Why Vegan? Part 2

I'm glad you're back! If you haven't part 1, you can check it out here. Ready for part 2? Today's is definitely more serious than last week so hang on to your keyboards, and let's jump right in!

Animals

The longer I've been vegan, the more research I've done, the more my eyes have been opened to the atrocities of the food industry. I'm not going to go into detail about how mistreated the animals are (look up what "cage-free" really means). There are plenty of documentaries and farms and slaughterhouses out there to check out if you really want to know.

Especially now that I am pregnant, I empathize with all the momma animals out there. I can't imagine anyone taking my baby from me. I would eat meat way faster than I would ever eat dairy simply because death is not the worst thing that can happen to someone. Slavery used to be considered totally fine because society said so. How is exploiting animals unnecessarily any different?

Civilization

Some fun facts for you, if we would just eat the food that we're feeding to the animals instead of filtering our nutrients through another's body, we would be able to feed everyone on the planet. Does anyone remember the trophic levels from 7th-grade biology? Only 10% of the energy in an organism makes it into the consumer (the rest is lost as thermal energy). If we eat the plants, we're getting that 10%, but if we eat the animals that ate the plants, we're only getting 1%.

Animal agriculture consumes so much of our water, and it produces an insane amount of greenhouse gases. I have done practically no research into commercial fishing, but considering the state of our oceans, I can't imagine the overfishing is any more sustainable than beef and dairy production. I for one would like for my child(ren) to live in a world that isn't dying as quickly as ours is currently. We are literally sacrificing countless animal lives and our ecosystem to satisfy bad habits and taste. Yes, vegan alternatives are not exactly the same, but there are some fabulously delicious alternatives if taste is the only reason you have to keep eating the way you always have.

Want to know more? I'll leave you with some awesome things to check out if you're still curious.

• Gary Yourofsky (speech on Youtube)
• Vegan Sources for Nutrients
• Vegucated (documentary)
• Cowspiracy Facts
• Forks Over Knives (documentary)
• What FAT Vegans Eat (Facebook group)

And that's what I have for you! I hope at the very least I got you thinking. What surprised you the most if anything? Is there anything I missed?