Why Be Vegan?

When exploring a vegan diet, many may feel themselves questioning the validity of what many would call a very extreme diet, or you yourself might be considering going back on your diet, to a vegetarian, or even an omnivore diet. In this article we are going to cover a big range of reasons going from health, to ethics, to environmental reasons! And at the end we have a small infographic you can always keep by your side.

Health!

Reduce Risk of Heart Disease

Vegan diets are much lower in cholesterol and saturated fat, while also being higher in fiber, vitamins, and minerals which help to lower blood pressure.

Cancer Prevention

The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) recommends a plant based diet of primarily vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds for cancer prevention to get a variety of plan foods’ cancer-protective nutrients.

Weight Management

Many studies recently have concluded that a vegan diet can actually promote significant weight loss.

Slow the Aging Process

Many Vegan foods are scientifically show to slow aging, an example being blueberries can help protect the brain against dementia, and avocados can reduce the wrinkles.

Avoid Toxic Food Contaminants

Vegans can avoid food poisoning much more easily, not eating the flesh of dead animals contaminated with bacteria. Yuck!

Ethics!

The Numbers

Over 150 billion land animals and 2.8 trillion fish are killed for consumption each year. Those numbers are simply unfathomable.

The Atrocity

The conditions animals are put into, are worse than the conditions seen in Nazi Concentration Camps, and over 95% of farm animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms.

Environment!

Lessen Your Energy Footprint

A vegan diet has the lowest carbon footprint at just 1.5 tons CO2e (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent). Researchers at the University of Oxford found that cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual's carbon footprint from food by up to 73 percent. Meanwhile, if everyone stopped eating these foods, they found that global farmland use could be reduced by 75 percent, an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined.

Factory Farming Pollution

Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce many times more excrement than does the entire human population of the country. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), animals on U.S. factory farms produce about 500 million tons of manure each year. With no animal sewage processing plants, it is most often stored in waste “lagoons” (which can be seen in aerial views of factory farms) or it gets sprayed over fields.

Large Water Consumption

It takes an enormous amount of water to grow crops for animals to eat, clean filthy factory farms, and give animals water to drink. A single cow used for milk can drink up to 50 gallons of water per day—or twice that amount in hot weather—and it takes 683 gallons of water to produce just 1 gallon of milk. It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef, while producing 1 pound of tofu only requires 244 gallons of water. By going vegan, one person can save approximately 219,000 gallons of water a year.

Reduce Chemicals Used

Factory farms also produce massive amounts of dust and other contaminants that pollute the air. A study in Texas found that animal feedlots in that state produce more than 7,000 tons of particulate dust every year and that the dust “contains biologically active organisms such as bacteria, mold, and fungi from the feces and the feed.” And when the cesspools holding tons of urine and feces get full, factory farms may circumvent water pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, creating mists that are carried away by the wind and inhaled by nearby residents. According to a report by the California State Senate, “Studies have shown that [animal waste] lagoons emit toxic airborne chemicals that can cause “inflammatory, immune, … and neurochemical problems in humans.”

Avoid Extinction

Communities adopting agro-ecological techniques is a win-win solution that goes a long way towards sustainably feeding the world without pushing wildlife towards extinction.

Footnotes:

Key TJ, Fraser GE, Thorogood M, Appleby PN, Beral V, Reeves G, Burr ML, Chang-Claude J, Frentzel-Beyme R, Kuzma JW, Mann J, McPherson K (1998). "Mortality in vegetarians and non-vegetarians: a collaborative analysis of 8300 deaths among 76,000 men and women in five prospective studies.". Public Health Nutr 1 (1): 33-41. PMID 10555529.
Lu Qi, MD, PHD, Rob M. van Dam, PHD1, Kathryn Rexrode, MD, MPH and Frank B. Hu, MD, PHD (2007) “Heme Iron From Diet as a Risk Factor for Coronary Heart Disease in Women With Type 2 Diabetes,” American Diabetes Association, Diabetes Care: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/30/1/101.full(link is external)
Ornish D, et. al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. JAMA 1998; 280(23): 2001-2007. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/188274(link is external)
The Physicians Commitee, “Meat Consumption and Cancer Risk”: http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/facts/meat-consu...(link is external)
Saltzberg, Rebecca. 10 Reasons to Go Veggie. From PlanetVeggie.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Newsrelease, “New scientific review shows vegetarian diets cause major weight loss,” : http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/pcfr-nsr033106.php(link is external)
Key, Timothy J, et al., "Mortality in British vegetarians: review and preliminary results from EPIC-Oxford" American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 78, No. 3, 533S-538S, September 2003 http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/533S.full

Additional Links:

https://data.oecd.org/agroutput/meat-consumption.htm

https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-animal-feed.html

https://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/world_food_consumption_statistics/world_meat_consumption_statistics

https://www.earthsave.org/environment/water.htm

https://temp.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf

https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/interactive-graphic/water/

https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/drone-factory-farm-pig-feces-lakes

https://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only

https://www.ibtimes.com/cow-farts-have-larger-greenhouse-gas-impact-previously-thought-methane-pushes-climate-change-1487502

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/study-claims-meat-creates-half-of-all-greenhouse-gases-1812909.html