Eating Vegan

Eating vegan is not only a blessing for the body but also for the world. Eating vegan means you don’t eat animals, animal products, or animal byproducts. Vegans don’t eat meat, fish, dairy, or honey.

People adopt a vegan diet for many reasons that include avoiding animal cruelty, avoiding pathogens and toxins in animal products, eating foods rich in nutrients to support homeostasis or the optimal functioning of the organs of the body, and what may now be the most important reason, saving all life on the planet.

Eating vegan has become much more important than just a personal choice, eating vegan has important consequences for the health of the earth. Let us start with the health of the earth.

Eating Meat-Centered Diets Affect on the Planet

It may seem impossible that choosing to eat vegan or not can effect all life on earth, but it is possible. A meat-centered diet is being globalized around the world which is throwing off the natural patterns of life that exist in the earth’s ecosystem.

The end result is the mechanisms the meat industry employs to satisfy the needs of meat-centered diets results in the release of an unnatural amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This supports amplified climate change and threatens the ecosystem’s ability to sustain life on earth.

This situation is so bad the United Nations developed a report^[1,2,3] stating that the present rate of meat production is unsustainable and recommended the move to plant-centered or plant-based will be necessary to save life on the planet.

Greenhouse Gases Effect on Climate Change

Climate change is a natural phenomena but the amount of industry produced greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere is amplifying climate change and is throwing the life supporting balance of the ecosystem out of sync.

Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation from the sun and trap the heat in the atmosphere. The natural balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has kept the temperature of the environment suitable to support the growth of vegetation, animal, and human life on earth.

The unnatural rate at which industry made greenhouse gases are added to the environment is raising the temperature of the earth and is negatively effecting the patterns in the ecosystem that support life.

NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University predicted a mega-drought will occur in the Southwest and Great Plains regions, which is spurred on by the amplified climate change.

Industry Derived Greenhouse Gases

The enormous and unnatural amount of animals that are raised to satisfy meat-centered diets have a detrimental effect on the earth’s ecosystem in various ways.

9-10 billion animals a year are grown and slaughtered in the United States alone. This amount amount animals produce an unnatural amount of feces producing methane. Methane is a green house gas that is 25 times a greater impact on climate change than CO2 does.

• 70% of the US grain production goes to feeding animals.^[5]
• 80% of the United States fresh water goes towards supporting agriculture, which is mostly used to feed animals. This is depleting fresh water sources and is helping to cause the drop in the West and Mid-West.
• South and Central American forests are being cut down at a rate of 5 million acres a year to grow crops to feed animals. Cutting down forests reduces the amount of trees that can convert greenhouse gases into oxygen and help stabilize climate change.
• Fossil fuel is being used up at an alarming rate to supply the energy needed to run the factory farms and meat industry.
• Runoff of nitrogen based fertilizer into the coastal ocean, used to replenish the large amount of nutrients used by the unnatural amount of crops that are grown to support livestock, kills life in the coastal ocean.

Eating vegan would reduce and reverse the damage being done to the earth and would severely cut the amount of manmade greenhouse gases that are being put into the atmosphere.

Even if everyone returned to eating plant-centered diets or adopted plant-based diets we wouldn’t have to grow as much plant food to feed people. For instance the population of the United States is around 320 million people.

Most of the crops grown go to feed 9-10 billion animals in the U.S. each year. Even if people started to consume 2-3 times the amount of plant food they currently consume each year, they would still consume less plant food than is needed to feed the number of animals that are raised for food each year.

This would cause less damage to the earth, would allow the earth’s ecosystem to heal and stabilize, and would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere that are amplifying climate change.

Animal Safety And Human Safety

Eating vegan would save millions of animals from a horrible life filled with misery from birth all the way through death.

Factory farming production of animals had to be developed because natural methods of raising animals wouldn’t be able to supply the number of animals needed to support meat-centered diets.

Factory farming methods raise animals in cramped and unsanitary conditions that promote the proliferation of disease. Animals become so sick from living in their own waste that they have to be kept alive through the heavy use of antibiotics.

Overtime bacteria becomes resistant to the antibiotics and the animals become weakened and diseased. The animals are also injected with growth hormones to have them grow faster and bigger.

People end up eating this contaminated meat that passes on diseases like mad cow disease, H1N1 (Swine Flu), Avian Flu, E.coli, and salmonella. The growth hormones are also passed on and consumed leading to abnormal growth and increased risk of cancer.

Not only does the consumption of unprocessed meat like steak or chicken promote the proliferation of disease, the consumption of processed meat like hotdogs and hamburgers is even more problematic.

The World Health Organization has labeled the consumption of processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans.”^[6] This places processed meat in the same carcinogenic category as cigarettes, alcohol, and arsenic.

Red meat did a little better and was labeled as being “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

To save animals from living through extremely cruel conditions, to stop the proliferation of disease in humans and the environment, and to protect life on earth, eating a whole food vegan diet or a plant-centered diet will be needed to bring health back to the ecosystem and the life within in.

Eating Vegan

Eating a whole food vegan diet in an excellent way to protect animals from cruelty and the world from destructive climate change. It also is a great way to protect health and promote or reclaim a youthful body.

Eating a whole food vegan diet is an anti-aging diet. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains are saturated with antioxidants and are low in saturated fat.

The consumption of saturated animal fat causes oxidative stress in the body and leads to the quickened shortening of the telomere caps that protect the DNA of chromosomes.

Each time a cell replicates the protective caps become shorter, and when the telomeres reach a certain length the cell can no longer replicate.

This leads to the aging of cells, the aging of the body, and death. A vegan diet protects telomeres and slows their shortening, and also prolongs the life of cells by increasing telomerase activity.

Telomerase is an enzyme the adds DNA back to telomeres, which makes them longer and extends the life of the cell and body. Besides the anti-aging properties of a whole food vegan diet, the diet has been shown to have a wide range of health benefits.

Eating vegan:

• Makes your skin glow
• Protects against diabetes
• Protects the kidneys
• Protects against ulcerative colitis
• Prevents and treats asthma

Though a whole food vegan diet in general is protective against disease and supports health, certain vegan foods are better than others. Non-hybrid alkaline plant foods have chemical affinity with the body and best support and maintain homeostasis in the body.

More and more people are finding out about the benefits of a vegan diet and are adopting a vegan diet. Mya has embraced veganism and a vegan diet and has done so beautifully.