TellUs: World Vegan Day

World Vegan Day, 2019

November 1 is ‘World Vegan Day’. If you’re vegan yourself and celebrated it, or simply curious as to why people switch to the vegan lifestyle - then stay tuned! 

People go vegan for an abundance of reasons. This blog will go through some facts and reasons about how being vegan helps the animals, the Earth and your health. In order to add weight to these points, I will include statements from verified organisations. Included are four aspects of why some might go vegan, but bare in mind that is is just scraping the barrel of reasons!
1.   Vegan diets cut your carbon footprints in half (environmental impact)


Surprisingly the single-largest thing a person can do to reduce their carbon footprint is by adopting a vegan diet. This is because the animal agriculture industry is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This is more than the entire transportation sector combined. 

The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) estimates that factory farming contributes to 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 


To take this a step further, The Worldwatch Institute puts the animal agriculture industry greenhouse gas emissions to a higher 51 percent. This accounts for everything involved within the sector. Ranging from raising the animal for food, from birth to being transported to the supermarket. It also includes the emissions that occur from clearing forests to make room for grazing and animal feed.

2.   Fish-less oceans by 2048 (animal and environmental impact)

Sea of dead fish and other bycatch (Source: Elite Readers)
Fishing is a dangerous business that is very much under wraps. A lot of people, when talking about meat consumption skip fish all together. However they very much should be included in the conversation. 

A study published in the journal Nature Communications stated how overfishing has thrusted the global fishing supply sector to its limit. Industrial fishing causes devastation to the world’s fish stocks, which at the current rate of fishing (due to demand) is set to collapse as soon as 2048. The FAO backed this claim and reported that 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks are “over-exploited” and “in a state of collapse”.

In addition, ineffective fishing methods catch unwanted and unneeded bycatch. Bycatch in the fishing industry is a fish or other marine species that is caught unintentionally, while catching certain target species and target sizes of fish, crabs etc. 10 million tonnes of captured dead or dying fish, enough to fill the size of 4,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools, are thrown back into oceans every year.

3.   Lower risk of diseases and illness (health impact)

(Source: Youtube, Letstute)
Eating fruits, vegetables, legumes and fibre is linked to lowering the risk of heart disease. All of these aspects are typically eaten in large amounts within a vegan diet compared to a non-vegan diet.

Observational studies comparing vegans to the general population reported that vegans benefit from up to a 75% lower risk of developing high blood pressure. Vegans also appeared to have a 42% lower risk of dying from heart disease. In the UK alone, more than a quarter of all deaths are from heart and circulatory diseases. In the US heart disease is the number one killer. 

Moreover several other randomised, controlled studies reports that vegan diets are much more effective at reducing blood sugar, LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol levels than other diets. This again benefits your overall heart health, as reducing these aspects were seen to reduce the risk of heart disease by as much as 46%. A reason for this was assumed to be vegans tending to consume more whole grains and nuts that benefit your heart. As well as the food items listed above. 

Vegetarian diets presented more protection against cardiovascular diseases, cardiometabolic risk factors, some cancers and total mortality than general, meat diets. However compared to vegetarian diets, vegan diets seem to offer additional protection for obesity, hypertension, type-2 diabetes, and cardiovascular mortality.

Food-borne illnesses are at a lower risk for vegans also, as bacteria, parasites, and chemical toxins are more common in commercial meat, poultry, and seafood when compared with plant food.

4.   Preservation of habitats and species (animal and environmental impacts)

Rainforest destruction (Source: The Guardian)
Consuming animals and their products is the largest contributor to habitat loss and animal extinctions. Why is this? Firstly raising and producing meat requires vast amounts of land to raise animals and their feed. Every second a football field size of land is cleared in the rainforest to rear and graze animals. 

It is estimated that to produce 1lb of beef equates to 200 square feet of rainforest being destroyed. Eating meat requires approximately three times more land than what is eaten by a typical vegan diet.

Moreover poorly managed animal waste from the meat and dairy industry pollute the environment, destroying habitats. This waste is washed into water systems. The nitrogen and phosphorus found within the waste causes algae to grow on the water. This limits sunlight reaching plants under the water. Also it starves the fish and other marine life of oxygen. This leads to ocean ‘dead zones’, a place where very few species are able to survive. More than 400 ‘dead zones’ are present today.

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Check out my previous blog: https://www.tellusabouttheenvironment.com/2019/10/tellus-vegan-travel-tips-part-1.html

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