It’s been a month or more since I switched to a vegan diet (gradually eating all my veggie food up that contained dairy) and I have to say, that it isn’t that hard to do if you’re prepared to put a bit of thought and effort into it. It makes so much sense: it’s the most ethical, healthiest and compassionate diet.

And there’s so many substitutes today for things you might miss: milk chocolate (Dairy Free Rice Crackle, mmmmm), bacon (Redwoods do a good fake bacon), chocolate milk (Alpro Soya do a lovely chocolate milk) and erm, lots of other things that you might crave. You can probably guess where my priorities are from the items I’ve just listed! : )

Good starting point for some facts about veganism is the UK Vegan Society website but if you’re too busy even to check that out, then here’s a few facts to get you thinking for the meantime…

1 The meat-intensive diets of the developed world contribute to global warming, deforestation, desertification and water pollution.

2 Meat and dairy production is an inefficient use of land, food and water. It has been estimated that for every kilogram of meat protein produced, farmed animals are fed nearly 6kg of plant protein.

3 Livestock such as cattle and sheep use more than two thirds of agricultural land, and one third of the earth’s total land area.

4 In a world where every year 6 million children under the age of 5 die as a result of hunger and malnutrition, the meat-intensive diets of the western world represent a tragic misuse of limited planetary resources.

5 Homo sapiens lack sharp teeth to tear through flesh, hide and bones, and the human digestion tract is quite long - 22 feet - which means animal protein can sit for up to 14 days - plenty of time to putrefy and release dangerous carcinogens. Carnivore’s digestive tracts are much shorter, meaning that the animal protein doesn’t have as much time to sit in the digestive system to release carcinogens.

Food for thought, eh…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Veganism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.