In today’s society, more and more celebrities have talked about their diets and how they stay “so skinny” and healthy. If you look closely, most of them are either vegan or vegetarian, which, usually is more expensive than eating food from normal grocery stores like Bi-lo, Ingles, or Wal-Mart. Vegetarians have always openly talked about how they feel more healthy, but recently over the past few years,veganism has come around and become a sort of fad. It has been speculated that if you are not vegan, you are not healthy enough and not doing all that you can do to stay happy and healthy.
The main reason that most celebrities or local icons are vegan is that they are in the public eye most of their life and they can afford to pay for the diet. They need to fit the “image” Hollywood has given them in order to stay in the spotlight. This means that most middle and lower class citizens aren’t able to afford this and causes much controversy.
When I still lived at home, my mom only like to shop at Earth Fare, which is an all organic grocery store. It was expensive, but as I looked at some of the vegan options, I noticed the prices jumped up higher than normal prices in the store.. I knew there was no way I could buy some of those products. Even as a non-vegan, I still find ways to eat healthy and get nutrition from the food I eat now; I just have to watch what junk food I eat and cut out certain things like soda and chips.
This also can affect the self-image of most women, teenagers and young adults, because they see a skinny celebrity and then look at themselves and wonder why they don’t look like that person. Having pictures of these women everywhere on social media can either have a positive effect or a negative effect on the world. Some women know they can’t keep diets and result to starving themselves to look like some of these celebrities, but are never fully happy with their image. Others are more motivated to lose the weight or fat that they want to and seem happier about themselves in the end.
Personally, I struggle with my self-image, so first-hand, I understand the thoughts that people may have. Dieting has never really worked out for me and I’ve played soccer almost my whole life and I still don’t have that body that I want to have. Recently, plus-sized models are becoming more socially acceptable and I wish that I could be as confident in my body size as they are.
Since vegan products are mostly created to replace dairy, meat and eggs, most vegan made products are made from multiple ingredients instead of just one or two. For example: butter’s ingredients are just butter, while Earth Balance, a butter replacement, ingredients are: Palm fruit oil, canola oil, safflower oil, flax oil, olive oil, salt, natural flavor, pea protein, sunflower lecithin, lactic acid, annatto color. This causes the product to have ingredients that are not real or are not as healthy for you. Because veganism is a non-dairy and meat diet, soy is a big part of vegans food choices. Soy is in most of the foods we consume every single day, which is partly good and bad. Western countries like Japan and China have stopped eating soybeans whole and just eating the processed part of soy. This is because soy is known to block mineral absorption and doesn't allow all the nutrients from foods to make it into our blood streams.
Veganism isn’t always viewed so negatively though. Some people are lactose intolerant and can’t have dairy so they may turn to veganism to replace those dairy products they can’t have. There are many different diets out there that are used to replace plenty of food, veganism is just one of the biggest diets out there. Even though it became a bigger deal in the recent years, doesn’t mean that it will disappear again from the public eye any time soon.
