The way we eat is very personal. Food keeps us alive, brings us pleasure, and connects us to others. But veganism isn’t just about tofu and veggies. It’s a way of life that encompasses compassion, a connection to the earth, and an awareness of who we are in body and mind.
Selfish beginnings
When I first decided to try a vegan diet, it was for selfish reasons. I wanted to lose weight and to have defined “food rules” that helped me resist fast food or office treats. I’d read that my skin would look better, my grocery bills would be cheaper, and I could still drink wine (a must!). So I made the change and as the years went on I became adept at cooking without animal products. I had mastered the “vegan diet.”
Photo credit Pixabay
So much more than a diet
But something else happened too. Changing my diet allowed me the opportunity to become more aware of myself. Paying attention to the type of foods I consumed translated to mindfulness about my body. Not just physically — as my dedication to veganism grew, my personal philosophy evolved as well. I felt my mental and emotional choices becoming less selfish and based more on ethical considerations.
Another very natural outcome of veganism is finding compassion for the animals who give their lives for the food lining the grocery store shelves. The more I have come to know and enjoy eating without animal products, death and suffering for the food we eat seems more and more pointless. Once you put yourself in an animal’s place, you open your heart and mind to their experiences. Livestock in factory farms surely deserves better. But perhaps grass-fed dairy cows don’t deserve to have their calves taken away year after year. Maybe free-range chickens aren’t living as close to a natural existence as we think. Veganism can also connect you to all animals, not just those we use for food. It isn’t difficult to understand our pets and wildlife are all impacted by our actions, as well.
Photo credit Pixabay
Looking even farther afield, science is increasingly demonstrating the global impact of consuming meat is contributing to the detriment of the planet. Cattle range in places that used to be wild. Factory farms produce tons of pollution every year. The transportation of livestock and their feed takes petroleum. We now know that even going vegetarian could help to slow down climate change.
Passing it on
When I had my daughter, I knew I wanted to raise her meat-free. After exploring the hows and whys I found that the heart of passing on veganism isn’t just a diet. It means raising her to understand that animals have feelings and deserve our compassion, that we are all connected to Planet Earth and must take care of it to take care of ourselves, and that how and what we eat nourishes our bodies as well as our minds and spirits. Like I said at the beginning of this article, eating is personal. We each must make up our own minds about our lifestyles; my daughter is no exception. I won’t be able to force her into any certain diet as she grows up. What I will be able to do is show her what I have learned and all the beneficial ways veganism has allowed me to experience life.
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them [other animals] for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the sense we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of earth.” ~ Henry Beston, The Outermost House
Thanks for sharing this article.
You are wrong: animals dont “give” their lives (for our food). Their lives are taken from them.
Good catch. When words are used in this context, it makes it easier to exploit animals for their flesh. Meat eaters don’t want to think about the fact that animals value their lives just as much as humans do & that they don’t readily want to die to become someone’s dinner.
Most wines are not vegan or vegetarian due to the fining process. You probably know this.
Barnivore.com is a website that will tell you exactly what beer, wine or hard alcohol is vegan…it’s a great resource!
Most wines are not Egan or vegetarian due to the fining process. You probably know this.
Great article, but the salad content in the accompanying image was rather meager. I assume that it was not put together by a vegetarian or vegan.
I gave it up for the animals I just couldn’t bare eating a life anymore or contributing to the death of babies. I do not consume dairy. Yes it’s about ethics and compassion and not being selfish.
I started as a vegetarian about 30 yrs ago…I have been mostly vegan for the past 3 years.
NO REGRETS! I feel great. I love animals.
I first stopped eating animals 49 years ago. I knew nothing about the cruelty and the environmental effects. I just knew I did not want to eat animals. If I know then what I later learned I would have become vegan at that time but I know no other people who did not eat meat let alone consume or what any animal products. My daughter started out vegetarian since I was and then became vegan with me since she was only 11 or 12. It is not just a diet but a way of thinking and living. It is sometimes a process and how one gets there is not the important point but the end result.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 34 years – since 1985. I eat no meat, poultry. or fish, but I do eat eggs from my own chickens. It has become a way of life for me. I also do not buy or approve of such things as fur coats, leather jackets, pocketbooks, footwear, and suede products etc, I became aware of how animals were being tortured and slaughtered to put food on our plates or coats on our back etc. Then I came across a horrible scene on TV showing the brutal bludgeoning of the baby harp seals. I went vegetarian within a week after that film, in support of all the animals being slaughtered, and I never looked back.
There are wonderful meatless dishes out there.
Thanks for this lovely article.but there’s just one thing I’d add – that is that animals do not GIVE their lives. Their lives are cruelly and brutally stolen from them. Their cries of terror pain and anguish as they are smashed and hacked to their untimely, hideous deaths are clearly cries for mercy, to have kindness rather than pain and torture and to remain whole and live out their lives. You said much of this later in the article and I thank you again for it. Vegan is indeed a way of life, of compassion for animals, the earth, ourselves, an improvement on the face of humanity and the planet..
I agree, no animal offers it’s life to be killed and eaten. All life is joined by instinct to survive, fear and pain are nature’s way of making sure we understand we have to remove ourselves from the situation we are in in order to survive another day. It also annoys me when I read vegans and vegetarians apologizing for their diet choices, as in ‘eating is a personal choice’, not wanting to upset the meat eaters in our midst.So is cruelty and unspeakable suffering and we must speak out against it regardless of diet choices!