7 great reasons to become a vegan today

Martina Garancini
Nov 1 · 9 min read

Today’s World Vegan Day, the international day of Veganism! This recurring event was established in 1994 by the Vegan Society, fifty years after the organisation was founded and the word “vegan” was created. Apparently, the choice of the 1st of November, the Día de Muertos, wasn’t a coincidence. Creepy, yes, but very effective.

To celebrate this day, I want to share 7 good (great!) reasons why you should become a vegan today. And remember: if you don’t want to become a vegan full-time, you can still experiment with a Vegan Challenge!

Why go vegan?

  • For the animals

Many people believe that the ethical motives behind veganism aren’t enough to justify such a radical lifestyle change. After all, it’s difficult not to think of animals as ingredients to use for our meals: humans eat meat naturally, so animals exist to be eaten. Circle of life, right? The meat and dairy industries do their best to show us idyllic images where animals happily graze on endless green fields, or to show us how tasty the finished product is when it doesn’t look like a former living being any more. The intermediate stage of production is never shown and stays well hidden behind the walls of slaughterhouses.

Ricardo Gomez Angel via Unsplash

Raise your hand if you want to stun a cow with a bullet in its brain, hang it upside down, cut its throat and watch it die of exsanguination? Yep, you’ve read it right. Very few people would be comfortable at the idea of working in a slaughterhouse, and they’re often people who have no other options. Many former slaughterhouse employees tend to suffer from PTSD and depression. The more people consume meat, the more other people will have to cope for the rest of their life with the trauma of killing thousands of sentient beings.

Saving an animal’s life is an act of compassion, and compassion doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s the right thing to do, especially if the animal that we eat is an innocent animal that we would normally cuddle when alive. You don’t even have to be an “animal lover” to be a vegan. I, for example, don’t like cats. But I would never mistreat them, or let them die just because I don’t like them. I respect their existence and the fact that they’re on this planet with me, not for me.

  • For your health

Many new studies certify the safety of a vegan diet and its health benefits. Contrarily to the stereotypes, vegans are not weak or deficient in any vitamin or mineral that comes to your mind (or even protein-deficient). More and more professional athletes and celebrities are adopting a vegan lifestyle. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Beyoncé decided to eat plant-based for 40 days to get fit before Coachella 2018? And do you think it’s a coincidence that Beyoncé is Beyoncé?

Not only is a vegan diet useful to lose weight, have more energy and recover faster after physical activity, but it is also the easiest way to help prevent or even cure chronic debilitating diseases. Heart diseases and diabetes are the most common illnesses in the Western world, and in most cases they are completely preventable! We often tend to think that only those who eat junk food and are obese risk to die of a heart attack or suffer from type 2 diabetes, but it doesn’t really work like that: the build up of plaque in the blood vessels starts at an early age and is a gradual process that gets worse as time goes by if the proper precautions aren’t taken. Many doctors that support the vegan diet have been able to save their patients’ lives simply with a change in lifestyle.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who lived between the 5th and the 6th century BC, already argued that good nutrition is crucial in maintaining good health: “Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.” Today, it looks like there’s a specific medicine for each physical issue, so we tend to underestimate the effects that the foods we eat can have on our well-being. We forget that these foods will build the cells we’re made of. Animal products are considered carcinogenic substances: are they really worth risking our health?

  • For the planet

The impact of animal products on the environment has been known for a while. In 2006, the FAO declared that animal farming is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the quantity produced by all means of transport combined (13%). According to other sources, the percentage might be even higher: 51%. By 2050, if we consider that the developing countries are starting to consume more meat and animal products, it is believed that the polluting emissions caused by agriculture will rise by 80%.

500 grams of beef consume nearly 10,000 litres of water and emit about 75 kg of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, just like a car polluting for three weeks. This is because, in order to make space for grazing land and monocultures that produce animal feed, it’s necessary to cut down large sections of forest land. And forests, as we know, are those green things that allow us to breathe. And maintain climate balance. And basically keep us alive on this planet. Ah yes, apparently animal farming consumes between 20 and 33% of freshwater.

Jan’s Archive via Unsplash

Another damage caused by deforestation is the mass extinction of wildlife. To understand the seriousness of the situation, it is estimated that 86% of land mammals, 88% of amphibians and 86% of birds are on the verge of extinction. It is also predicted that by 2050, because of mass fishing and pollution, the oceans will be fishless. It would be natural to think that this has nothing to do with us, since we don’t live in the sea. Right? Well, not really. This concerns us all, because the oceans produce most of the oxygen that we breathe, regulate the climate and cleanse the water that we drink. The first life forms were born in the sea, after all. If we don’t act to protect the oceans, we will pay the consequences of our inaction: among the many things that will happen, the phytoplankton that produces our oxygen will go extinct and we will have more frequent and violent hurricanes.

I know, I know. Too much stuff to digest. It’s easy to assume that these numbers are fake, considering how big they are. But think about it: how many times do you eat meat and animal products in your daily life? Sometimes you probably eat both in the same meal. Now try and multiply your three meals a day for the 365 days of the year: we’re talking about 1095 meals during which you potentially eat meat or animal products. Now multiply these 1095 meals for the 60 million people that live in Italy: 65,700,000,000 meals. Think about how many animals we need to meet the demand of meat and animal products of the sole Italian population. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of animals that need to eat and drink in order to become fat and end up on our tables. The more the demand increases, the more these animals will continue to be replaced by other animals that consume resources and impoverish the planet.

  • For world hunger

We all care about people, as much as we care about animals, if not more. This is why one of the reasons to become a vegan is to fight world hunger and finally say goodbye to the enormous disparity between the North and the South of the world. Today we would have enough resources to feed 10 billion people, yet 50% of the crops become animal feed for the animals that are eaten by the first world.

82% of starving children live right next to cows that are fattened to be eaten. In fact, vast areas of Africa are stolen from locals by the big meat industries that raise the animals that we eat. The most ironic thing is that not only we don’t need this meat, but we also die because of it! Our diet has a huge impact on our lifestyle and on the wellbeing of less fortunate people.

  • For your wallet

Being a vegan is a privilege and only those who can afford to buy groceries in organic shops can sustain this lifestyle. After all, everyone knows that 100 grams of beans cost far more than 100 grams of prosciutto. Wait, what?

Let’s go back to the real world: I did an internship once that paid me 500 euros per month, and more than half of it would vanish in rent and expenses. The rest would be used to buy pasta, rice, canned beans and chickpeas, lentils, tomato sauce, cereals such as barley and spelt, oats, plant milk, soy yoghurt, seasonal vegetables, frozen vegetables, bananas like there’s no tomorrow, nuts and seeds, ready-made vegan burgers (probably the most expensive thing in my fridge), kilos of focaccia and obviously loads of dark chocolate. Some of these foods were organic and fairtrade, some others were basically what any other Italian family would buy. I even had enough money left to go out for dinner with my boyfriend.

Most of the time, a vegan diet cost less than an average Western diet and helps waste less: many plant foods such as cereals and legumes can be bought in bulks and last for months. We are lucky enough to live in a vegan-friendly age, so even eating out as a vegan is getting easier and easier. Why not give it a try?

  • For the sake of experimenting

Did you know that there are more than 20,000 species of edible plants in nature? Think about how many dishes you can create with them. And yet, we always end up eating the same foods. Don’t you think it’s a wasted opportunity?

Franziska Haßler via Unsplash

Becoming a vegan doesn’t mean that you have to chastise your taste buds and sacrifice yourself like a martyr for a good cause. On the contrary, since I became a vegan I have been discovering new foods and flavours that I had never imagined before. I once thought that vegans were sad people that survive on undressed salads. Now I am the living proof that you can be a vegan even without eating salad, since I can’t stand it.

Luckily, vegan cooking is getting more and more specialised, so it’s fairly easy to replace animal products even in traditional recipes: legumes and mushrooms can replace meat, oils can replace eggs and butter, plant-based milks and yoghurts have almost the same taste and consistency as the original foods, and so on. Life as a vegan is a continuous discovery.

  • Because you’ll thank me later

“I could never be a vegan,” said every vegan ever before becoming a vegan. I was exactly like that: when I was a vegetarian, vegans looked like crazy animal rights activists obsessed with health. I imagined this cult of malnourished hippies that are afraid of stepping on insects when they walk. “What exactly do vegans eat? Air?” I asked myself. Then I started to question my beliefs. And my questions turned into an experiment. I tried to eat only plants for a week, and I failed. However, I felt like I was doing the right thing. I tried again a few weeks later, and I haven’t stopped since then.

Fabian Blank via Unsplash

Veganism is now the most natural thing in the world for me. If I go out for lunch or dinner and I can’t find vegan options, I’ll make a meal out of side dishes. When I go to the supermarket I check all the labels, but it isn’t a burden for me because — regardless of veganism — I like to take care of my health. If I need to buy a beauty product, I’ll check if the brand is cruelty-free first. I rarely purchase clothes and shoes now, especially if they are made of leather or wool, since veganism has taught me a lot about being a conscious consumer. Basically, it’s easy to see veganism as a huge pain in the neck that doesn’t go well with the pace of modern society. However, it’s a lifestyle that gives so much for so little (because let’s admit it, it’s not so difficult to be a vegan). If you think about it, the only reason why we eat meat and animal products is their taste. In some cases, it’s plain attachment to tradition. But five minutes of taste in our mouth are really worth the serious and potentially irreversible consequences that animal farming causes?

When and if you become a vegan, I bet the first thing you’ll say to a non-vegan person will be: “It’s the best decision I’ve made in my life. I only regret I didn’t become a vegan sooner!” Believe me, it’ll go exactly like this.

Martina Garancini

Written by

Martina, 26, “raging” feminist, stalker of dogs and pigs, junk food vegan, lazy reader, wannabe saviour of the world at www.batatabeats.it

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