Why be vegan

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I am not a hippie. I do not enjoy yoga, and I do not wear flowy clothing. I do not appreciate the smell of patchouli, journal, or use words like "journey," "aura," and "vibes. I do not care if my food is organic. I barely even care if my food is healthy. In fact, my all-time favorite meal is pizza, beer, and chocolate chip cookies.

But, I am vegan. I am fiercely, passionately, unapologetically vegan. Eating a plant-based diet is probably the most important thing in my life. And it has nothing to do with living a "natural" lifestyle or eating "clean. Sound like a contradiction? It's totally not. Let me explain….

First, I just want to say that I grew up Jewish, and sometimes I joke that "vegan Jews" has the be the smallest demographic on the planet, because not only is less than 0. I've actually had more than one of my people tell me, not even joking, that they "hate" vegans. My Jewish friends and family members from back home seem to buy into every vegan myth that irks me most: That we're obsessed with our health, that we're living this lifestyle just to be difficult, and that we're all a bunch of woo-woo L.

Everyone has a different reason to go vegan , of course. But what motivates me to avoid meat and dairy like the plague has nothing to do with dieting and everything to do with these three things: The environment, the economy, and the questionable ethics of our country's modern slaughterhouse system.

Allow me to state my case…. In the current political climate, people are distressed over climate change more than ever. And that's great: People should be concerned about how each of us can take personal responsibility for protecting our planet. I've witnessed discussions on Facebook about installing solar panels, taking shorter showers, and riding the bus to work instead of driving.

These are all awesome ways to conserve. But you know what would be even better for the environment? To stop or at least cut way down on supporting the meat and dairy industry. According to a large review , following a plant-based diet can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The research linked this effect with eating healthful plant-based foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains , nuts, and legumes. A vegan diet removes some sources of nutrients from the diet, so people need to plan their meals carefully to avoid nutritional deficiencies. People may wish to talk to a doctor or dietitian ahead of adopting a vegan diet, especially if they have existing health conditions.

A vegan diet may be low in specific nutrients. Certain specialized foods and dietary supplements can help people meet their daily requirements. People can choose from a variety of brands online. The change from an unrestricted diet can seem daunting, but there are many simple, tasty, and nutritious ways to pack a vegan diet with key vitamins and minerals. Instead of cow milk, people can use plant-based alternatives.

Manufacturers often enrich them with vitamins and minerals. People can also buy plant-based cheeses, yogurts, and butters or make their own. Read about dairy alternatives here. Some people may have concerns about meeting their protein needs on a vegan diet, but many plant foods are excellent sources of protein.

Read about the best plant-based sources of protein. Soy products — such as tofu , tempeh, and seitan — provide protein and also add a meat-like texture to many dishes. Learn more about meat substitutes here. It may take a little experimentation, but most people will be able to find a vegan meal plan to suit their taste. Vegan diets are growing in popularity. A vegan diet can offer many health benefits, including better heart health, weight loss, and a reduced risk of chronic diseases.

People who wish to adopt a vegan diet will need to plan their meals carefully to ensure that they are getting enough key nutrients to avoid deficiencies.

A runner's diet should contain a healthy balance of macronutrients, adequate carbohydrates, and micronutrients from plant foods.

Learn more. Learn why some people might need to follow a mechanical soft diet, the foods they can eat safely, and the foods they may wish to avoid here. Caffeine, fatty foods, and foods high in sugar can all negatively affect sleep and keep people awake. People can often manage fatty liver disease by making dietary changes. Learn which foods to include and avoid in a diet for fatty liver disease. In each of those years, wholesale milk prices came in well below production costs.

Over that period, one regional dairy cooperative sent out suicide prevention letters after two of its members killed themselves. Note 3. To stay afloat financially, meat, dairy, and egg producers must cut expenses wherever possible.

Tragically, many of these cost-cutting measures are tremendously cruel. No farming cruelty exceeds those carried out by the egg industry. Additionally, these hens spend their entire lives standing on wire-bottomed cages.

Predictably, the wire causes abrasions that lead to open sores and bruises. The birds sleep while being pressed against the cage and literally never have a moment of comfort. Pigs face comparably appalling living conditions, especially females used for breeding. These sows often spend their entire lives in gestation and farrowing crates. Standard crates forbid any sort of normal movement.

In fact, they are so narrow that the sow lacks sufficient space to turn around. What about cows and cattle? Beef cattle are the only farm animals that nearly always live a portion of their lives outdoors in good conditions. Some dairy cows also spend much of their lives outdoors. But many dairies are factory farms that intensively confine their cows for their entire lives. Even for the lucky cattle who spend time outside, this experience is only temporary.

There, they live out their final months crowded onto filthy, barren plots of land. Having driven this stretch of Interstate countless times, I have often smelled the stench of the feedlot from several kilometres away. The feedlot covers a vast expanse of land, with seemingly every square meter crammed with animals amassed on black manure-coated earth. Any large feedlot is basically indistinguishable from what you can see at Harris Ranch.

Conditions are just as bad at many dairy farms. Some dairies are nearly indistinguishable from beef feedlots. The easiest way for an untrained observer to spot the difference is to look at the animals: most dairy cows have spotted coats whereas beef cattle are usually solid dark brown.

Just as bullying and violence pervades poorly run schools and prisons, the same is true at factory farms. The staggering levels of crowding incite the animals to take their frustrations out on each another. More crowding inevitably means more violence. The problem goes away if you remove stresses and provide adequate living space, but that solution costs too much for most facilities to contemplate.

Factory farms instead inflict a variety of mutilations onto the animals in order to keep them from injuring one another. Hens crowded into battery cages can peck each other to death. So egg producers use a hot blade to sear off the pointy final third of their beaks—rendering it unlikely that a peck can draw blood.

Some hens die after beak searing renders them unable to drink or eat. Ranchers also brand their cattle with a hot iron in order to deter theft. That leaves the cows with no way to shoo away flies, which are often legion at dairies and a constant source of misery. Each of these mutilations, including castration, typically occurs without anesthesia. A local anesthetic would greatly reduce pain, but factory farm owners regard even the cheapest pain killers as prohibitively expensive. Even when raised in good environments, farm animals commonly suffer painful health problems.

These breeding advances make animal agribusiness more efficient and productive than ever, but the animals pay a terrible price. When it comes to genetics, no animal is more revved up than chickens, and none suffers more as a result. Chickens raised for meat grow more than four times faster than birds raised in the s. Unable to walk to food or water, they die of thirst or starve to death. Just like every human pregnancy carries risk, complications can arise every time a hen lays an egg. So the more intensive the breeding to increase egg productivity, the greater the chances that something will go wrong.

During laying, reproductive and digestive organs can come out along with the egg. Without prompt veterinary attention, infection will set in and the bird will die. Since the requisite veterinary care costs at least twenty times more than a replacement hen, none of these afflicted birds get the treatment they need to survive.

In typical sheds that house tens of thousands of hens, it is unlikely they will be noticed at all. Nearly all hens afflicted with a severe prolapse will suffer a lingering death from blood loss or infection.

In many cases, they take their dying breaths trampled by cage-mates while lying pressed against a wire battery cage floor. In the United States alone, millions of hens each year die in this manner as a result of prolapses and other conditions. Note 5. Dairy cows likewise suffer a variety of maladies brought on by selective breeding.

Note 6 A variety of health problems are attributable to these extreme milk yields, the most common of which is an inflammation of the udders, which is generally accompanied by infection. In cows with infected udders, the number of somatic cells in the milk increases dramatically.

Thanks to their massive milk yields, udder inflammation and sub-clinical infection are widespread among modern dairy cows. So if you want to ensure your milk contains no pus, you must choose a plant-based variety like soy milk.

These experiences have convinced me that no words can do justice to the topic. In order to truly grasp what the animals experience, you really must visit factory farms yourself.

Most of these places therefore forbid visitors. Thankfully, the world contains people like my friend Cody Carlson. Cody switched to a vegan diet at age nineteen. A few years later, he took a job at a large dairy farm in Upstate New York. He worked there for a month, then left to work in a pig-breeding facility in Pennsylvania. After that gig ended, he got jobs at two different egg farms.

The other difference was that, each day when Cody arrived at the job, he wore a hidden camera. What happens when you take people who lack decent employment opportunities, pay them a pittance, and put them in stressful work environments with minimal supervision? All too often, they take out their frustrations on the animals. The atrocities that undercover investigators like Cody have uncovered at factory farms are endless. I could go on and on with more examples.

Few jobs are as traumatizing as that of an undercover animal cruelty investigator. Yet many activists have stepped up to do this work. Still other undercover investigators have taken jobs at the slaughterhouses and fishing boats. No matter where these investigators show up, staggering cruelties reveal themselves. Typically, whenever a new undercover video goes public, the guilty company makes a big deal of firing the workers caught abusing animals. While these firings are invariably well-deserved, they conveniently shift blame away from ownership and management.

Yet the root of the problem is not with any individual worker. Factory farms are owned and operated by people willing to inflict unfathomable amounts of suffering onto animals in order to cut costs. Every farmer has a tremendous financial incentive to cram as many animals into the smallest space possible. On top of this intensive confinement, the industry strives to cut expenses to the absolute minimum. These efforts play out in all sorts of distressing ways.

No matter where in the system an animal may be, agonies and discomforts unrelentingly suffuse every moment. There is not one softer corner, nothing without an edge, no flicker of respite. Anything decent or worthwhile was squeezed out decades ago in the pursuit of profit. Countless sources of misery exist within factory farming. Wherever you choose to look, a fresh hell opens up. For the sake of brevity, here are just three topics of dozens worthy of a lengthy book chapter:.

No room to talk about what the animals can see coming as they look down the slaughter line. Nor can we linger here on the experiences of the dairy cows who watch their newborns taken away just a day or two after birth. No space either to talk about the millions of birds and cattle who have been buried alive in open pits during disease outbreaks.

Factory farming is a bottomless horror, no matter where you choose to look. Unless specifically labeled to the contrary, you can assume that every animal product came from a factory farm. A number of omnivores have pushed back against factory farming by demanding higher animal welfare standards. Most natural foods stores and supermarkets sell specially-labeled animal products from farms that promise better animal welfare.

At their best, alternative farms deliver genuine animal welfare improvements. And with this reduced crowding, mutilations like beak searing and tail-clipping can be eliminated. Unfortunately, the substantial price premium these higher welfare foods command exerts an overpowering temptation on producers to cheat.

All too often, farmers exaggerate or outright lie about standards for animal care. Just like at factory farms, every alternative producer faces the strongest financial temptation to push limits. Since the costs of delivering genuinely good animal welfare are so high, there are always farmers willing to cut corners. Sure, they use higher quality animal feed and refrain from using antibiotics, but animal welfare remains deplorable. Many consumers are aghast to discover poor animal welfare at organic farms.

So top food service companies and groceries have implemented a variety of certification programs. Much like hotels are typically rated from one to five stars, one leading program offers five different tiers of animal welfare.

That way, at least in theory, the consumer can decide for herself which practices are acceptable, and choose products accordingly. Of course, every welfare certification system depends on farmers having the integrity to live up to their promised standards. This in turn demands careful monitoring and strict enforcement by the certification agency. Alternately, you can do your own monitoring. Me, I have better things to do with my time. Much easier, I think, to simply avoid foods where egregious abuses of consumer trust and animal welfare are commonplace.

In this respect, laziness surely ranks as one of the most underappreciated reasons to consider a vegan diet. You undoubtedly have more pleasant ways to spend your time than investigating animal welfare compliance. And why expend all that effort when there exists such an abundance of delicious vegan food? And anyway, no matter how you strive to purchase only the highest-quality animal products, numerous problems remain either unaddressed or impossible to remedy.

As just one example, there is simply no way to eliminate slaughter. Even the highest-welfare producers kill their dairy cows and layer hens well before midlife, as yields decline. Diving a little deeper, the use of heirloom breeds is all but unheard of in commercial agriculture. In short: the more you care about sourcing animal products from only the most conscientious producers, the messier and more unsatisfying your task becomes.

By contrast, aspiring vegans have it much easier—their primary task is to try delicious new foods. The two fundamental concepts of the animal protection movement—animal welfare and animal rights—offer powerful approaches. Most animal protection efforts begin with animal welfare, a simple concept arising out of common decency. Unfortunately, eradicating suffering is easier said than done. A great deal of the suffering intrinsic to animal use is expensive and difficult to remove.

Once someone begins to pay attention to animal welfare, some degree of dietary change is virtually inevitable. In order to eliminate additional suffering, people also switch to free-range and pasture-raised animal products. But animal welfare is only one approach to thinking seriously about the ethics of eating. The most important ideas offered by the animal protection movement relate not to animal welfare, but to animal rights.

Animal welfare condones virtually any use of animals, as long as we attempt to minimize suffering. Animal rights rejects this world view and emphatically proclaims that animals are not ours to use however we wish.

As its name suggests, animal rights goes beyond animal welfare to proclaim that animals have rights.