Tracey Martin is a Sustainable Lifestyle Leader and author and has been a certified Transformational Life Coach as well as health, life and wellness advisor for more than 25 years. Tracey’s mission is simple, to protect our natural resources, planet, and our most precious resource: humankind. She is sharing her knowledge with us in this weekly column and this week Tracey is talking about the reasons behind becoming vegan in honor of World Vegan Day.
World Vegan day 2017 is TODAY!!! November 1, 2017.
This is an annual event to celebrate a lifestyle choice.
Why do we make the choices we make? This is a very important question. Each one of us is driven by different reasons. Choosing to become vegan can be a health choice or an ethical choice. Either way, you need to have an important “why” to make this commitment.
Here are a few of the top reasons people choose this lifestyle:
Ethics and Morals
This is a biggie! Most people have questioned why certain animals are our pets and why some are our dinner. You can justify this by saying to yourself “We have always eaten beef or chicken” Or it is a cultural thing. Just because something has been done historically doesn’t mean it should be perpetuated. These seem to be excuses. We breed and kill billions of animals every year, just so we can eat them. Baby calves are taken from their mothers only hours old an then are put in veal crates. They will be slaughtered in 6 months and end up on your plate. Baby male chickens are ground up alive in a large blending machines because they will not lay eggs. These animals know they are going to be killed. They see other cows or pigs going before them. Their bodies release adrenaline and cortisol and you eat it. This is a personal question only you can reconcile with yourself. Be willing to ask some tough questions. Be willing to educate yourself on the horrors of factory farming and slaughterhouses.
Health and Wellness
There is more and more information coming out regarding how meat and poultry consumption is wreaking havoc on our bodies. The animal agriculture purchases more antibiotics than the medical community. You eat the meat that is injected with them. Your body becomes resistant and you will have to ingest more and more when you get sick. “Where do vegans get their protein from?” This is my favorite. Your body can assimilate plant based protein from nuts, green leafy veggies and quinoa better than it can ever assimilate animal protein. Beef has to sit in your intestines for up to 3 days to ferment before your body can begin to break it down. Ewwwww! The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified processed meats as a carcinogen. Which means it causes cancer.
Environmental Impact
I know you probably have heard something about this issue. We all have to be aware of our food choices and the toll it is taking on the planet. Seven football fields worth of land is cleared and bulldozed every minute to create more grazing pastures. More than a 1/3 of the fossil fuels that are consumed in the US alone are used for animal production. It takes 2400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat. Most of the grain we produce go to feed livestock and then we eat that too!!! You have to ask yourself how much longer can we continue at this rate. The air you breathe is contaminated as well. I will leave you with this one last fact. Once the cesspools that hold the urine and feces from the cattle at the factory farming reach their limits, the farmers begin to spray “liquid manure” into the air. It becomes a mist and is carried through the air. Yes, the same air that you and I breathe.
I know I have thrown a lot at you today on this topic. I care about all of humanity and all animals. We need to be aware of the impact we are having on this place we call home. There is no Planet B.
I look forward to your questions and comments.
Sustainably Yours,
Tracey xo
If you have comments or questions you would like to see addressed in this column, please send them to info@fabulousarizona.com.
For a private one on one with Tracey text 602.568.4124.