Veganism is not a belief. The Planet is dying. Animals are dying, We can make it better. Choices. That is not a belief.
What is Veganism?
Veganism is basically a way of living that focuses and attempts on avoiding all sorts of animal exploitation and cruelty, be it for food, clothing or any other purpose.
What is a Vegan Diet?
A vegan diet is basically a diet which contains only plants and it doesn’t include an animal in any form whatsoever.
No dairy products, no fishes, no meat, no chicken and no eggs.
When did I turn Vegan?
I started turning Vegan in Sep 2018. Since I was a vegetarian all my life, it wasn’t really difficult, for me. I slowly started minimising the use of dairy products from my diet.
And it nearly took me about a month to completely cut-down all the dairy products from my diet. Not only a vegan diet but, I also refrain to use any product that has animal cruelty involved.
Is a Vegan diet unhealthy?
According to researches, Vegan diet is much more healthy than a non-vegetarian diet. One needs to keep up with highly nutritious food; green-leafy vegetables, lentils, sprouts and soy as well. You can get all the minerals and Vitamins in a plant-based diet just except Vitamin B12. For that one needs to take B12 supplements which actually serves the purpose, and anybody who denies taking supplements is harming their body.
Mostly, vegetarians also are B12 deficient. I would highly request you to read more about it.
Now, the most asked question,
Why did I turn vegan?
I turned Vegan for a major reason; animal cruelty. I am still reading on the environmental impacts & I will surely update you guys when I have enough knowledge to share with you.
Animal cruelty has a lot of aspects, but I am only going to state the ones that has made me switch to this diet.
So Killing of an animal is and never was a right thing according to me, for human consumption in any manner.
Like for eggs. No, eggs at all.
I have been asked so many times that “Eating an egg doesn’t kill an animal, and if we won’t eat an egg, it is only going to be wasted. Isn’t it?”
Well, no, the world isn’t that innocent. To meet the growing demand for eggs, birds are bred in several million every year, in commercial egg farms. As the male counterparts obviously don’t lay eggs and aren’t profitable, they are killed. And the female ones are also slaughtered as they slow down on laying eggs.
There is no ethical way to run an egg farm. It ultimately requires interfering with the bird’s natural cycle of birth, reproduction and death.
And I wonder if I need to explain why Vegans don’t eat meat, chicken, pork or beef, altogether.
Okay so, why not dairy products?
They don’t even kill or harm any animal.
Well that’s what I thought so too. But I was wrong.
A cow or buffalo can only give milk when they have given birth and a dairy cow must give birth to at least one calf per year in order to keep providing milk for human consumption. They are artificially inseminated after every three months of giving birth. It is forced. It is inhuman.
Oh, do you know what happens to the male calf? They are killed even before they open their eyes because they are not profitable because they can’t produce milk. A female calf is raised to be another dairy cow. This inhuman act goes on for about seven years until she gives up to give birth and the milk.
And the fact is that the milk which cow produces is for the calf, but it is taken away to fulfil our needs.
Each cow that becomes unprofitable is sold to a slaughterhouse for the beef.
Fact check : India is the second-largest producer of the milk as well as exporter of beef. How is that even related, I wonder.
Difficulties after turning Vegan
Since the realities of these animal agriculture hit me really hard, it never really was difficult for me to actually turn into a vegan, neither by difficulty nor by choice. I always followed a very nutritious diet, right from the beginning, so there were no health problems too.
Any cheat days for me?
Okay, so this is a very funny story. Finding vegan restaurants in India is still quite hard and it gets slightly hard for my friends to actually adjust to the diet I follow. So there was this one day when they quiet convinced me to cheat for a day for Pizza at a famous Pizza restaurant, which is famous for different kind of pizzas. We had just placed the order when a guy came up to me and said Hey Prakriti I follow you on Instagram. I was really awestruck at that moment. Then he suddenly said, ‘ Oh you are a vegan right! How come Pizza ‘ and I left me so embarrassed at that moment that I stopped having cheat days at all. And this happened right at the beginning of my transition. So yeahhhh!
I hope this helps you if you were about to switch to the vegan diet. Or if you were researching on it, or if you were just curious to know Whys, Hows and whats. If you know someone who wants to read this, please share it with them. And just keep contributing in whatever little ways you can for a better world! And I really really hope it makes you think of switching to a vegan diet. Thanks for watching <3
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