A Year of Being Vegan

Well, a year and three days to be exact. On January 5th of last year I stopped buying anything that comes from animals - that's what being vegan means. I stopped eating meat, dairy, honey and other minor ingredients. I stopped buying anything with leather or fur (not that I wore much of either, anyway). And I certainly stopped buying anything that was tested on animals (again, not that I did, anyway). The way people treat animals is simply fucked. They raise them on unnatural diets full of chemicals and hormones in barns and cages where they oftentimes don't have enough room to turn around. Sometimes they spend their whole lives without ever seeing the sun. Male chicks in egg factories are thrown away like garbage, literally. Dumpsters will overflow with their petty figures. Animals with luxurious fur are skinned alive then thrown into heaps of other skinned animals bleeding and suffocating to one of the most painful deaths I can imagine. It's sick. Even if they were treated humanely, killing an animal for food when fruits, vegetables and grains could be used instead is completely unjustified. Everything about using animals for our own ends is backwards and twisted.

The meat industry is also the single worst contributor to global warming and environmental destruction. All the gasses from the animals and machinery that are crammed into factory farms, slaughterhouses and meat packing plants do more damage to the ozone layer than anything else. Waste and chemicals escape the farms and seep into local water sources, causing illness to humans and animals alike. No meat eater can call themselves "green."

I've learned a lot from being vegan. One important fact is that everything you hear about vegans and vegetarians not getting enough protein or other nutrients is a lie. You can't use that as an excuse. The only real deficiency we have is vitamin B12, but it is easily supplemented. Also, being vegan does not necessarily mean eating healthy. It was easier to eat healthy over the summer, having my mom to help cook and all, but a lot of food that you wouldn't expect to be vegan is, in fact, vegan, so eating healthy at school is still as difficult as ever.

Going vegan isn't as hard as you'd think, nor is it as pricey as everyone claims it to be. In fact, I think my average grocery bill is cheaper now. Eating out is hard, but you can usually find something to eat, though people will make fun of you and give you a hard time, and you will argue with many close-minded, stubborn dolts. Regardless, if you've any brain at all, please just take some time to think seriously about it. There are a million reasons to go vegan - even Biblical ones, if that's your cup of tea. If you want to know more, feel free to leave a comment or something.

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."

Leo Tolstoy