You can hear quite often that you should eat more plant-based food. There is also a huge trend of eating vegan food nowadays. That is most common thing with the people who are also interested in nature and its recourses. In this post, I will try to explain why vegan and vegetarian diets are the best options for everyone.
This type of lifestyle is also growing in Switzerland because people are coming more and more aware of environmental things. Also, the knowledge about non-animal-based food and its impact to your health is spread more widely every day and big part of the people want to at least try vegan or vegetarian diet.
Basically, vegan is a person who uses nothing that is animal-based. This is extended to every areas of life, for example clothes. There is also a big amount of variations of vegetarian diets. Some of vegetarians uses only non-animal food and some are using things like dairy products, eggs, fish or honey.
According to a survey conducted by organization called Swissveg, about 14% of swiss people eats vegan or vegetarian food. They also found that in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland there are more vegans than in other parts. They also noticed that biggest part of people who had the non-animal-based diet, was between 15 to 35 years old. Swissveg also says that there are more vegans and vegetarians every year. The biggest reason for being non-vegan is simply that people like to eat meat. This survey was done in 2017.
Vegan or vegetarian diet is the best single way to affect to the climate change. Meat production is one of the biggest factors that is speeding up the climate change. According to The Guardian, its impact to the climate change can be as big as 32%. For example, you will need over 15,000 liters of water for producing only one kilogram of pork meat while you need only little bit over 300 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of vegetables. This will dry up some lakes and rivers entirely.
Also, a big part of deforestation is happening because of meat producing. Almost 80% of all land area that is meant for agricultural use, is used to grow food for animals that we eat. This 80% part could be also used to grow food straight to the people to consume. That would be many times more efficient than using this huge part of cultivable land to feed dairy and beef industry.
In his article, that is published by The Guardian, Damian Carrington tells that it is almost inevitable for us to reduce the meat production remarkably in the near future. So, at some point in the future, everyone has to move towards eating more plant-based products. There should be political changes too, before this can happen in the full scale. We have to consider how we could make our regulations better regarding to environment.
Having a vegan diet comes with huge amount health benefits too. According to Harvard health publishing, it will help to protect you against many very common diseases, for example different kind of cancers and heart diseases. This is mostly due to the fact that vegans don’t get so much saturated fats in their food. The most noticeable benefits of having plant-based diet are that you get more vitamins, fibers, magnesium and other organic chemicals that you will need.
There is also some drawbacks in vegetarian diet too, but you can solve most of these problems easily by planning your diet more carefully. When you are using only non-animal-based food, you have to use huge variety of products to get every kind of things that your body needs. But for example, you cannot get B12-vitamin if you are eating only non-animal-based food. But I think that this kind of problems are minor compared to problems that you could have if you eat animal-based food.
As a conclusion, I can say that everyone should at least try vegan diet. After one or two weeks, you can say that if it is your thing to eat only plant-based food. If you feel that this is you thing, you can go back to your normal diet. In this case, you could increase the amount of vegetables and fruits in your own diet. It would be a very good thing if you could eat at least one plant-based meal every day. These kinds of decisions could make our future world little bit better place to live.
Sources:
Plant Based News. 2018. What’s the difference between Being Vegan and Vegetarian? Available at: https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/whats-the-difference-between-being-vegan-and-vegetarian
Swissveg. 2017. Veggie survey 2017. Available at: https://www.swissveg.ch/veggie_survey?language=en
The Guardian. 2018. Damian Carrington: Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown
Harvard Health Publishing. 2009. Becoming a vegetarian. Available at: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-vegetarian
The Guardian. 2018. What is the true cost of eating meat? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/07/true-cost-of-eating-meat-environment-health-animal-welfare