Why should I go VEGAN??

Simple....To save all the meat for the rest of us!!!

I get where you're coming from and I've thought about it myself.

But those vegan substitutes are so processed, I'd rather eat chicken.
Can the average person pronounce all of the ingredients in those fake meat crumbles or the fake cheese?
Some of the additives are pretty bad...

For me it started with HEALTH. My family has a history of every modern disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, etc.) I was determined not to get these diseases, which I think are largely preventable, and I decided to cut out meat. For a few years I would eat meat a few times a year. Then people say something along the lines of "Ok, but you could eat meat every now and then and still be healthy and disease free". And to some extent I believe that. As I did more research I decided it was not good to rely on dairy that much either so I gradually cut my reliance on dairy products.

Second for me it is about ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS. That has been addressed and I am not going to explain it further here. I think the planet would be better off if people ate no, or less, meat and animal products.

Then it became more about how I FEEL, physically. I feel so much better when I am not eating animal products. Over the past year I have had fish a few times and one bite of chicken and that was it. I was also eating eggs (from a coworker's chickens) on a regular basis. I still felt OK after eating those things. I haven't consumed milk in years, but I eat cheese on occasion. I can definitely tell when I eat dairy items that I do not feel that great afterwords. I'll just throw it out there that I avoid gluten, except beer, but sometimes I will eat a few crackers, a wrap, or pizza. And I definitely pay for it afterwords in how I feel. Unless I injure myself I never have headaches or muscle or joint pain. I also do not get sick. I think that now how I feel is the most important reason to continue eating the way I do.

Last for me is ANIMAL RIGHTS and ETHICS/MORALS. I do think it is important and it is definitely a factor in my choices now. I am still VERY conflicted over this though. I would feel okay eating my coworker's chicken eggs. I would feel okay about eating a fish that I caught, filleted, and cooked. I would also feel okay eating meat from an animal that was killed, dressed, cooked, by someone that I know. I would feel okay eating honey from a farmer/bee keeper that I knew. On the other hand, the few times I ate purchased fish I felt like I received no benefit from it, I did not really enjoy eating it, and I actually felt guilty for eating it. I felt like I did not NEED to eat it to survive. I know that I could survive without all of these things, I just don't know how important it is to me to keep them out of my diet all together.

Also very confusing to me is not using wool, silk, leather, and down. I can see avoiding these things to some extent. But as an outdoor enthusiast I do love my down items (jacket, sleeping bag). As a knitter I love using wool. I know that some people with small scale fiber productions have rescue farms where their animals are treated very well, loved, and cared for like a member of the family. I can probably carry all the leather things I own in one arm, a few belts, a few pairs of shoes, a small wallet, and a bike seat. Hopefully these items will last a very long time, or forever, and I won't have to replace them. But is replacing durable leather goods or down goods with cheap petroleum based products really any better, especially from an environmental/reliance on (foreign) petroleum point of view? I don't know.

I'm still really struggling with the ethics part of being vegan and this is going to be one of the hardest parts for me as I embark on a full vegan lifestyle for a year. And that's the thing about ethics. I see ethics as a continuum, and people fall any place along that continuum. Some see no problem at all with eating and wearing animals, some people see problems with eating honey and wearing wool and will refuse those items. I think that we should all strive to live a more compassionate life. With compassion for yourself, your health, the health of others, the planet, the animals.

This is part of a post I wrote on VeganTalk.com. You should check out that website! Lots of good stuff/people on there. I decided to go full vegan at the beginning of the year! Not only diet (which is easy for me) but the whole lifestyle (I already bought wool ski socks :-/). Feel free to add me as a friend if you want. :-)

I get where you're coming from and I've thought about it myself.

But those vegan substitutes are so processed, I'd rather eat chicken.
Can the average person pronounce all of the ingredients in those fake meat crumbles or the fake cheese?
Some of the additives are pretty bad...

This is an agreeable statement.

Also, the amount of soy in tofu, and other soy products is not healthy............Before someone starts in on edamame or the soy that Asians eat.............it is far different than what Westerners eat and the stuff that is in America, especially is NOT healthy for us.

Also, there are ways of sourcing humanely treated animals for consumption and then you are supporting your local economy. Find a farm and visit.

hmm.

I could live without meat - indeed I did for a while when particularly broke and don't large servings nor daily now - but not without cheese or fish. Many vegan alternatives to meat/ fish/ eggs/ dairy are processed rubbish with lengthy ingredients lists and the diet NEEDS to be supplemented and/ or fortified, which is against my food ethos.

I'm not vegan and never will be, but to me it makes more sense from an animal rights/welfare perspective than being vegetarian. I graduated with a BS in animal science so I'm very familiar with the industries. Let's just say that if reincarnation is a thing, I would MUCH rather come back as a beef cow than a dairy cow or a meat chicken than a laying chicken. Beef cattle live most of their lives on pasture, dairy cows are confined and bottle fed as calves. Laying chickens are sometimes forced to molt, which involves starving them.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend reading books by Bernard Rollin. He wrote some of my texts in my ethics classes. I believe he himself is vegan, but he explains this stuff just how it is and shows both sides on issues from dairy calf raising to dehorning to whether anesthetic should be used for castration to branding with actual backup from peer reviewed studies. He knows his stuff. He usually leans to the animal rights side of things but does it without offending my ranch raised sensibilities.

Anyway, I feel eating meat is beneficial and is how things are meant to work (I wouldn't hold it against a shark for eating me, that is also how the world works) but I could probably stand to cut back on animal products a little so as to get away from saturated fats. I would also love to eventually raise my own chickens, rabbits, etc for my own meat so I know how they were treated.

I won't go vegan because no plant TASTES LIKE MEAT. Especially BACON.

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Been in fitness industry for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition