Why should anyone ever be vegan?

Warning, I will express in this post my reasonings, and explain to you that my mission is in fact AGAINST sharing the details and fighting the fight. I don’t want to turn people away from the plant based life by offending them. However, I feel it necessary to be truthful in this one place, and honestly explain the truths of why I am vegan.

I am passionate about making the best possible choices to create these three realities: age defying health, lowest possible impact on our environment, and a compassionate world. These three things will have a far reaching and defining positive impact on the world, our loved ones, our planet, and ourselves.

How? And why??? Let’s look at these things one at a time.

1. Age Defying Health- We are a country who suffers from three main causes of death. Heart Disease. Cancer. Stroke. All of these and so many more diseases can be prevented and even at times reversed by eating a plant based diet. I don’t want to spend my time on this blog to talk about the science and dig up the studies and prove it to you. I’ve seen it and done that work, but it’s not fun for me to be a researcher digging up all the facts and studies to prove my case. It’s true, I know it, I’ve read the studies, and I will be more than happy to share the resources from the tons of amazing plant based leaders and doctors and scientists and health organizations that have already done the heavy lifting and have it as their mission to prove it with actual scientific evidence. They are good at it! I’m good at getting people excited about how much fun they’re about to have joining this super cool club!!!
2. Lowest possible environmental impact- Here are a few common vegan truths, we vegans all know them and preach them. “If you are an environmentalist and you eat meat, you are not an environmentalist.” “You will create a much more profound positive impact on the environment and leave a much smaller carbon footprint by not eating meat or dairy than if you never drove or flew again.” “It takes an enormously larger amount of resources to raise meat than it does to raise plants.” “If we stopped growing plants to feed our meat supply, we could feed the world and end hunger.” If you hit up Instagram or youtube looking up vegan factoids, you’ll find all the juicy details and facts to support these statements along with the data to back it up. Again, not my job, not what I want to do, but I can point you in the right direction. I want to step away from the preaching and teaching and leave it to the experts. Think of me as a friendly concierge to help you get your feet wet in the plant based world, even if it’s just to dip your toe.
3. A compassionate world- Spin it any which way you want, but there is no possible way to eat an animal without first killing it. We are not eating meat that has skipped around freely and happily its whole life and died in its sleep of old age. Nope. It is absolutely horrific. I do believe that the pain, suffering, and horror these animals experience is absorbed energetically into our bodies and minds. It breaks my heart. However, I will NEVER judge or throw stones at someone for eating meat. I find that, in my opinion, to be of very poor taste and quite rude. Our world has become enveloped in the normality of carnism. I certainly do not ever want to be the person to guilt someone while they are enjoying a meal. No one wins in this scenario, and it will only push them further away from the terribleness of vegans and the idea that they would ever consider trying a plant based meal. Of course, I love to follow all the gruesome news and videos and learn as much as I can about the horrors the animals suffer. It keeps me on my toes, and helps me to not eat cheese when I’m weak. Poor little veal babies ripped from their crying mothers at birth! It works for me, but I vow to never show the gory details of the meat and dairy industries, I mean we all know how food becomes food. But of course, I’ll be happy to share some resources.

Hoowhee, that was a whole lot to get off my chest! These are the thoughts that keep vegans awake at night, knowing that we could save Uncle Fred from getting another bypass surgery. Knowing we could improve the expense of health care. Knowing that our world could be a cleaner and friendlier place. But we know it is absolutely unacceptable in polite conversation.

I understand why people eat meat and dairy, and it is their right. I do not believe that the marketing and health industries have done any favors to our health by teaching us that we need so much protein and telling us that these toxic foods are indeed healthy and necessary. It’s a brutal paradigm we live in, but it is changing. Slowly, but surely. Heck, we have Arnold on our side now! Mr. Freaking Universe himself! And we have Doctors fighting legislation to remove dairy from our food pyramid. (Canada already has!) So the time will come when eating meat and dairy will be like cigarettes. You KNOW it’s bad for you, but it’s your choice and you are absolutely aware you are CHOOSING to make that health choice. People still smoke, but it’s expensive, dangerous, and it ramps up your cost of insurance. And as a FREE PERSON, you can decide to do it anyway. That’s what I am looking for. Freedom of choice, but the knowledge to know that you also have the right to choose to defend your health.