Why I’m Doing a Vegan Month
TLDR: Scroll to the bottom for bullet points
I had a sobering realization recently: What if we already have the answers to the problems that plague us, and are just choosing to ignore them?
This thought crossed my mind in the context of climate change. I realized that deep down I’ve had this assumption that somehow we just haven’t yet found the right solutions. It’s a quiet hope that there is a magic bullet out there somewhere, and once it’s discovered we will all recognize and embrace it whole-heartedly. For me this fantasy looks something like a giant carbon-capturing machine we’ll construct and unleash somewhere in the Dakotas. They’ll flip a switch, it will suck carbon out of the air, and we’ll all drink champagne as we watch global CO2 levels fall. It will be oh so dramatic!
[END SCENE, ROLL CREDITS]
It is also fantasy.
Instead, what I’m slowly coming to grips with is that we already have many good and viable solutions to climate change, but we lack the willpower and leadership to embrace them.
One such solution that has been around for ages is veganism, and below I will share a few of the reasons that have led me to want to try it out.
Less is More
Over the past five years or so I have gradually chosen to eat less and less meat. This began around 2015 when I heard that cutting back on red meat just one day a week would have the same carbon reduction effect as switching from driving a 1990’s sedan to a Toyota Prius. I was blown away… How could meat have such a big carbon footprint? This definitely motivated me to cut back on eating meat and feel pretty good about making such a small sacrifice.
Whenever this fact would come up organically in conversation (see what I did there?) people would usually ask: “Why don’t you go entirely vegetarian then?” To which I would respond with my ready-made answer: “Because I don’t believe in absolutes.”
Personally, I think humans have a really hard time with gray areas and spectrums. We tend to feel much more at ease with dichotomies: Good/bad, black/white, fun/boring. It’s as if we want to unburden ourselves from the cognitive load that is required to exist somewhere in the middle. It’s just much easier — cognitively — to choose one side or the other and be done with it. But ultimately black/white choices are misleading to both sides. They’re too limiting, don’t take nuance into account, and as we’re seeing politically right now, they also pit us against each other. And so, feeling resistant to having to choose between all or nothing, I chose to just eat less meat and feel content with that.
Fast forward to 2020 and I’m sitting in my apartment going down a YouTube rabbit hole. I’m watching a random video that explains how dairy consumption accounts for 3% of global carbon emissions. “Dairy alone? Three Percent?!” Okay, this seemed like another quick win, and a relatively easy habit to shake for the common good. After all, what I would mostly be giving up would be cereal. Voila, I would have done my 3% and feel good, once again, for a while longer.
[BRUSHES HANDS AND GIVES SELF A PAT ON THE BACK]
It’s Not Just Carbon
By now I’ve significantly reduced meat in my diet, virtually eliminated dairy (I still wanted cream with my coffee), and hadn’t fainted yet. In fact, energy-wise I was feeling pretty good! That’s when I watched David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet” and had my next existential crisis.
According to the film, there simply isn’t enough land on Earth for us to all be meat-eaters. If we were to all largely go plant-based, that would free up fully 50% of the farmland used today. This could restore lost habitats, preserve biodiversity, and divert critically needed fresh water to where it is needed most. Although what really blew my mind was a fact about our food. I learned that the weight of all mammals on Earth can be summed up pretty much like this: 60% animals farmed for us to eat, 36% humans, 4% everything else. That’s right, ALL wild mammals — from mice to whales — make up only 4% of the weight of all living mammals on Earth 🤯🤯🤯
Suddenly it felt like the baby steps I was taking were no longer enough. I wanted to transform my food habits and more meaningfully extract myself from a system that turns out to be at the nexus of multiple environmental problems: Greenhouse gas emissions, extinction and loss of biodiversity, habitat loss and reduction in trees that capture carbon, global water shortages, etc. (and I do mean etcetera because the list goes on!)
If you haven’t seen “A Life on Our Planet” I highly recommend it.
But let’s back up for a minute. Vegans and vegetarians aren’t all motivated by environmentalism. In fact, my sense was always that the OG vegans chose that lifestyle because they didn’t want to participate in the cruelty of factory farming (yet somehow that reason alone was never enough for me to make the switch).
Not Just Good Health… GREAT Health
So eating meat and dairy comes with animal suffering, and most people know this on some level and are okay with that. I mean, I was… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Then there is the existential environmental damage that comes with industrial animal production. That got me to at least scale back meat and dairy somewhat significantly. But most recently, the straw that surprisingly broke my back was learning how profoundly healthy a plant-based diet can be for us. This is the most selfish reason of them all! I would love to believe that my dabbling in veganism is purely altruistic, but clearly it’s not.
According to Dr. Michael Greger a plant-based diet can prevent, treat, or even reverse 14 out of the 15 leading causes of death in the United States (once again… 🤯🤯🤯 ). There are numerous medical studies pointing to a myriad health benefits that come from cutting animal products out of our diets. From a healthier microbiome to an improved cardiovascular system. Lowering blood sugar levels to improving kidney function, and much more…
Why hadn’t I heard about this before?
Apparently, studies have shown for decades that there are numerous and profound health benefits of adopting a plant-based diet, but “the good word” has failed to cross the bridge from academia to media and public discourse (perhaps a subject for a later article). Instead we’ve been fooled into believing slogans like “meat makes you stronger” and “milk gives you healthy bones.”
The regrettable reality is that these misplaced beliefs are largely the product of lobbying and marketing by the meat industry. Organizations have quietly funded research to cast doubt, lobby and influence the USDA, and come up with clever advertisements to fool us into believing meat and dairy are good for us. Moreover their tactics are eerily similar to (if not borrowed from) those used by the tobacco industry used in the 50’s and 60’s. What’s that saying again? History repeats… something… oh yeah itself!
Being Playful with Our Lives
So after discovering all of this, I decided that I would continue in the spirit of non-absolutism and just try going vegan for one month. I’m not declaring a life-long change and then quietly struggling to live up to it (or more likely abandon it). I’m just going to try it… for one month… as an experiment, and see how it goes.
I have two close friends who also like to participate in monthly challenges like these (dry months, exercise bets, etc), and I know the group element makes these experiments much more fun and holds us accountable as well. In February the three of us are all experimenting with a vegan diet and seeing what happens. We’re experiencing first hand how it makes us feel. Will our energy dip, or increase? Will new recipes and new habits stick, or will the temptation for Saturday morning eggs be too much? Only time, and actually trying, will tell!
One of my favorite quotes is by Rudi. He said: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” This quote has always hit me right in the gut, because it reminds me what creatures of habit we are. And as much as we’d like to believe we are rational actors, a good many of our decisions (conscious or subconscious) are made emotionally. Monthly challenges of any kind put us back in the driver’s seat and allow us to take more control over our lives. They give us a chance and a format to be more playful with our existence.
My reasons for doing a vegan month are numerous, with some motivating me more than others. Like everything else in life, timing is everything. Being stuck at home during a pandemic has definitely made it easier for me to get more creative in the kitchen. Though one thing is for sure, and that is that I didn’t arrive at this moment suddenly; there has been a gradual crescendo of information that’s reached me at different points in time. Even now I’m sure I still don’t see the full picture, nor have I reached some final destination. This is just where I am today. And since today is all we have, here is my incomplete list of reasons why I’m experimenting with a plant-based diet. Perhaps one of these will resonate with you?
Why I’m Doing a Vegan Month:
- To reduce my chances of dying by 14 of the 15 leading causes in the U.S.
- To live a healthier lifestyle and feel increased vitality and energy
- To restore habitats and biodiversity, slowing down the tide of extinctions
- To significantly reduce my carbon footprint
- To redirect scarce, fresh water to worthier recipients (people over alfalfa)
- To not partake in animal-suffering of factory farming (this does get me)
- To be more intentional about my life choices
- To be more playful with my life