Questions you've always wanted to ask a vegan

Can vegans get enough vitamins and protein?

Easily! A well-rounded vegan or vegetarian diet will give you all the nutrients you need to be the best version of yourself. Vegans can get their protein from seeds, nuts, peanut butter, beans, soy milk, and many dark green veggies. The same goes for calcium: it is found in kale, broccoli, spinach, almonds, beans, and in fortified juices. The Vegan Plate by registered dietitians Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina is a great point of reference to help you make sure that you get all the nutrients needed on a purely plant based diet:

What about B12?

B12 was once found naturally on the skins of many root vegetables such as potatoes. But the use of unnatural fertilizers have removed the vitamin from the soil. B12 is now available in things such as fortified soy milk, certain breakfast cereals, nutritional yeast, and fortified orange juices. Otherwise you can always take an over the counter supplement or multivitamin.

Aren’t people carnivores by nature?

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard explains in his book, The Power of Your Plate, that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging—eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

Any basic biology course would show you that our body much more resembles other herbivorous animals than carnivorous ones. Just look at our hands – they are perfect for picking and grabbing fruits and veggies, not for tearing through flesh. Our intestines are also very long, just like other plant-eating species. Carnivores have very short intestines in order to be able to process and get rid of all the rotting flesh that they eat. Lastly, having canine teeth doesn’t automatically make you a carnivore. Most land mammals (excluding rodents, rabbits, and pikas) actually have canine teeth. The most ferocious canines are actually found on herbivores!

Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, says “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

What would happen to all the production animals if everyone went vegan?

It’s unrealistic to think that everyone will go vegan or vegetarian at once. What will hopefully happen is that more and more people will choose to keep meat off their plates. This will force farmers to breed, raise and slaughter fewer animals. It’s the same concept of Supply and Demand as anything else. This will also mean that more vegan products will replace animal products in stores and more farmers will switch to growing things like quinoa, spelt, or kale.

Why should we care about animal rights when there are so many people suffering?

There are many issues on this planet that need to be improved, but these shouldn’t diminish the fact that billions of animals are being tortured and slaughtered every year.

Feeding grain to livestock is wasteful, a plant-based diet makes 16 times more grain available to starving people around the world. Stopping the intensive factory farming of animals would also save tons of water and topsoil. Billions of kilos of manure from production animals results in methane gases, which damages the ozone layer more than anything else on this planet. This means that fighting for animal rights would actually help the planet in many other ways.

© Cowspiracy

What’s bad about dairy and eggs?

This question you will definitely hear too much when switching to a vegan diet. Some people may use the health issues as a way to argue against dairy and eggs, but we believe the cruelty behind the egg and dairy industry will give you more than enough ammo to answer this.

Let’s start with the dairy industry. For cows to produce milk, they need to have just given birth (much like us humans). This means that cows are continually artificially inseminated -a.k.a. raped- for several years. Within hours of the baby calf being born, he or she is ripped away from his/her mother so the milk isn’t wasted and can be sold for human consumption. If the calf is a girl, she will be forced into the same depressing cycle as her mother. If the calf is a boy, he will be sold into the veal industry and won’t make it past a couple months old. Cows can naturally live to become 25 years old, but cows in the dairy industry rarely make it past 5. If you don’t take my word for it, watch the video below to see the cruel moment a baby gets ripped away from his mother:

Chickens in the egg industry don’t have it much better. The problem obviously isn’t the actual process of them laying the eggs, as this is completely natural. It is the industrialisation and mass farming of eggs that causes so much suffering. Because male chicks don’t lay eggs and don’t grow fast enough to be raised for meat, they are deemed a liability and get thrown away like trash within hours of hatching. The females are only kept alive as long as they produce enough eggs. Once their production decreases, they get slaughtered prematurely as well.

Besides this, eggs have absolutely no dietary fiber, and about 70 percent of their calories are from fat—most of which is saturated. They are also filled with cholesterol—about 213 milligrams for an average-sized egg. More information on this can be found on Forks Over Knives.

Why don’t you eat fish?

Many studies have shown that fish feel pain. According to Dr. Donald Broom, animal welfare advisor to the British government, “Anatomically, physiologically, and biologically, the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and mammals.” Just because they look a little different than us doesn’t make it alright to take their life away from them. They have fully developed brains and nervous systems, some even build complex relationships with others in their schools.

Animals kill each other all the time in the wild, so why can’t we?

There are also completely herbivorous animals in the wild, including some of our closest ape relatives. The animals who hunt others for food do this to survive. With the countless products easily available to us in grocery stores, we don’t necessarily need animal products to survive anymore. Animals in the wild also kill their young to survive sometimes, so should we really be basing all our actions on what they do?

Are there scientific studies proving the health benefits of a vegan diet?

Yes, there are plenty of health benefits! The benefits of switching to a healthy vegan diet include a reduced risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes and premature death. According to The Vegan Society, “vegan diets tend to be higher in fibre, which decreases the risk of colorectal cancer. Vegans also tend to eat at least 7 pieces of fruit and vegetables per day, meaning we have a 33% reduced risk of premature death compared with people who eat less than one portion.”

Also, if you have a high cholesterol, switching to a vegan diet will most likely resolve the issue completely! Animal products are the only sources of dietary cholesterol.

So go ahead and try vegan! If you need any advice feel free to ask 😊 let's make this world a kinder place, one plate at a time.
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