Make room for veggies!
The benefits of a vegan diet plango way beyond standing up for animal rights. In fact, a lot of the people who are shifting to vegan and vegetarian diet plans now are doing it for health or environmental reasons.
The majority of your diet should be plant-based foods. The more research is done, the more scientists find reasons that humans should eat mostly plants. Each person identifies with different benefits of a vegan diet, so I’ll go over all the main ones.
Health
The effects of any specific food on human health is difficult to study and prove direct correlations, but animal products have been the common thread in many studies done on the causes of chronic degenerative diseases.
Heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes and cancer are all directly related to diet, and have strong links to intake of animal products. I’m not saying you have to be a vegan to be healthy. But cutting back on meat leaves more room for vegetables and fruits in your diet, and that is definitely important.
Environmental
The current methods for meat, poultry, fish, egg and dairy production use many times more energy than they provide in calories, they use large quantities of the natural resources that are in danger right now, and they produce mass amounts of toxic and unusable waste.
Ethical
Current practices involve cruelty throughout the life of an animal raised to be food – while they are being raised through to the time they are slaughtered.
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Some vegetarians and vegans also have an issue against killing of a sentient being, whether it had a good life to that point or not. There’s also cruelty in the production of dairy and eggs, even though these animals aren’t always killed. This is the strongest reason for strict veganism, and certainly makes the case that if vegetarians are eating dairy and eggs that they should be sure to get them from a reliable source that uses humane, organic and environmentally sustainable methods.
Social
Raising animals involves an intense use of land as well as many acres of feed grown for each animal. Since plant foods use only enough land to grow food directly for humans, they require much less space. The social cost is that the priorities of meat eaters (usually richer individuals and richer countries) are put above the priorities of plant eaters (usually poorer individuals and poorer countries). Developing (poor) nations produce more animal products than they eat, meaning that these products are being produced for developed (rich) nations, with most of the profits going back to the large multinational corporations that sell those farmers the means of production.
Economical
If none of these reasons grab your attention, think of the financial impact cutting animal products out would have on your grocery bills. Beans are a much cheaper source of protein per gram than meat, along with all their other benefits.
If we lived in a perfect world, almost all of these issues (the moral impact of killing a sentient being is the exception) could be overcome in theory. But because I don’t live in a perfect world, and I don’t see any solutions to all of these issues in our current reality, I choose to eat only plants and take a few supplements. (I also want to note that most of the supplements I take are to make up for industrial food production and nutritionally-depleted soil, not to make up for a lack of animal foods.) Looking at all of the factors, I think it’s the best choice I have in our imperfect world.
Most importantly, I feel incredibly healthy, full of energy and stronger than I’ve ever been before – all on a vegan diet. So I have no complaints, and no desire to eat animal foods.
What do you think about the benefits of a vegan diet plan? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
