Respect Your Diet, Respect The Earth

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."  

-Mark Twain

"Animals were created to feed us"

"We have always eaten animals."

"We need animal protein."

"Meat is too delicious."

"Milk gives you strong bones."

"Fish have good fats."

"Real leather looks so much better."

These are some of the arguments you hear when talking about vegetarianism or veganism. For some people these are still valid reasons to continue exploiting animals in numerous ways. If you are one of those people, I'm not writing this to judge you, but rather asking you to take a minute to read this little text, and if it has no effect on you, you can go back to living your life, doing what you're doing. Simple as that. It is not an easy subject, and it can definitely divide opinions, but I think it's an important message that needs to be shared. You might be happy with your living and eating habits, and that's alright, but once in a while it is good to question things that might actually have very significant effects on our planet, and even our health. 

Two years ago, I was also still ignorant to all the ethical, environmental, and health issues related to animal exploitation especially when it came to eating. I ate meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, and basically anything that an average person eats week to week. About a year and a half ago, I started to change my habits after watching a few very well-known documentaries talking about the very real and global effects that the meat and dairy industry have not only on our planet, but also on our health. After watching these documentaries and doing more research on my own, one of the biggest reasons why I made the change was also the heavy ethical reasons that are very hard to look away from. But as I know that not not everyone cares about the injustice concerning animals, I would instead suggest those people to take a look at the global and health related reasons. 

"Every year in the US alone 41 million tons of food, are fed to 7 billion livestock, which only produce 7 million tons of food. There are 701 million starving people on this planet, the US alone could feed 800 million people with the grain used to feed livestock.

Eat less meat. Save lives."

Ever hear about the green house effect? 

"Growing food for the world’s burgeoning population is likely to send greenhouse gas emissions over the threshold of safety, unless more is done to cut meat consumption. Research led by Oxford Martin School finds widespread adoption of vegetarian or vegan diet would cut food-related emissions by 63% and make people healthier too"

-The Guardian

 Yet another very good reason to cut down meat consumption. This might be old news to many of you, but a lot of people are still not aware of this. The greenhouse effect is very real and getting worse every year unless everyone does their part in stopping it. 

Then there are the numerous health effects. 

"More than 5 million premature deaths could be avoided globally by 2050 if health guidelines on meat consumption were followed, rising to more than 7 million with a vegetarian diet and 8 million on veganism. These steps, if widely followed, could also reduce global healthcare costs by $1bn a year by mid-century."

-The Guardian

To those of you who still believe meat and dairy is what makes you healthy and strong, take another look at the statistics. Meat consumption is actually highly linked to cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Milk does not give you strong bones, high consumption of it actually causes osteoporosis instead of preventing it. Funny right? 

"The strongest animals like gorillas and elephants are vegetarian, what does that tell you about our protein needs?"

Meat produced on livestock farms is not healthy. The cows, chickens and pigs are given numerous antibiotics and all this plus all the bacteria that live on these farms because of poor conditions will eventually end up in our gut as well. The milk cows are first raped so that they will get pregnant, after that the babies are taken away from them forever, and they will spend the rest of their lives standing in the tiniest cages while being milked 24/7. The milk cows will therefore die about 15 years younger than a cow that lives free. The milk has to be boiled to get all the bacteria, blood and pus out of it. The babies are not needed so they will starve to death without the milk that was actually meant for them and not us.

This is only one of the hundreds of examples of how the meat and dairy industry lacks ethics. Later I will write more specifically about that. You can say that you could never kill an animal yourself but by eating the meat and dairy products you are actually participating in killing millions and millions of animals each year, and not in a humane way at all. These animals spend their lives living in constant terror and anxiety, caused by tiny spaces, diseases, stress and severe physical and mental torture. If you don't believe me, you can find tons of actual footage of this all over the internet. If you wouldn't do this to your pet dog or cat, then why would you do it to another living being?  

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan."

-Paul McCartney

How about fish then? Nothing wrong with eating them right? Where do you think all the waste that we produce goes eventually? From plastic garbage, chemicals, factory waste, seward waste to rotting carcasses from meat farms, it all ends up in the same place eventually. In our lakes, rivers and seas. Without even mentioning the environmental effects fishing has on our planet, there are many health effects that eating fish has on people too. Mercury in particular found on many fish species is a serious growing health issue. 

As for the environmental issues regarding fishing and fish eating, already fishing nets account for 46% plastic waste in oceans. In 2050 it is said that there will be more plastic than fish in the seas. It has also been stated that the world could very well run out of wild caught sea food by 2048. In addition many species in our seas are becoming extinct because of overfishing and getting caught in nets by accident. 

No one has to give up everything at once, but even small changes are better than nothing. Veganism can be too extreme for some people, but there are many ways we can all contribute. And in the end, I've noticed that it's all about getting used to something. Once you start to cook more vegetarian food and not eat meat, it's hard to remember why was it so difficult before? With the various vegetarian and vegan products we have in our world today, it is actually not difficult at all once you get used to using more plant based products. The biggest effort is in starting to make the change.

There are many documentaries, articles and videos that will give you more specific information about all of this, and I would suggest that you watch the documentary called "Earthlings." It took me many times to watch it til the end, because it is definitely not pretty. But I think we have come to a point where we all need to take responsibility for our actions on this planet and stop closing our eyes from things that aren't pretty to see. If you consider yourself an animal lover or an environmentalist, you need to see this. If you want to start with something slightly lighter, go with "Cowspiracy" or "Forks over knives." 

We can all take small steps in helping our planet, and getting to know the facts is how you get started. 

"We always ate meat,

we always had slaves,

we always had wars,

we always had racism,

we always oppressed women,

Does that make it right?"

"There is no humane way to kill someone that wanted to live." 

"The future of meat is vegan."

-Bill Gates

Thank you for reading, and feel free to share if you found it important. 💜