Cocolin - Why Vegan?: A simple guide to the right choice for us and our planet

Why Vegan?

A simple guide to the right choice for us and our planet

Introduction The future is Vegan

It may seem a slightly presumptuous and unrealistic statement, but there is no doubt than more and more people are choosing a vegan lifestyle. Just look at how many vegan alternatives have cropped up in every aisle of all major supermarkets.

Why are so many people turning vegan? Some may have vegan friends and feel inspired to try new food, some may want to improve their own health and wellbeing, others may be dictated by their own feelings of compassion for farm animals or a strong concern for the environment.

Some people might even be inspired by sports celebrities, actors, models, or influencers who are vegan.

The Coronavirus pandemic we are facing has had such a dramatic impact on our lives that it has made us rethink our priorities and pay greater attention to our health and the environment. According to London-based market research firm Mintel, approximately 400,000 people in the UK alone have taken part in Veganuary 2020.

25% of Britons aged between 21 to 30 say that the pandemic has made a vegan diet more appealing. And its not only Millennials.

Overall, 23% of British consumers are eating more fruit and vegetables since the start of the pandemic, and almost one in five say that since the outbreak they have added more nutrients to their diet to help support the immune system.

But is veganism for everyone?

We are all different human beings with different needs, different beliefs, different interests, and different aspirations but one thing is certain: we all share the same planet. And we need to look after it. For ourselves and the future generations. It may seem a distant future to some but looking at the speed with which the global temperature is rising, the glaciers are melting, the forests are disappearing, there really isnt much time to waste.

Children, more than adults, are aware of the environmental emergency we are facing. Ask any 12-year-old if they have heard of Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement she has inspired, ask a teenager if while browsing through the programmes available on Netflix, they have come across Seaspiracy. How many households have at least one book or DVD by David Attenborough on a shelf? Chances are that you or someone in your family have one, too.

So why is the current health of our planet so important and what does it mean that vegans can have a positive impact on its future? Are we not designed to eat meat? Can a child grow up healthy on a vegan diet? If we stopped eating meat, will animals become too numerous and invade the cities? Can I just become vegetarian instead? Does eating eggs and dairy harm animals? Does eating meat increase the chances of getting cancer? These are just a few questions I have come across on a number of occasions.

This book aims to try and answer them and help you make a considerate choice.

Chapter 1: What is Veganism?

There has been a lot of confusion about vegetarianism and veganism. Is vegan the same as vegetarian? Do vegetarians eat fish? Do vegans eat eggs?

Vegetarians are not the same as vegans. Whereas vegetarians follow a diet that includes dairy and eggs, vegans do not. Vegetarians may wear leather, silk and wool, vegans generally do not.

The concept of vegan is in fact rather simple: vegans adopt a plant-based diet. This means they do not eat meat, fish, or any animal-derived products such as eggs, milk, or cheese. They do not give up meat, they simply choose to eat something else.

Vegans have often been wrongly portrayed and often even ridiculed, as some tree-hugging hippies, animal-rights activists who go round organising marches and causing trouble. Many of of them may well be environmental activists and animal lovers but, as with everything else, one cannot generalise.

In my experience there are three main factors that lead an individual to embrace a vegan diet and lifestyle: an ethical reason, a health reason, an environmental reason.

Chapter 2: The ethical reason

This seems to be the most popular reason, especially amongst young people who decide to become vegan. Over the past 40 or 50 years, there has been an increased awareness and sensitivity when it comes to topics like animal testing, the use of fur in the fashion industry, intensive farming, fishing, and the use of animals for entertainment. The greatest concern is whether animals have feelings like us, whether they suffer pain, whether their killing for food and clothing can be at all justified and how it can be carried out in the most humane possible way.

Of course animals have feelings. Any scientist, any veterinary surgeon, any ethologist would be able to confirm that animals, and by animals we mean any multicellular organism, have a nervous system, and therefore can experience pain. The only multicellular organisms without a nervous system are sponges and a few microscopic organisms called placozoans and mesozones. What varies is the complexity of the nervous system. Some organisms lack a central nervous system but still possess nervous cells and receptors. An example of such animals are members of the hydrozoa class, like jellyfish, often called medusae. They are made for 95% of water and possess a rudimental network of neurons that help them detect the environment around them, but they lack a brain, a heart, bones, and a respiratory system and therefore do not experience pain like we do.

We can comfortably state that any animal with a brain and a heart, from the smallest fish to the majestic elephant, is able to feel pain.

Animals have primordial instincts that help them survive, but they also have feelings, they bond, they communicate with each other and sometimes with other species too. With social media platforms such as Tik-Tok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube so widespread these days, it is very easy to come across videos of animals helping animals of other species. So the question is, do they act by instinct or are they able to feel empathy? Animal behaviour experts, or ethologists, are still studying the subject in detail but it is wildly agreed that the more complex the brain, the more developed feelings such as self-awareness and compassion are. This is particularly evident in mammals. One just needs to look in the eyes of a dog or a cat to see that they do have feelings, they understand our moods, share our pain. They understand us, comfort us, keep us company, even contribute to our mental health and wellbeing. Pet therapy has proved so efficient in rehabilitation and in relieving health conditions such as depression, anxiety, obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Animals have been exploited by humans for thousands of years, not just for the meat and skin, but also for their role in medical research, in farming, working in the fields, pulling the plough and carriages, transporting goods and people and in the case of dogs in particular, aiding police and rescue teams as search dogs, as guide dogs for the blind, just to name a few.

Following the Great Depression and the two World Wars, a regained prosperity in first world countries and an increased demand for meat led to the creation of intensive farming. Animals treated like meat-producing machines, born, dragged away from their mother, caged, raised quickly with the aid of growth hormones and antibiotics, killed systematically to meet our demand for meat. The shorter the life of an animal, the smaller the cost of raising it, the bigger the profit. Since ancient times, animals have been hunted and killed for meat. With the advent of farming and animal farming, animals were bred, raised, sold, and killed for food. Yet the question of whether this was necessary or at all ethical is not new. The first roots of Vegetarianism date back to the 6 th century B.C. Amongst the great thinkers of the past, there were people like Leonardo da Vinci who questioned whether the killing of animals for food was justified. Equally, there were others like Cartesio, who saw animals purely as meat-producing machines, unable to think, feel or interact like humans. Many cultures and religions, especially in India and other Asian countries, rejected the consumption of meat, seeing it as unhealthy and, as the animal had suffered a painful death, this would jeopardize the persons inner spiritual balance. By the end of the 20 th century, the Indian philosophy of nonviolence toward humans and animals alike, promoted by Mahatma Gandhi amongst others, had helped the diffusion of vegetarianism in the West. 1908 saw the birth of the first International Vegetarian Union, which included several Western national societies. Vegetarianism continued to grow in the 20 th century as a reflection of nutritional and ethical concerns. However, vegetarians were still a minority and vegans were even more uncommon.