Happy Reasons to Be Vegan

1) You are helping to save the rainforest Animals, which are raised to be slaughtered and eaten, have to consume tons of soy to gain weight rapidly. 80% of soy which is cultivated ends up in feeding troughs of cows, pigs and chickens which is why 113 millions of hectares of rainforest are deforested to cultivate monocultures of soy. In addition, 65% of deforested area of rainforest is used as cattle ranges. So, basically while you are eating your burger, bacon, or steak you are also eating rainforest. Too bad that rainforest is essential for us, since it produces a lot of the oxygen we need to breathe and live!

2) You protect the ozone layer

Cattles are known for their high amount of emitted farts, which consist of methane gas. This gas is one of the main reasons for climate change because it damages the ozone layer and increases the greenhouse effect. Climate change therefore is fundamentally fuelled by cattle breeding.

3) Cow milk is not made for humans

When babies are born, mothers are breast-feeding their babies for their breasts start producing milk. This milk contains of several hormones which are very important and healthy for their babies. As soon as the babies are old enough, the milk production decreases and the mother is not able to breast-feed her baby anymore. Everybody knows that. This biological process is the same for every other breast-feeding creature, such as cows. To produce enough milk for us humans, female cows are raped and as soon as they gave birth to their baby it is taken away by the farmers. In this way the farmers can milk the mother cows in order to sell their milk to humans who want to drink milk which actually is supposed to be suckled by the calf. In the end milk is nothing more than liquid containing tons of hormones like lactose which are produced as nutrition for new born calves. Therefore it is completely unnatural for humans to drink cow milk. By the way, the older you are the less enzymes your body will produce in order to degrade lactose, which is why biologically it is completely normal to have a lactose “intolerance”. Only that you are not intolerant. You simply are not supposed to drink milk as teens and adults.

4) Your body is not a cemetery

Your body is your own temple and you kind of are what you eat. Why do you feed your body with dead bodies? Behind the closed doors of slaughterhouses animals are being tortured and are living under terrible conditions. They become mentally ill and start hurting each other or accidentally kill their babies for they do not have enough space to even turn around in their cages. Is supporting this torture worth the smell of a steak which lasts 30 seconds?

5) Protection against antibiotics

Because of these terrible living conditions in intensive livestock farms, animals are fed a lot of antibiotics which are added into their feeding troughs to keep them healthy so that they can still be slaughtered and sold. These antibiotics can still be found in the meat we buy and eat and the more meat we eat the more antibiotics we eat. As a result, in time we become resistant against antibiotics.

6) You stand up for the rights of those who can’t

Every year 2.5 billion male chickens are shred and killed in the egg industry. When laying hens hatch male chickens they are not useful for the industry since male chickens are not able to lay eggs themselves and are economically not rentable for the farmers for they cannot gain enough weight to be used as plump chickens in the meat industry.

7) It is not in the human nature to eat meat of intensive livestock farming Again and again people give the argument that humans are omnivore creatures and therefore “made” to eat meat. Well it might be right that it is in the human nature to also eat meat, but in our developed world it is definitely, morally as well as biologically, not right to eat animals which we bought packed up nice and neat in portions in the supermarket. This is not our natural behaviour. If you want your meat, go into the forest and stab it yourself. That would be our natural behaviour.

And if still you are saying: “But men have always been eating meat”, I say to you: If we would still do what men have done thousands of years ago, we would still run around half naked living in tents and using stones and sticks as weapons. Besides, like I already said, we are living in a developed and enlightened society and eating meat is not really essential to us anymore.

After all, waking up knowing that you stand up for the rights of the unheard and fight for the beautiful nature of your planet makes you a happier person, trust me!