I’ve been mulling over the idea about adding a post about veganism over the past couple of days. My only concern was that, because I’m not a confrontational person, some people (not all!) might get the wrong idea about my message. And to be honest, my experience with others when it comes to finding out that I’m a vegan are the following three reactions:
- What’s a vegan?
- So you think you’re better than us?/veganism is extreme, you can’t be healthy without some animal protein
- Cool, I admire vegans but I only eat free range and organic meat, and I only eat very little of it.
You can see why I was (and still am) a bit dubious…
Okay, not everyone is like that, but the majority of people I have spoken with fall in those three categories. Granted my other half has followed me in my path to a more cruelty free way of life, and I am so lucky to have an understanding and kind fiancé who gets me and wants to do something to help others just as much as I do. But only a heartless individual would not want to change after they have seen and read about all the things we have. And now that I think about it: if my other half didn’t/refused to understand the reasons why I became a vegan, carried on eating meat without consideration of how I feel about it, or/and in worst case scenario ridiculed me for it, then I would seriously doubt that our relationship would have continued. If you’re wondering what would be my breaking point, it would be something along these lines:
For those who fall under the first category and are actually curious about veganism and want to learn more – GO FOR IT :D! If you are truly curious and want to think for yourself you will go the extra mile and do your research. I was curious and decided one day that I wanted to know more; although in my three categories I fell under number 2 at the time. Which only goes to show that even stubborn people can change :-).
So I guess some of you might be thinking what made me shun dairy and eggs for good, or for that reason why ANYONE would ever want to give up “delicious” cheeeeeeese and protein filled eggs. So…why choose to be vegan?
Every vegan out there has their reasons, but mine involved the stark realization that almost a third of the spent dairy cows that were sent to slaughter were still pregnant! Yes, I didn’t believe it either! Not like the fact that the animal is pregnant should make one any more or less uncomfortable or angry that she was slaughtered, but it did knock me out of my “la-la land” where cows were happy to give humans their breast milk. There’s a lot of information you can get a hold of with regards to this, mostly from animal rights webpages. There are a lot of YouTube videos as well, although they are very graphic as they show the process of slaughtering a cow. If you are really curious, or have serious doubts about what I’ve written here, just type in “pregnant cow slaughter” in the YouTube search bar. These videos have come straight from slaughterhouses and I will warn you right now – it is VERY graphic! Though if you do happen to find this information gruesome, then you need to really re-consider your diet. Because if it’s not good enough for you to hear about it or see it, then why is it good enough for your stomach?
A lot of people have been lead to believe that a diet free from any animal products is bad for you; I was one of them!
Well folks, we were brainwashed! It turns out that a vegan diet would help the human civilization a lot! It would help improve our overall health, the number of people suffering from heart diseases and cancers would plummet, and our waistlines would get better :-). It would also be extremely beneficial for the environment, and The Guardian has even done a piece on this and provided some good sources.
I would greatly recommend watching a documentary called Vegucated – to which I have provided the YouTube link. It’s a little over an hour long, so this would be good to watch when you have a bit of extra time. It’s quite entertaining as you get to follow a couple of “normal” people who are set in their meat eating ways and watch how their perceptions about who they are eating change. The copy isn’t great, but it’s definitely watchable.
Another YouTube video I would HIGHLY recommend is Gary Yourofsky’s speech on Why Vegan.
And for those of you who feel that eating meat is manly, well I only have one response for you :-):
Vegan Astronaut 