Changing your diet can significantly reduce your carbon footprint, reduce pollutants, protect the environment, and reduce global warming. In addition, many of these adjustments will help you save money, enhance your health, and maintain your fitness level.
Why eat vegetarian or vegan?
ypically, ethical considerations regarding animal rights, their feelings and their sentience are the number one reason people are increasingly turning vegan.
Veganism does not only protect animals and helps bring an end to the industrial meat industry but also reduces carbon emissions.
This is because meat, cheese, and eggs are the most carbon-intensive foods by a wide margin. In order to raise an animal for food production, the animal needs to be fed grains and pulses. In addition to this comes the energy and land consumed for rearing the animals and producing meat, dairy and cheese.
The carbon footprint of fruit, vegetables, beans, and nuts is significantly smaller. Therefore, your carbon footprint can substantially decrease if you switch to a vegan diet.
A meat-eater has the most significant carbon footprint, with more than 3 tons of greenhouse emissions. With under 1.5 tons of CO2e, a vegan diet has the lowest carbon footprint (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent). By consuming less red meat, such as beef and lamb, you can minimize your food footprint by 25%.
A vegetarian diet has a carbon footprint of around half a meat-eater’s footprint.
- In addition to the suffering of animals on industrial farms, workers in those industries are typically not treated well. The ideal of the lonely farmer, which advertising likes to portray, is not the reality. Meat and dairy factory workers typically endure low pay and hazardous working conditions. Heavy air and ground pollution is a result of factory farming. In addition, meat can be contaminated with superbugs. Every year in the US, eating “dirty” beef makes about 3.5 million people unwell.
- It benefits you as well! Meat eaters tend to die younger than vegans. Compared to meat-eaters, vegetarians are leaner. A vegetarian’s chance of developing cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease decreases.
A diet predominantly or entirely composed of plant foods is known as a plant-based diet. Beans, whole grains, herbs, pulses, vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts and spices are just a few of the plant foods that are typically included in a whole-foods plant-based diet.
Vegan Schnitzels look just like the one above in the picture….
Many vegan options on supermarket shelves taste just like ‘real’ meat.
Understandably, switching to a vegan diet is not straightforward for everyone. However, food technology has managed to imitate the taste of meat-eaters favourites such as sausages, chicken nuggets, meatballs and a variety of other meaty dishes perfectly.
You may want to check out your supermarket shelf for foods from start-ups This! , Beyond Meat, Squeaky Bean and others and give it a try.
