Veganism has long been a minority diet, but it has grown increasingly fashionable in recent years — to the point that the number of vegans worldwide increased by 350% in the last decade, according to research from the United Kingdom. Veganism is a way of living that includes minimizing animal suffering and exploitation as much as feasible.
Many people feel that a vegan diet is overly complicated or restrictive at first. Many of my clients considering going vegan are concerned about replacing their special meals with suitable vegan alternatives. However, most discover that the change is less complicated than they feared when they mastered a few basics.
I’ve noticed more vegan options on grocery store shelves and restaurant menus in recent years. I just found a vegan version of one of my all-time favorites, pastel de nata. In this post, I’ll explain veganism and offer some suggestions for meals and products to eat as a vegan.
What is veganism?
Veganism has been defined since 1944 when a few vegetarians who left the Leicester Vegetarian Society in England to establish the Vegan Society first used it. They also avoided using milk, eggs, and other animal-derived items to minimize their environmental effect.
The words “vegetarian” and “carnivore” are derived from the first and last letters of the term. In 1949, the phrase “produced without using animal products” was created as the first definition of veganism. It has changed somewhat over time to become what it is today. According to the most recent purpose from the Vegan Society, veganism is a way of life that seeks to eliminate “as far as is possible and practical” all types of animal exploitation for food, clothing, or any other purpose.
In many situations, the term “vegan” characterizes a person’s diet. The newest definition of veganism, on the other hand, includes more than just eating a plant-based diet. Most vegans aim to minimize animal suffering and exploitation in all areas of their life, including their wardrobe, cosmetics, and recreational activities.
Many vegans avoid wearing wool coats, leather furniture, and down pillows and comforters due to this. They may also choose to visit animal sanctuaries rather than zoos, circuses, or animal petting farms.
Why do people go vegan?
Many individuals avoid animal products for one or more of the following reasons.
Ethics
A moral vegan believes that all living things, including humans, are entitled to fundamental rights. They think that all animals are conscious beings that desire to avoid pain and suffering just as people do. This is why ethical vegans advocate against killing an animal to consume its flesh or wear its fur or skin.
Vegan advocates are also concerned about the psychological and physical strain that animal suffering may cause. Animals live in tiny pens or cages for much of their lives, only leaving between their birth and slaughter due to necessity. However, this goes beyond today’s agricultural methods’ cruelty for ethical vegans. This is because vegans are opposed to eating anything that heavily relies on killing other animals. After all, alternatives exist.
For example, there’s a procedure for disposing of surplus cattle or male chick culling in egg production in the dairy industry. Furthermore, ethical vegans generally believe that nonhuman animals should not be used as sources of milk, eggs, honey, silk, or wool. Even if humans harm free-roaming or pasture-fed animals due to their proximity to agricultural producers and human settlements, ethical vegans are opposed to drinking an animal’s milk or eating its eggs.
Health
Some people follow a vegan diet for health reasons. Meat-heavy diets, particularly red meat, have been linked to cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. On the other hand, plant-based diets have been linked to a decreased risk of developing or dying from these diseases. Switching to a vegan diet can help improve your digestion and reduce your chance of Alzheimer’s disease by restricting your intake of animal items.
Veganism may also aid in the removal of antibiotic and hormone residues from meat consumed on factory farms. According to several studies, vegan diets seem to be more successful at reducing weight than other types of diets. A vegan diet has been connected to a decreased risk of obesity in multiple studies. You may need to consume less of some nutrients if you follow a vegan diet, which is why preparation is essential.
To develop a vegan diet that will enable you to obtain the nutrients you need, talk with a doctor or registered dietitian.
Vegan diets tend to be low in these nutrients:
- vitamin B12
- vitamin D
- calcium
- zinc
- iodine
- selenium
Individuals on vegan regimens sometimes supplement their diet to obtain nutrients that may be insufficient in the food.
Environment
Animal items are more pricey and may also be avoided for a variety of reasons. A recent study has shown that animal farming is highly linked to global climate change (GHGEs), which leads to climate change. According to a recent study, meat-eaters are thought to produce 2–2.5 times more GHGEs than vegans. This figure was estimated by taking people’s dietary choices in the United Kingdom.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent research, cattle, sheep, and goats produce the most carbon dioxide per gram of protein they deliver. As a result, diets that exclude dairy considerably reduce more GHGEs. Compared to a meat-containing typical American diet with the same calories, a vegetarian diet reduces GHGEs by 33 percent. With an environmental impact even lower than that of a vegan diet, when compared to one with equal calories but no animal products, the reduction in GHGEs was 53%.
The majority of the animal protein eaten today is provided to livestock rather than people. As a result, producing an animal-based diet takes more natural resources than growing soybean protein does. Animal protein, for example, takes six to seventeen times more land to make than soybean protein. Meat, on average, consumes twice to three times as much water as plant proteins.
Because of all of these factors, experts predict that, if nothing changes, our food system will exhaust our planet’s resources by the year 2050. Switching to a vegan diet might be one way to postpone this fate.
Read our blog about What You Need to Know About Vegan Diet for Weight Loss
