12 Reasons Why Going Vegan Is The Best Thing You Can Ever Do

It’s a cliché that vegans are militant, self-righteous, short-tempered bigots who will go on a crusade against anyone with a chicken sandwich, but just how true is that really?

#1. You won’t ever have to worry about wasting water again.

Think that’s bullshit? It isn’t, but the 120lb of wet manure that a single dairy cow produces in a day definitely is. While we drink about 30 gallons of water in a month, a cow downs more than two-thirds that amount in a day. All that manure? It takes about 150 gallons of water daily to flush that away.

#2. You will save millions of lives… literally.

hagen_081201_0521_800px

In 2013, US farmers slaughtered 90,030 cattle daily. That’s nearly 33 million dead cattle in one year alone. On a good day, even the most humane warehouses line cattle up, hang them by their feet while they’re still alive, and slit their throats for others to smell and see. But it’s tough to stick to protocol in a large slaughterhouse, when you’ve got 300–400 cattle being “processed” every hour.

#3. You will be doing your part in the efforts to prevent global warming.

Worried about melting polar caps, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather across the planet? Then stop eating meat.

While the livestock industry produces only about 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide, it produces 65% of global nitrous oxide (which has 296 times the global warming potential of CO2), and 35% of global methane (which has 23 times the global warming potential of CO2).

#4. You will stand against exploitative practices.

The leather and footwear industry in India has been booming like crazy, thanks in no small part to the efforts of 12-year-old children. Of 28 tanneries and shoe factories, eight were proven to involve child labor – and when challenged, big shoe companies like ECCO, UGGs and Bugatti refused repeated attempts to gain information about their practices.
Did we mention the animals? Dairy cows, which are already subjected to extreme crowding, branding, anaesthetized dehorning and mechanical rape, translate into just a little bit more moolah for the companies that commission their skin. Male calves, useless because of their inability to produce milk, are turned to veal and have their skin sold for a high price. Alligators, which can live up to 60 years, are factory-farmed and killed after just two years of cheap confinement, often meeting their end with a blunt axe or mallet. Pigs are castrated without anesthetics, and their curled tails are docked to prevent them from getting ripped off by angry pigs in their crowded prisons.

Now, about your health – while leather’s been around since the iron age, it’s no longer treated with vegetable oil and air. Leather is mass-produced on the cheap with tar, formaldehyde, and other things you really wouldn’t want to wear.

#5. You will truly understand what it means to be healthy.

Ever stopped at the condiments aisle to check what’s actually in your mustard? If you see things like artificial color (yellow) and high fructose corn syrup in what’s supposed to be honey mustard, you’ll start to understand why vegans are really limited in what they can buy.

Although veganism only means no animal products, any health-concerned vegan would quickly realize that more than half the goods in a supermarket are nutritionally-void and processed to be as addicting as possible, without cutting into the manufacturer’s wallet too deeply.

Then there’s all the veg. Vegetables today are planted in soil that’s almost entirely sucked dry of any nutrients, and in such dense numbers that each one is fighting to beat its neighbor. That’s why many vegans buy local food from nearby farmers.

#6. Cruelty-free protein will always be on hand.

No, being vegan doesn’t mean you’ll end up as the most willowy player on the field. Say otherwise to Tim Shieff and Frank Medrano and watch as they laugh over their salads. To maintain the amount of protein in your body, you need about 0.36g of protein per pound of body weight – that amounts to 58g of protein for a 160lb man. A mere cup of cooked lentils has 18g of protein (compare that to 100g of ground beef, which contains 14 grams of protein). That’s some cruelty-free protein right there.

#7. It will protect you from a whole range of health problems… and make you a better lover too.

A third of US adults have high blood pressure, usually as a direct result of clogged arteries from poor dietary choices. Cholesterol is a common contributor, acting as a plaque inside your veins, obstructing your blood flow and leading to hypertension – an onset symptom for a number of common preventable diseases, like heart disease, stroke, and even erectile dysfunction. Yes – needing to pop a blue one isn’t necessarily a sign of aging, but also has a lot to do with what you’ve been eating. So if you can’t bring one up for the missus, then you should probably put down the steak and hit the salad bar.

A plant-based diet remedies that. Eating meat-free lowers your cholesterol intake to nearly zero. The key, however, is eating right – so don’t go into a vegan diet without some nutritional research.

#8. It will make pill-popping a thing of the past.

While Greek philosophers often had some strange ideas about how the world works, the Greek physician Hippocrates was largely right when he said that food should be medicine. Do you have type-2 diabetes? Hypertension? Asthma, allergies, hives, and a pile of pills so large that it becomes more of a meal than your breakfast plate? If you’re going vegan, then know that you’ll not only save yourself a ton of time and a ton of animals, but also a ton of money by investing in food vs. pills, and turning all those nasty illnesses into nothing but bad memories.

No, I’m not screwing with you – if you’d like to see how a good vegan diet can cure preventable disease, check this guy out.

Heart disease? Diabetes? The last time a vegan thought about that, was the last time they had a fried drumstick.

Even the obligatory chicken breast that seems to pop up on healthy menus, hailed as the king of lean meat, has a higher cholesterol content than pork. In the US, chicken consumption rose from about 10lb per capita in the beginning of the 20th century, to nearly 60lb today. As chicken has become cheaper, it’s become the fast-food of choice for poorer minorities among which obesity and heart disease is at an all-time high. American Indians are hit particularly hard with diabetes with diagnosis rates at 15.9% — African Americans don’t fare much better at 13.2%.

In 2012 and 2013, studies began showing up in the medical community prescribing plant-based diets for diabetes prevention and treatment, citing several studies wherein a switch to veganism didn’t only stop type-2 diabetes, but reversed it.

#9. You will be part of the solution to the problem of worldwide hunger.

lel

Feedlots in the US require 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and 4kg of grain to produce 1kg of pork. As protein demand rises, so does the production of grain, and most of that grain isn’t going where it needs to go.

The stats might be different in other countries, where there is such a thing as grass-fed beef, but it doesn’t change the fact that our appetite for meat is part of a larger problem. A third of our planet’s arable land – that is, land we can grow food on – is used for livestock. More and more meat for those who can afford it means more and more starvation for those who can’t.

#10. It will make you aware of speciesism, and why you won’t take any part in it.

The biggest factor in becoming vegan is embracing other mammals and vertebrates. Livestock, of all kind, is inherently treated far, far worse than not only us, but even our pets. Would you allow a factory farm to stun, hang, and slit open and skin of 300–400 dogs and cats per hour? Or systematically rape a woman, kidnap her child, and then repeat the process until she’s physically unable to produce any more milk? Becoming vegan means understanding what it means to be part of a movement that distances itself from the devastating consequences of eating meat. If you don’t have to, why would you?

#11. When you go vegan, the fog in the world starts to lift a bit.

There’s a lot of suffering in the world, the least of which is ours. Going vegan means giving yourself the opportunity to look past yourself, and try to make a difference in the world with the very dollar you’re using to provide for yourself and your family. Are you going to automatically become a superhero when you go vegan? No. But, you’ll automatically make a little difference. From there, it’s all up to you. When you start to pay attention to what you put on your plate, you’ll realize that there are significant ways to change yourself and your family, and change the world around you, for the better.

All you gotta do is grab that fork, and make your choice.

You May Also Like