Who wants to watch an entire film about veganism? Well, I do but I am already converted to the cause so I don’t really count.
Comedian Simon Amstell is aware that preaching to the choir isn’t going to change hearts, minds and eating habits. His savvy BBC film is therefore aimed at the not so silent majority who still cling to the outdated notion that being a vegan is unachievable, extremist and faintly ridiculous. Continue reading
There are three main reasons why I am a vegan :
1. I oppose the unnecessary and unjustifiable maltreatment and slaughter of animals.
2. I believe that the intense factory farming is slowly but surely destroying the planet.
3. I have personal experience of the health benefits which far outweigh the minor inconveniences and small sacrifices needed to maintain this diet.
I gain sustenance for my position from some excellent documentaries that make the case for veganism.
For the animal welfare issues, Earthlings (2005) sets out the arguments powerfully and compassionately.
The environmental effects are efficiently outlined in Cowspiracy (2014).
Forks Over Knives focuses on the health question centering primarily on the persuasive views of two eminent doctors – Caldwell Esselstyn and Colin Campbell. The former is a physician and heart surgeon while the latter is a nutritional biochemist. Both have spent a large part of their professional lives researching the links between diet and wellbeing.
Campbell’s influential China Study found 94,000 correlations between diet and disease, surely too high to be dismissed as coincidence.
Esselstyn’s work with patients who have suffered heart attacks has demonstrated that following a plant-based diet can halt and, in some cases, reverse the debilitating and often fatal effects of heart disease.
Despite this, US bodies like the National Academy of Sciences continue to routinely promote the consumption of animal related products as essential health requirements. They are part of the mass brain washing process whereby people are conditioned to repeat the falsehoods that protein comes primarily from meat and calcium can only be found in cow’s milk.
The film makes it clear that a large number of those behind official nutrition programmes have a stake (steak?) in preserving the status quo and ensuring that the level of meat and dairy food production continues unabated. Agribusiness and junk food manufacturers are more concerned with promoting diets that produce short-term profits than ones with long-term health benefits.
The consequence is plain to see. Studies on the worldwide rise of obesity show that this has reached epidemic proportions.
In Forks Over Knives, clinical psychologist Doug Lisle explains that one of the key reasons why consumers resist change is due to what he calls the Motivational Triad. He says that people’s diets are driven by three main factors : pleasure-seeking, pain avoidance and energy conservation. This leads to diets containing a high proportion of artificial and highly processed foods and a preference for anything that tastes sweet or salty. Anything that involves more effort and commitment tends to be resisted.
The challenge is to break free of these habits and to question the so-called dietary experts who refuse to acknowledge that a fundamental change in lifestyle choices is necessary.
Mac Danzig – not your typical vegan!
In the documentary, the testimony of ultimate fighting champion Mac Danzig and Ruth Heidrich, a marathon runner and recovering cancer patient, are used to prove that you don’t need meat to stay fit, strong and healthy.
Danzig is not on a personal crusade for veganism but merely explains how changing his eating habits improved his performances stating matter of factly “I tried the diet and it worked for me”.
The default defense mechanism of many meat eaters is to mock the ‘holier than thou’ attitude of vegans rather than defend their own food choices. All I would ask anyone reading this post who remains sceptical is to try a plant-based diet and see if it works.
There’s nothing to lose and plenty to gain.
Further reading:
The Pleasure Trap – Why It’s Hard To Do What’s Right – Article from the website: ‘Plant-Based Food for Health’
Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease – Website of Dr Caldwell Esselstyn’s health program.
Live A Whole Life – Website of Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s Center for Nutritional Studies
Transition To Health – Website of Dr Lederman promoting food as medicine
Forks Over Knives – Official website for the film with related articles and recipes.
How The World Got Fat – Guardian article about the rise in obesity over the past 40 years.
Great vegan athletes – Website containing profiles of top athletes who follow a vegan diet.K
As individuals we can save water, ride bikes and use energy-saving lightbulbs but even if everyone diligently did all these things the problem would not go away.
Today the cities were full of people marching to demand action to prevent global warming. A good thing of course. It prompted TV news stations to dust off their stock footage of ‘natural’ disasters and smog-filled cities.
Animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change, a fact that governments and businesses have kept quiet for obvious reasons. To make matters worse, Al Gore, Greenpeace, Naomi Klein and other campaigners have also all but ignored this issue.
If you are truly worried about climate change then you should watch Cowspiracy and check out the Green Your Diet website.
Going vegan is the ideal solution but even reducing the consumption of meat would help the planet far more than turning off unnecessary lights or not using water sprinklers on your lawn.
I haven’t eaten meat or fish for the past forty years and in all that time I have never been remotely tempted to regress. On the contrary, I am now trying to stop consuming ALL animal related products and switch to a completely plant-based diet.
The wisdom of following a vegetarian lifestyle is, to my mind, beyond dispute and arguments for taking this one step further towards veganism are equally compelling.
It is relatively easy to explain why I don’t eat raw steak, ground veal or chicken legs but the processes that lie behind the mass production of eggs, milk and cheese are just as closely tied to barbaric factory farming methods. You don’t have to be overly squeamish or sentimental to see that the routine practices of animal agriculture are increasingly indefensible and unsustainable.
One time carnivores and omnivores might have been able to claim that vegetarian alternatives were hard to find. Now that kind of counter-argument simply doesn’t cut the mustard. Labeling is now much clearer than it was and you no longer have to feed your habit in a back street hippy store or search for food items in a shop resembling a pharmacy. Any supermarket worth its salt will now have sections devoted to those with more enlightened tastes.
If you say you don’t eat meat or fish in a restaurant there’s a greater chance that you will be presented with a more imaginative alternative than an omelette or the kind of salad that looks like a rabbit’s lunch. Also, soya-based products no longer look like ingredients for a dog’s dinner and seem more adapted for human consumption.
I have lived in Emilia-Romagna in Italy for the more than 20 years and the slow but sure sea change has been thrilling to behold. Daily products like soya or oat milk cappuccino, vegan pastries or non-dairy ice cream, all of which would have been practically unimaginable two decades ago, are now both easy to find and more socially acceptable. As a consequence, while there are still many who probably think I’m a crank, there are fewer who will come right out and say it.
Nowadays, if you enthuse about ‘gourmet vegetarian food’ you are less likely to be accused of being oxymoronic. Above all, if you declare yourself to be a vegetarian or vegan, you will not usually be met with expressions of puzzlement or pity.
Like the links being smoking and cancer, it is now broadly accepted by even the most conservative medics that a diet dominated by dead animals is bad for your health. It is also become more evident to the public at large that fast-food nations are also hugely damaging to the environment.
If you doubt the truth of any of this, I’d recommend watching eye-opening documentaries like Earthlings, Forks Over Knives or Cowspiracy plus reading books like Jonathan Safran-Foer’s Eating Animals or The China Study.
Now,if I am ever asked (either with or without a patronising tone) ‘Why are you a vegan/vegetarian?’, I usually reply with the question: ‘Why are you NOT?’
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