
What makes matters worse is that maybe meat was too abundant in our diets that I took less attention to other vitamins, minerals and nutrients that are equally as important, if not more.
Meat is gross!
Animal products are contaminated with blood, body fluids and faeces.
Not only is that a horrible thought, abundance of bacteria and other toxins including antibiotics, hormones etc. that have been given to the animal for treatment during the manufacturing process is passed to us when we eat the meat.
The foods prone to the most serious diseases such as e-coli are commonly found in ground beef and unpasteurised milk but also found in other animal products such as pigs, sheep and goats.
According to a study by CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), an estimated 265,000 people in the US alone are infected by e.coli each year.
3,600 are hospitalised and 30 deaths each year.
Although there have been e.coli outbreaks that have been passed to humans from vegetables, the original source has always come from animals from a nearby farm.
OK, but what about chicken, maybe it isn’t so bad?
Wrong, in fact, CSPI (Centre of Science in Public Interest) published a report to state that among the risk of diseases, poultry is the worse out of them all, spreading dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter amongst other things!
What really happens behind closed doors
If the health benefits of veganism or to be better put, the grave dangers inherent in meat consumption wasn’t enough to put me off, the issues I unraveled surrounding animal cruelty pushed the nail in the coffin even further.
My omnivore indecisiveness was quickly being converted after reading, listening to and watching clips of animals being treated in
slaughterhouses and ranch farms.
A particular clip was quite gruesome and I got goosebumps for many days after.
Right from the entrance of the slaughterhouse, viewers were greeted by the carcass of slaughtered animals, bones from different parts of their bodies hung overhead, arranged as though the house was displaying some kind of trophy cabinet.
It was worse than some of the horror films I’ve ever seen in my life, apart from, this wasn’t a film, this was real life.
I was already clearly put off by this but I never knew how much worse still lied in store.
The particular slaughterhouse shown had a target of 200 animals per hour, an average of about 20 animals every five minutes.
The animals all had a gloomy look, weary from their useless struggling as they were led from the pen at the parking lot in order to face their judgment without any trial.
Cows were kept in a single file and had to go through the horrifying experience of watching their kind get stunned with a metal bolt that rendered them brain dead. Then their heavy lifeless bodies lifted to a trolley where the slaughtering properly took place.
The workers at the kill point had a careless kinda sedated look about them, almost resembled machines and it’s hard not to doubt their ability to feel anything.
Even more machines and humans are further employed to finish up the job of gutting out the organs of the animals.
Are we simply playing God?
Numerous health and safety issues arise at almost every stage of the animal agriculture process and as mentioned before, the condition of what we are consuming has been questioned again and again.
The fact remains that as long as slaughterhouses continue to churn out meat at such unprecedented rate, there’s hardly anything that can be done to guarantee the microbiological fitness of the products.
However, the unavoidable question kept popping into my head,
“what is the difference between a pet dog, a cow at the ranch, or the pig in the farm? Why does one deserve to be showered so much love while the other meets the grueling experience of the gallows?”
Science has proven that cows, pigs, and birds all have intelligence levels comparable to dogs.
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that maybe we have too much power as humans and we only owe it to nature and our future children to tune down the destructive influence of our powers.
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Fancy a hotdog?
Further reading revealed that dog meat is a people’s’ favourite in some parts of the world.
Unbelievable, right?
As near barbaric as that sounds, it is actually true. I cringed at the thought of anyone taking our man’s best friend, a dog to the slaughter.
I tried imagining the look on the dog’s face, the painful wines, and the agony as it surrenders to the cruel hands of death.
The sequence of thoughts was expectedly unpleasant. And it hit me that people who kept pigs as pets (Miley Cyrus had one) are hit with that reality on a daily basis, and not being able to do anything about it must hurt as hell.
When I think about how I want all animals to be treated, to be free as beings that share our planet amongst us. But even the zoo or even the petting farms readily comes to mind.
Although, many vegans would probably disagree about the caged animals. Many zoos that I have visited have been rescued from horrible habitats and the animals maintained wouldn’t simply survive in the wild any longer.
However, I realise that there is much of a controversy surrounding this which can be discussed in more detail another time.
However, for this post, I wanted to highlight the contrast of the the impeccable manner in which the animals in the zoo or petting farms are tendered; in an atmosphere of love. Then on the opposite side of the coin, the commercial ranch with their killing conveyor belts.
The double standards just leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I tell myself even if I can’t stop this, I can no longer be a part of this.
You won't believe how much has changed in only 10k years!
You’ve probably heard this buzzword flying around as well, ‘sustainability’.
Just in case you were wondering, the reason why this word keeps popping up here and there is because all the top scientists and environmentalists have raised questions surrounding the ability on how our planet can continually sustain the demands our species are putting on our planet.
Just to put things in perspective, the world population in 1804 was 1 billion; 1930 was 2 billion, 1974 was 4 billion; 1999 – 6 billion and currently in 2018 – 7.7 billion.
Only 10 thousand years ago, we took up only 1% of the proportion of vertebrate land animals living on earth, with 99% wild animals.
Today, due to our exponential growth in population and the amount of mouths as a result to feed, our beloved earth now holds 67% livestock, 32% are us hungry humans and only 1% of wild animals are left.
In the last 40 years alone, wild animals have decreased in population by 58% whilst we increased by 85%!
Such alarming levels of livestock production can’t be allowed to continue if we do not want a global crisis on our hands.
There is just too many of us to feed!
According to some studies, we have already reached our breaking point and by 2050, we would need about 3 equivalent planets to sustain us!
As per the chart below, it is interesting to note that out of the 71% of the earth’s habitable land, half of that land is dedicated to agriculture with 77% used for farming livestock production (and it’s still on the increase).
Amazon is the biggest rainforest in the planet and gives us about 28% of our entire oxygen on our planet.
In the last 50 years, almost a fifth of it has been destroyed; about 300 thousand square miles. A range of studies have reported that is about 1 to 2 sized football fields destroyed every-single-second.
The big question is: for how long can we continue doing this?
As people keep giving birth to more children, science advancing and more people are surviving diseases, our population keeps increasing and so does our demand for meat.
If this is not curbed, I fear there would be a time when cities would be brought down to build farms.
Many crop farms have already been brought down in favour of livestock farming.
Paradoxically, a huge part of land dedicated to farming is even used for farming crops that are to be used for feeding livestock.
We’re running out of water!
The amount of water needed for animal production is more than I could ever have imagined.
I thought the statistics unbelievable at first.
Here I was thinking I was being careful about saving water with my quick showers, switching the tap off when I was brushing my teeth, telling my daughter not to waste water as she washed her face in the sink, whilst all this time, all I needed was to simply stop eating meat!
Agriculture uses about 70% of available freshwater in the world.
Even plant cultivation has been negatively impacted by our insatiable craving for animals. Our freshwater supplies that seemed inexhaustible is now under threat.
The standard diet of a meat consumer in the US requires an estimated 4000 gallons of water per day, compared to the 300 gallons required by a vegan. This stat puts a lot of things into perspective.
Maybe this will help you visualise it better. The water used in the production of one hamburger is more than the water needed to shower for two months.
The COW conspiracy unravelled...
Livestock is responsible for 13% of greenhouse gas emission worldwide, meaning they contribute to global warming.
According to ‘Cowspiracy’ the documentary, this amounts to more than cars, ships, planes and all other means of transportation combined.
However, being an insatiable investigator myself, the figures didn’t quite add up when I started comparing the numbers with other studies that I had found.
What I later found out was that they had made the calculations based on the GWP (Global Warming Potential) and NOT just carbon dioxide alone.
Katt Andryskova from My Vegan Experiment explains it very well in layman’s’ terms.
Everyone seems to be focused on carbon dioxide as the main cause of global warming. However, if we took a closer look at the other factors that have a considerably more worrying effects on global warming such as methane gas, you’ll be surprised as I was, to learn that methane had an effect on global warming at a rate of 20 times faster than carbon dioxide!
And just to let you know, 90% of methane is released through a cow’s burp and the remaining 10% from their farts!
Reduce the burps, reduce the risk of global warming!
“If you reduce carbon dioxide [CO2] emissions to the atmosphere, you don’t really see a signal in the atmosphere for about 100 years or so. If you reduce the amount of methane emissions, the level in the atmosphere goes down fairly quickly, within decades.” -Kirk R. Smith, PhD, Professor of Environmental Health, UC Berkeley
Just in case you didn’t get that last paragraph. If we reduced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is mainly associated with transportation, power plants, burning of fossil fuels etc. we wouldn’t notice any difference for about 100 years or so.
BUT if we reduced methane which is mainly caused by animal agriculture (cows), then we would see changes within decades, that means 10 years or so, in-our-lifetime.
Further studies suggest that over a longer period of time, another main greenhouse gas which are also byproducts of the beef industry is nitrous oxide.
Many studies have confirmed that this is 310 times more GWP than carbon dioxide!
The stats in Cowspiracy makes sense now.
Even the waste products from livestock pose danger to our planet.
Excreta from animals can pollute waterways and have lead to deadly diseases. The contaminated water is further used to irrigate crops, transferring the contaminants to plants and the already vicious cycle continues.
The complicated procedure goes unchecked until a major health disaster arises.
Furthermore, animal waste passing into water bodies could also severely inhibit aquatic life. In ways similar to oil spillages, animal waste can make it impossible for aquatic life to exist in contaminated waters.
How could I have imagined a perfectly enjoyable serving of steak could cause all these things?
Good job! You've got will-power!
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What about fish?
Finally, the question that kept popping on my mind, surely there’s plenty of fish in the sea right?
I have always believed fish production and consumption have no negative impact on my health, my family’s health or the environment.
Turns out this is another misconception that is quite far from the truth.
First off, fish like mammals also feel pain and there is overwhelming scientific evidence in support of this.
I put the methods of fishing into perspective, and realized they are quite abusive and against all what the advocates of animal compassion stand for.
Think of a fish being trapped on a hook, the pain that comes with it, and the feeling of betrayal.
Or think of hundreds of fishes packed in a trawler, the extreme discomfort, and the feeling of helplessness.
One can only realise how important this cause is if we appreciate the fact that animals also feel, just as much as we do.
Were these fish scared?
One recent example was when we were traveling in Thailand in 2017.
We were watching a fishmonger fishing out catfish from a huge tank about 1 metre high. There must have been a few hundred catfish in the tank, yet there was barely any water covering them.
Everytime the guy went towards the catfishes, hundreds of them would frantically swim in the opposite direction of the net, leaving only a few unlucky ones trapped in the corner.
After the fishmonger had grabbed his victims, when he left, the catfishes resumed their stance and started spreading out once again in the tank. It looked like they were desperate to grasp the tiny bit of space and water they could find.
My heart was breaking. That was when I said to my husband, “these fish must feel fear!”
Will you eat McDonalds again?
The widespread contamination of water bodies also makes fish consumption a danger to everyone, including aquatic plants and birds that feed on fish.
As briefly mentioned before, animal excreta is passed through waterways.
McDonalds & Walmart slaughter 35 million chickens & 125K cattle every week, creating 104 million tonnes of animal faeces each year which runs into the sea.
Other chemical and organic contaminants from farms and industries passed into waters are absorbed or consumed by the fish and are ultimately transferred to us when we consume them. This could cause cancers, birth defects, brain disorders or worse still, a widespread epidemic may even arise.
Japan’s Fukushima disaster readily comes to mind.
Although crops are also at risk of absorbing environmental toxins, the dangers posed by such in crops is much less compared to animals.
The sea gives us life!
Out of all the shocking information I have learned so far, the fish industry is the one that finally tipped me over the edge.
The environment is feeling the huge impact of overfishing, just like livestock consumption, our demand for our legless friends are at a breaking point.
Giant trawlers and fishing vessels destroy the aquatic habitat and extensive farming with dead zones on the increase, causing our sea water to rise.
This also has a great impact on biodiversity in the water bodies as phytoplankton, which are vital in the marine food chain, are being killed off.
Phytoplankton, just like trees, serves us oxygen by consuming carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen through photosynthesis.
In fact, the ocean provides half of the oxygen we breathe and scientists believe that phytoplankton contributes between 50 to 85% of oxygen to the planet’s atmosphere!
You really don’t need to be a scientist to work out the math should the phytoplankton become extinct.
Are fish on the verge of extinction?
By-catch or By-Kill (turtles, whales, dolphins etc) caught in fishing nets according to some estimates make up 40% of the world catch!
Based on 800 papers, an average going up to 39.5 million tonnes of fish are discarded each year in commercial fishing!
Shrimp being the worse, chucking out 80-90% of its catch as by-kill.
That’s basically, for every pound of shrimp on your table, 26 pounds of other sea animals were killed and tossed back in the sea.
Currently, over 70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted.
Many studies have concluded that by 2048, saltwater fish will be extinct.
From a health perspective, fish isn’t what I thought it was either.
Whilst I cannot argue with the many benefits of eating some types of fish, many nutritional studies have argued that just like eating eggs, dairy and meat, fish contain high amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol.
Some fish even have high-fat content which is comparable to eating red meat.
Many typical fish that are available in your supermarkets contain high amounts of toxic pollutants such as mercury which causes cancers, birth defects and brain disorders.
EVEN organic salmon is toxic for your health!
Specialised physicians in health and nutrition like Dr Micheal Greger suggest nutrients provided through fish can be found naturally in a plant based diet.
If you watch this Youtube video by Dr Michael Greger, renowned physician and owner of Nutritionfacts.org, I suggest changing the replay speed to x1.5 for optimised listening.😉
The meat industry pulls the strings!
On top of this, I realised that the main reason people are not made aware of all these matters is because of the lobbies that are being injected into the meat industry.
The hidden expenses to produce meat is offloaded onto society aka our taxes!
In the US alone about $38 billions is spent subsidising meat and dairy; to keep the cost cheap. In comparison, to subsidising fruit and veg = $17 million (US only). That’s a mere 0.05% in comparison to meat!
Since meat is being subsidised so much, fast food as a result is cheaper! Therefore, we’re basically being paid to kill ourselves.
There was only 1 thing to do.
I finally came to the conclusion that I had to go fully vegan.
My journey to veganism has been hard, to say the least, even scary at some points. There were moments I thought about giving up, but I was spurred on by all the aforementioned facts.
It isn’t a fad, a trend like any other diet that I first thought it was. The stuff I was reading is real.
The most scary thing is, the impact of the damage to our planet is happening as I’m writing this.
The thought of everything that I have learned so far terrifies me and even more so that unless we took vital action now, we could be seeing catastrophic repercussions within 30 years, if not sooner.
And if I was to be perfectly honest with you, going back to that scary introduction at the beginning of this post…
..Should we become vegan?
For me, saving the planet is THE reason to be vegan.
You see, the way I see it, being vegan isn’t just about health, as taking out the planet’s destruction out the equation, there are still plenty of ways you could eat to stay on a healthy diet including a small amount of meat, if you will.
YES, I said it! Come on, I was a healthy omnivore for a VERY long time.
Let’s face it, we’ve been eating meat all our lives and many live to a very prosperous age. And if it weren’t for the planet, I would have been pretty happy to continue eating it.
If we had better treatment in the animal agriculture?
Despite the current horrible conditions of industrial animal farming, if I were told tomorrow, “Hey, all the farm animals will be happy animals and will be free to roam around and eat grass etc etc”, the same goes here too; I would probably be happy to continue to eat meat as well, knowing that my pig was a happy pig.***
After all, I cannot help the upbringing I had and whether many vegans disagree or not, I’ve been accustomed to the taste of meat all my life.
***Updated July 2019 — I’ve got so used to eating a plant-based diet now, eating meat feels TOO WRONG!
BUT, in the harsh reality, it ain’t about the diet and it ain’t about the animal cruelty, really.
The fact that we, the human race have overstepped our limits by a long shot, that I think the ONLY way we CAN reverse the damage we have done so far or stop the increasing damage that we are making, is to STOP contributing to animal agriculture.
Stop giving these big corporations our money, so they’ll stop trying to keep up with the demand of meat.
As a result, end the mass destruction of rainforests, end polluting of our oceans and stop human extinction; protect our children.
Breathe.
Does being vegan suck?
However, back down to the everyday reality, our vegan diet isn’t all THAT bad haha!
Only joking. Seriously it’s been quite a fun transition and not at all boring.
I’ve found a new passion in cooking.
I’m still learning new ways of cooking. And thanks to the wonderful invention of the internet, there are literally countless vegan recipe ideas to choose from, so you don’t even need to spend any money on cook books!
We’ve also noticed that our food bill has reduced even despite buying mostly organic ingredients! Seriously, I get excited everytime I go food shopping.
It has also been fun experimenting with new ingredients and my lovely supportive husband, Nick has enjoyed my successes as well as my disasters.
It has been a slow process but day by day, it gets easier and easier.
I remember at the beginning of our journey, he would comment things like, “mmm nice dinner darling but I think it would have tasted better with a bit of meat”.
But now, Nick doesn’t even mention meat in the household anymore.
I have been able to treat my family to amazing colourful meals but most importantly feeling happy within myself in the knowledge that I’m doing the best for our health and helping to save our planet too.
What are your thoughts on this?
Are any of these facts shocking news to you?
I would love to hear your take on this, just leave them in the comments below.
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Thanks to Pixabay for providing the photos apart from the steak and money by abigail low from Unsplash, fact photos as marked and Little Miss D and Vegan burgers by Insatiable Mel
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Hi Jenny,
Thank you for your great feedback. That’s fantastic that you are already making changes in your diet; not eating meat is already a huge part of the challenge accomplished.
That’s amazing that your son is also pretty much there! Maybe he’s more attuned to what’s happening in this world lol!
However, unless he is eating a good varied diet, I would consider adding multivitamins supplements with B12 especially as some kids don’t get adequate nutrients (even on a meat diet) as they should do, especially if they are fussy.
Eeeeeek! I know a lot of ‘pro’ vegans would argue against this but really, their kids are probably not fussy and love eating kale for snacks!
And your note about calcium; there are tonnes of vegan foods that are rich in calcium. Infact, you’ve probably already been eating most of them without realising it.
Obviously, tofu kicks quite a punch in the calcium department but if you don’t eat that, there are tonnes of everyday stuff such as: Oranges, Tangerines, Dried Apricots, Kiwi, Dates, Dried Figs, Rhubarb, Prunes or most green leaves like kale, collards, broccoli, spinach etc.
Here is a list of some of the everyday things you can get which are packed with calcium.
Remember diet is about compounding, I mean each item on the list doesn’t look much on it’s own but if you ate a handful of almonds here, a tangerine there, a kiwi, a piece of buckwheat bread, you’ll sure be getting the sufficient calcium you need or any other nutrient for the matter of fact!
I’m working on a super powered bread at the moment with teff, amaranth, buckwheat (see the list of calcium rich foods) which I’ll share with my readers as soon as I figure out how to get the darn thing to rise lol!
Just one thing about the list, check out each nutritional breakdown and you’ll notice that good nutrients are high in vegan foods but practically zero in areas such as cholesterol, which means, not only do you save the planet, you’re also doing your body a world of wonders 😉
Finally, I also refer to this tool which is awesome, gives you a breakdown of ALL the nutrients in vegan foods.
Rather a long response but since you were the first one to comment on this post, it’s my way of saying thanks and welcome you on this fulfilling journey yipeee!! If you have any other questions, just pop it in any one of my posts and I’ll be happy to help where I can. Big LoVe Mel! Stay strong! “Best intentions are better than no intentions”
After reading this I am SO glad I haven’t eaten meat since I was a child! It never felt right to me. However, while I have cut back on fish I do have it occasionally so I’d like to work on reducing that, which would make me nearly vegan…I don’t eat dairy now but I do eat eggs! Last night I had run out of protein options so I made a vege curry using coconut milk and added…my hemp protein powder that usually goes in my porridge. And actually it was good!!
BTW my son is nearly vegan if you can believe it! He refuses to eat meat and cheese and eggs. So it’s just Milk now (and the occasional sausage roll which he won’t miss). I’d be happy to try to substitute the milk for an alternative if I knew he was getting enough calcium. I’ll need your help with that for sure!! xx