Day 5: Vegan Redefined

#1 reason to go Vegan

What is vegan and it's lifestyle?

According to the the Vegan Society, "veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of,and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." With that noted, often vegan diets gets a bad reputation. But I believe it gets a bad reputation because Western society has normalized and weighed heavily on a meat consumption diet rather than a more plant based diet.

There are many reasons why people decide to go vegan. Perhaps people are wanting a more healthy lifestyle or their compassion for animals is their highest priority. However, the #1 reason to vegan is for ENVIRONMENTAL reasons. Here are the implications visible to anyone.

1) Livestock is the #1 water polluter. The slurry from livestock pollutes groundwater, streams and rivers causing different chemicals to spill into these natural resources such as nitrogen and phosphor. Acid rain is another cause of this as well.

2) TOO MUCH WATER: Vegans consume less water than non based vegans. It takes 1/3 less water and 1/3 land for vegans than non vegans. In fact, it takes more protein to raise livestock that it actually produces. Sounds a bit wasteful?

3) As our current population increases so does the consumption of livestock and not to mention the waistline of those that are Westernize diet or non-based vegan diet. Current population is 6.7 billion and expected to increase by 9 billion by 2050.

4) GRAINS: The amount of grains spent to feed livestock contributes to deforestation. Also, this sets more and more emphasis on developing countries to raise cash crops instead of their own crops increasing more malnutrition.

There's so many other ramifications but those are enough to consider thinking of going vegan at least testing it out and seeing if that's a lifestyle choice that will sustain our planet.

Source: The Vegan Society