4 Important Reasons to Go Vegan

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It is important to have a heart driven purpose when committing a lifestyle change. Here are four important reasons to go vegan.

It’s the new year and with the new year comes new changes. One of those changes are usually in the form of changing one’s diet.  But before making any major diet change you have to know WHY you are doing so. You have to have good sustaining reasons to go vegan. 

I will say a very POOR reason to go vegan is because “it’s trendy.” I once had this guy contact me about being interested in going vegan. Not even 2 weeks in he quit stating “I was just bored and it seem like the thing to do.” Doing something because of trends will NOT keep you on this journey because when trends die so will your interest.  

The 4 reasons to go vegan below are not all inclusive, but it’s a good start. They will give you the motivation to continue on when vegan is no longer the “current popular thing to do when you’re bored.”

4 Important reasons to go vegan 

Environment

This is one of my top reasons to go vegan. Earth is our only home so we must take care of it. It takes an incredible amount of energy to produce livestock for consumption. The more we depend on a livestock diet, the more land, water, pesticides, fuel, and fertilizer is needed to produce it. This is draining the Earth’s resources and putting our children’s future in jeopardy.

The amount of feed it requires to produce meat could be grown and use to feed over 800 million humans. 1/3 of the Earths fresh water is being used up to keep up with the demands of animal flesh. Not to mention animals raised for livestock (especially cows) produces green house gases. One in particular is methane.

Methane is natural gas composed of carbon and hydrogen. It considered a greenhouse gas because it absorbs the suns heat warming the atmosphere. It is 25 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide.

Beef and cheese are MAJOR producers of methane. Cows are ruminant mammals which means they have a special stomach they use to extract nutrients from food through a fermentation process before it gets digested.
They emit the gas methane and because they are breed in large numbers this makes them have one the highest emissions. Also these animals produce a lot of concentrated manure which produces more methane to be released into the environment.

The amount of resources in what it takes to produce plants versus livestock is significantly lower . Corn takes about 108 gallons of water to produce a pound. A cow which needs 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of ground beef. Most emissions that are produced from plants is from packaging, transporting, and waste disposal of packaging (which could be easily solved by recycling). Reducing meat consumption will is key to improving our environment. 

Related: Cowspiracy: The Facts

Health

Many people seek health as one of their reasons to go vegan and rightfully so. I do want to say that a vegan diet DOES NOT automatically mean a healthy diet but it can lead in that direction. Over consumption of animal flesh increases your risk of cancer, diabetes, and America’s number one killer…heart disease. Meat contains cholesterol which is the main component in developing coronary heart disease; heart disease often leads to heart attacks.  
You are literally attacking your heart with every bite you consume and your body responds to that abuse. Coupled this with the stressful emotions Americans carry daily, and you are a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. This is like playing rush and roulette with your life.

Dairy is no better. In fact it might be worse. Diary is one of the top mucus forming inflammatory foods out there . The proteins and sugars in dairy (especially pasteurized dairy which is what most Americans consume) are hard to digest because you ARE NOT A BABY COW. Most of us do not produce the enzyme lactose which is needed to break down cow dairy products. That milk was especially designed by nature to nourish a baby calf, not to feed your addiction. If you deal with things like recurring bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, ear infections, chest colds, bronchitis, sinus issues, or digestive issues(bloating, gas, constipation, and diarrhea) you might want to reduce or eliminate your dairy intake. I guarantee you will see an instant improvement.

Spiritualilty

Spiritual convictions are great reasons to go vegan. In humans, years of toxic emotions can manifest as physical diseases in the body. Well animals sense fear like we do. They stress like we do. They have pain like we do. It is naive (and extremely disconnected) to think you are not consuming the dis-ease this animal was programmed to live with. You consume the energy as well as the toxic flesh that holds it. You consume the fear, the pain, and the trauma. You consume what is stored in that animal’s cells and take it on as your own. Eating is very intimate and sacred ritual we humans do tho we do not realize. You are literally becoming one with what you consume. There is karma in our food. Ironically heart disease is the number one killer in America. Metaphysical speaking, one could argue that we have no heart in the way we treat animals and the food ends up killing the very heart we seem to not have.

It is not a coincidence that the less animal products you consume the clearer your mind becomes. Your conscious becomes clear because you are consuming light source food. Different information gets stored into your cells when you let go of flesh.

Ethical

This is also one of my top reasons to go vegan. How would you feel if you were locked up in a cage and forced to stay pregnant your entire life only for your babies to be stripped away from you at birth? All for the purposes of an industry that makes billions of dollars feeding your breast milk to grown adults of a different species? Then when they have no use for you any more, they kill you.

This is a reality.

The less meat you eat is automatically a stand against oppression of these beautiful animals. People oppress others they see as less than. We have been conditioned to view animals as less than so it can be easy to dismiss their pain and suffering. This an unnatural mindset to have it. Most indigenous cultures, even if they consume flesh, had a respect for other life forms and took no pleasure in their enslavement and torture for gluttony. This is not in the ebb and flow of nature.

Don’t feel pressured…

These are very important issues facing our society. But just as it is a bad idea to become vegan based on trends, it is also a bad idea to become vegan based on being bullied. At the end of the day no one can make the choice but you. Even a step in reducing animal consumption is a step in a new direction.

So now that you are armed with a good reason to go vegan, head over to find out how you can take practical steps towards how to eat less meat.

What are your thoughts on good reasons for going vegan? Do you agree or disagree? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below!

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