I started transitioning to a vegan diet and lifestyle around August-September last year.
I originally first flirted with the idea of veganism when I was 16, and I knew a few people who had made the switch, for various reasons. I started to go through periods where I would be vegetarian for a while, the longest I think was like 10 months, but I always ended up giving into cravings.
I’d seen all the graphic animal rights videos, and they would scare me off meat for a while, but I would never stick to it. And I felt a bit like a hypocrite – I cared about animals so much, yet I was still eating them, and using products that had animal products, or had been tested on animals.
But last year I interviewed Jona Weinhofen for a show his band I Killed the Prom Queen were doing in Byron Bay, in my area, and as a fan of his already, I knew he was a proud, long-term vegan. During some other background research I did before and after the interview, I came across another interview where Jona had said he went vegan after watching Gary Yourofsky’s the Best Speech You Will Ever Hear.
So, that afternoon I watched it. And everything just clicked. It made complete sense to me to be vegan – we can get all the nutrients we need from a plant-based diet, and our bodies function better on that type of diet anyway, so why are we still eating meat and animal products?
Not gonna lie though, I have had a few bumps in the road since turning vegan, but slowly they’ve started to disappear.
I have a terrible relationship with food – marred with eating disorders over a decade, and I still have trouble with that sometimes – leading me to listen to that little voice in my head that aids me in bad behaviors. But that’s getting a lot better since turning vegan and focusing much more on my health – but I have to be truthful, yes, I’ve given in to stupid cravings since deciding to make the switch to vegan – I can just work to eliminate them altogether.
I did strike a barrier when I went to Latin America for two months at the end of last year. You’re about to see my footage from this trip, but I wanted to post this video first, so that you know what I was going through at the time – because in some of my older videos I’ve been eating all kinds of things, bugs, snake, rat, spiders, and now in my new videos I may video someone else doing that but I won’t be myself, so I just wanted you to know why that is.
My reasons for going vegan:
- My health.
Eliminating meat and animal products altogether reduces (and almost eliminates) your risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and – if many studies, such as The China Study, are correct – many cancers.
My body runs so much better on a vegan diet – I have way more energy, I’ve lost extra fat from my body, my skin has been clearer, and any digestion and stomach issues have gone away.
Leading from that, my doctor has mentioned that I might have had a slight dairy sensitivity – which is not surprising. Apparently around 75% of the world’s population have some level of dairy sensitivity. Which makes sense – we’re the only species that drinks milk outside of infancy, and we’re the only species that drinks another animal’s milk. That’s just weird.
- Environmental Benefit
Worldwide, livestock and meat production have been identified as major contributors to climate change – A staggering 51 percent or more of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture.
Leading water scientists have warned there will not be enough water available to produce food for the expected 9 billion population of 2050.
For a guide – It takes 3,900 litres to produce 1kg of chicken and just 1,300 litres of water to produce 1kg of wheat.
And then, at a time when some 800 million people suffer from malnutrition, one third of the world’s cereal harvest is fed to farm animals – enough to feed almost three billion people.
- Animal Rights Issues
Each year more than 66 billion land animals are slaughtered for food to feed the world’s population. 66 billion. That’s not even counting fish.
And before you say – oh, but what about the majority of animals who are bred on small farms – that’s not the case as all. Two out of every three farm animals in the world are factory farmed each year.
Factory farming is the number one cause of animal cruelty in the world today.
Either way – no matter how the animal lives, they’re still being slaughtered for us to eat. There’s nothing ‘humane’ in that.
And what about what the animals go through before the slaughter – cramped conditions, being pumped full of antibiotics (do you really want to eat that? Plus we’re becoming immune to antibiotics due to the large consumption of them this way), receiving branding, clipping of beaks and other body parts without anesthetic, being pushed and pulled around, shoved in trucks for horrid journeys to slaughter.
That’s just not something I want to be a part of.
If you want to find out any more about veganism or are interesting in learning more to either understand, or to possibly switching to a vegan diet yourself, I’d urge you to check out one of my favourite vegan YouTubers, Emily from Bite Size Vegan. She makes short, informative videos that are so valuable.
Vegan resources I love:
Note: Some of these are affiliate links. I only ever affiliate myself with products and companies that I believe in and either use, or would use, myself.