Why I Became a Vegan

What a lineup!

 There are many reasons to become a vegetarian or a vegan, but this is probably the best one. If enough people became vegetarians, we could wipe out world hunger. The premise is simple. A massive amount of food is grown to feed pigs, cows, chickens, etc.  If we ceased to intentionally bring these animals into the world for our consumption, then all that food that would have gone to the animals can now be used to feed hungry people.  I'm not suggesting starving the existing livestock.  But if most people stopped eating meat, it would greatly reduce the demand for animal flesh, so less animals would be brought into the world to eat the staggering amounts of food grown for them.  This makes the extra food available for human consumption.  Obviously, animal populations could be controlled easily by separating males from females.

I saw a documentary called Forks Over Knives. The main message of the film is a powerful one. A whole-foods, plant-based (vegan) diet is much healthier than one that includes animal products (meat, dairy, and eggs). Several studies have shown that a diet that includes too many animal products is more likely to give the consumer of such a diet heart disease or cancer. We all have cancer cells in our body. A diet that contains too much animal products could cause these cells to develop into the disease. On the other hand, vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage help fight cancer. Being a vegan is win-win. It's good for you, and it's good for the animals. Conversely, not being a vegan can be lose-lose. The innocent animals definitely lose. The non-vegan might lose too when all the animals he ate reach from their graves to get their vengeance by pulling him down with them.

As most people know, obesity has become a major health problem in America. Before I became a vegan, I was wearing size 42 waist pants. I was, as a coworker told me, pudgy (to say the least). I currently fit comfortably into size 30 waist pants.

Anyone who cares about the environment should be a vegetarian. Many environmental organizations have come to the conclusion that raising animals for food contributes to global warming and pollution in a major way. Because there are so many of them, cows emit more greenhouse gases (from their bodies) than automobiles. Countless trees have been cut down to make room for livestock. Livestock production also leads to soil erosion, and the massive amount of pesticides it uses contaminates earth and water.

As a vegan, I assure you it is easy to be a vegetarian. Many different delicious varieties of veggie burgers, and other foodstuffs, are ready and waiting to fill the void when one ceases to eat meat. Some taste like burgers, others taste like chicken

Ever since I was a kid I've had problems with the way that people treat animals. Whenever I saw someone walking a dog, for instance, it didn't seem right to me. The dog wasn't free; he was leashed and under the control of the person who was walking him. Also, I knew that some dogs were only allowed to go outside when people took them out. I have understood, for many years now, why dogs are treated this way. I have walked dogs many times, and I know that leashes help keep them safe. Regardless, I think it's a shame that humans have taken control of this world in such a complete and total way. Obviously, animals belong here as much as we do. This world belongs to them as much as it does to us.

I was raised to eat meat. My father left us when I was two years old, so my mother had to raise me by herself; money was tight. I think this is the main reason why I really don't miss most of the sorts of meat that she fed me. When it came to steak, we didn't dine on fillet mignon, we ate London broil, which is a shoulder cut. It was quite chewy. I don't miss eating steak at all. Similarly, it's easy for me to do without the pork chops that I used to eat in my mother's home. I'm picturing them now: with the ring of fat around them that disgusted me every time. I'll admit that I really used to enjoy eating hamburgers and bacon. If they were to announce on the news that, somehow, hamburgers, bacon, and American cheese, all previously thought to be non-vegan foods, are in fact all 100% vegan, then I'd probably run out and eat as many bacon cheeseburgers as I could. Obviously, that's not going to happen. Besides, I've eaten my share of bacon, cheese, and burgers.

I also don’t miss eating eggs. I still can recall that egg farts are the worst. Before I became a vegan, I enjoyed many foods that contained eggs: like mayonnaise and baked goods. Since then, I have eaten many delicious vegan baked goods, and there is a tasty egg-free product called Vegenaise that has effectively replaced mayonnaise in my fridge. I don’t bake, but I know that there’s at least one vegan product out there that replaces eggs in recipes that call for them.

Once I started to become aware of the horrible ways in which so-called food animals are treated, I became a vegetarian. I was a college student at the time. I was a vegetarian for about two and a half years, and then I went back to eating meat.

I used to live in New York City, and I used to watch a lot of TV. One of the interesting things about watching TV in New York City is the variety of public access television programming that is available. That is where I saw several programs that had been put on the air by animal rights activists. One of the first such programs I saw was narrated by Pam Anderson. It showed men treating cows brutally in India. I had heard that cows are sacred to Indians, but, after seeing this show, it was clear that not all of them felt that way.

I also remember seeing chimpanzees confined in tiny washing-machine-like cells. The chimpanzees had been deliberately infected with a communicable disease so the scientists could study the effects it had on them. The scientists didn't want to catch whatever disease they had given to the chimpanzees, so they kept them completely isolated. That meant that they would not get to leave their cells: at all. They would receive no physical contact from outside their cells, and all the chimpanzees were separated from each other. Additionally, there was nothing in their cells aside from the chimpanzees: no toys or anything to help them pass the time. This enraged and saddened me. One could easily walk past the door of this room, where the chimpanzees were being kept, and not even know they were in there. Right away, I imagined what it would be like if I was unfortunate enough to be trapped in one of their bodies. I think the ability to sympathize with the plight of animals is one of the main reasons why people become vegans and vegetarians. I'm very lucky that I've never been treated the way those chimpanzees have been treated. I wouldn't be able to handle it. I'd have nothing to look forward to except for death.

Watching these kinds of shows convinced me to become a vegan. Once I found out what a vegan was, I came to the conclusion that being a vegetarian wasn't going far enough: at least as far as I was concerned. The main issue is intense confinement. As many people know, pigs are considered to be at least as intelligent as dogs are. I’ve seen, on TV, pigs who were much-loved pets. I saw a pig push a soccer ball around and put it back in his toy box when he was done. Unfortunately, many pigs and calves are forced to live in stalls that give them no room to walk. Many of them don’t even have enough room to turn around or fully extend their limbs. Calves are taken away from their mothers shortly after birth so people can have the milk instead; naturally, this upsets cows and calves. Egg-laying hens are often kept in tiny battery cages. Again, as with pigs and calves, these hens are given only the bare minimum when it comes to personal space. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. If anyone wants to know how eating meat, eggs, and dairy causes suffering in the animal world, there’s plenty of information about it on the Internet, in books, and in documentaries. I highly recommend reading Animal Liberation by Peter Singer: especially chapters two and three. Chapter two describes how live animals have been treated when they've been experimented on in laboratories. Chapter three lets the reader know what life is like for food animals that live within the cruel confines of a factory farm.

People are cruel to many different animals in many different ways. For countless animals, ours is a reign of terror. I’ve seen cruelty to animals in movies. Animals that are forced to perform in circuses are usually treated badly; they certainly aren’t allowed to live natural lives. It’s horrible that many animals have been killed just so people could have fur coats.

We take everything, everything, from animals. We take away their freedom and contentedness. We take away opportunities to follow their natural instincts. We don't allow them to live the sorts of lives they were meant to live. We often don't allow them to raise, or ever spend time with, their young. Conversely, we make orphans out of baby animals. And, of course, we take their lives and their mutilated bodies.

I’m not perfect. The sweet seduction of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups has caused me to fall off the vegan wagon. I've also given in to the urge to eat mozzarella cheese. Since I became a vegan, in 2002, I have not spent any money on foods which contain any meat, milk, or eggs. I went through a weak period. It began at a former workplace. Sometimes my coworkers would bake cookies to share with the rest of us. I’d see them on the break-room table, and sometimes I gave in to temptation. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I attempted to rationalize my transgressions by reminding myself that I hadn’t paid for them. I may have eaten something that had milk or eggs in it, but I didn’t support the meat, egg, or dairy industries with my money. I tried to convince myself that I had found a loophole, but I knew it was bogus. At no time have I eaten any meat since I became a vegan. I have since rededicated myself to being a vegan, and I am stronger than ever when it comes to resisting temptation. For instance, instead of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I eat dark chocolate with peanut butter. Vegan dark chocolate and peanut butter are very easy to find.

Spending quality time with food animals could very well convince someone to become a vegetarian. I have stroked the wattles of turkeys, rubbed pig bellies, and hugged cows. This all happened when I visited Farm Sanctuary, which is near Watkins Glen, NY. It is a great organization. Many of these animals really seemed to appreciate the affection that people showered upon them. These are sweet, innocent animals that deserve to be treated well.

There’s no shortage of reminders why I should be a vegan. I've seen horrible footage. I've seen a worker, who was holding a piglet by her rear legs, bash her head against a hard floor repeatedly as she screamed. I've seen workers throwing live chickens savagely against a wall. The same workers stomped on live chickens. I've seen an animal skinned alive for his fur. I've seen plenty of footage of animals being killed, and all of it is 100% ugly: no exceptions.

I saw a documentary called Food, Inc., which, ultimately, angered me. Toward the end of the film, the filmmaker visited with a farmer who raises food animals in a "natural" way. For instance, the pigs seemed to have it better than those who are forced to live on factory farms. A guy from Chipotle Mexican Grill was also there. Apparently, according to what I heard in the movie, they get their meat from places like that instead of factory farms, because they care about animals. If they really cared about animals, they wouldn't serve meat at all! They were all smiling and acting like this was the perfect solution to animal suffering. They were gleefully ignoring the fact that those pigs would eventually be killed, and that would be nothing to smile and feel good about.

Also in the movie, a farmer was preparing fresh chicken carcasses to be sold when he said something like, "Isn't this great? We're not in a dirty building doing this; we're outside." Around the time he was saying that with a smile on his face, one of the employees took a chicken out of a cage and shoved her into a device that was clearly designed to make slashing a chicken's throat nice and easy. That's just what the employee did. The poor chicken cried out fearfully from the time she was grabbed in the cage till she died. I disagree with the farmer and the guy from Chipotle. Killing is ugly and it always will be.

I won't be satisfied until nearly everyone has become at least a vegetarian: preferably a vegan. The animals need many people to change the way they eat. The vast majority of people do not need to eat meat in order to survive. They simply choose to do so. These animals don't deserve to live horrible lives simply because many people refuse to limit their food choices at all. Most people, if not practicing direct cruelty, practice a sort of casual cruelty. Buying meat in a store, ordering it in a restaurant, or buying garments made of leather are all examples of casual cruelty. It's so easy to practice this sort of cruelty. You don't have to kill the animals and butcher them. You're just paying other people to do it.

Please become a vegetarian. Giving up foods that contain eggs is the next easy step. The hardest part, at least it was for me, is saying goodbye to all foods which contain milk. Just remember, we are all animals. Think of all the things we have in common with them. Like many of them, we have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, teeth, and so on. There are many, many similarities between us and them. I consider all the animals of the world to be my brothers and sisters. Please don’t treat them any worse than you’d treat your daughter or your mother. And please don’t support a system that forces them to live in misery until their lives are taken for no good reason.