Why Vegan? There are three main reasons why people go vegan. In this article I hope to provide a brief explanation of each reason. In future articles, I will go more into depth about each reason. I hope that this article shed some light on the ever pressing importance of veganism in today’s world.
1. Environmental
The practices of the food industry are completely inconsiderate of our environment. There is a war on wildlife. “While many people are aware that more than 10 billion land animals are killed for food every year in the U.S., far fewer know that in the last decade alone, more than 30 million wildlife animals — many endangered — have been brutally killed by a secretive branch of the USDA that is primarily employed to destroy wildlife deemed a threat to animal agriculture.” I will write a future article expanding on this too.
2. Animal Rights
Animals go through hell! There is so much I could talk about, I don’t even know where to start! I will write (another) future article just on this alone but, essentially the food industry’s primary goal is to develop the most cost effective systems to get maximum profit. The problem: Animals live in horrible conditions, male chickens are immediately thrown away, cows eat corn (which is unnatural to their bodies) instead of grass which has more negative effects on us than you may realize, and much much more! Many people who go vegan for this reason have watched the documentary Earthlings which depicts all of these horrific conditions. I watched this and a few other documentaries in August 2015 and immediately went vegan.
3. Health
When I went vegan everyone would always ask me, “How do you get your protein?”. Depending on the purpose I would provide them with some of these simple facts in response:
Did you know that you don’t even need to eat meat or dairy products? The hoax that you need meat for protein and milk for calcium is absolutely not true. Vegetables and legumes have more protein and calcium than most meat and dairy products, and have much more benefits!
Those are the three reasons people tend to go vegan. I became vegan mostly for the environment and animal rights. There are so many problems in our food industry, in our world (global warming), in our health, and veganism provides an answer to all of these issues.
