Why Are You A Vegan? by Dr. Stacey J. Anderson, MVLCE

“Why are you a vegan?” How many times have you wondered how to answer this question? We have our A) family answer, B) workplace answer, C) public answer, D) friendlies’ answer, and E) whatever-else-we-may-be-faced-with answer. How many others?

On the one hand, I am very eager to engage in a compassionate way in this discussion with anyone who is curious. On the other hand, I am sick to death of having to talk about this every time I go out to eat with someone. We as vegans have our answers well thought through, having studied it in depth and having questioned ourselves and delved into our own answers.

“Why are you vegan?” I really have to say that this is the wrong question. “Why wouldn’t I be vegan?” is the question to ask. I think of all the reasons that a person would be vegan: health, animal welfare, environmental sustainability, economic necessity, striving for decency, or something else.

Planet:
Who wants to kill this beautiful planet or bring the human race to extinction? The fact is that even if we were to freeze population at its current level and attempt to feed every person on this planet with an animal-based diet, we don’t have the land mass that we need. Of the world’s approximately 12 billion acres of agricultural land, 68% of that is already used for livestock. How much more land are we going to need to feed an ever-increasing global population? We can’t turn the Himalayas or Antarctica into grazing land. We can’t raze every major city, wiping out all the inhabitants, to have grazing land. So we destroy the Amazon rainforest instead. The more we cut away, the more we are a cancer on the lungs of the Earth. Deforestation for cattle grazing is a double-whammy: We increase greenhouse gas production and cut our forests’ ability to respirate CO2 into oxygen. We do not have enough land to do this. It may feel enlightened to eat free-range beef, but one cow drinks 30 gallons of water every day and requires one acre of land to graze. We can’t feed all 7.6 billion people on the Earth with “sustainable” grass-fed, free-range beef. This is for ONE cow. Which leads us to…

Animals:
Factory farms are where almost all meat, eggs, and dairy are produced. These are concentration camps for mammals and birds. There is no other way of describing the horror of these places. Most males in egg and dairy operations are killed within days of being born—and even that is preferable to what females experience: crushing confinement, repeated rape, guaranteed kidnapping of every offspring, forceful taking of their bodily fluids, squalid living quarters where they eat and sleep in feces, undergo drug injections, and are finally jabbed with heavy equipment into a vehicle and onto a procession line to die an ugly death. This is what is turned into meat for people to eat. Which leads us to…

Health:
Does this sound tasty to you: Yum, yum! — I would like to eat more antibiotics, more amyloid proteins, more trimethylamine N-oxide. I can’t wait to have cancer and dementia! Diabetes sounds good, or while we’re at it, how about a nice dose of atherosclerosis or colorectal cancer? Lemme just have a whole cocktail: breast cancer, coronary heart disease, and stroke while I enjoy my erectile dysfunction and my inability to walk a flight of stairs. Meat— it makes me feel so good! I would like to eat more tortured animals please! Which leads us to…

Psychology/decency:
The vast majority of us call ourselves animal lovers. If you see a dog abandoned and suffering in the street, you want to help and make him whole. He may even become your best friend, a loving companion whose life you saved. We do this because we are decent creatures who cannot abide cruelty. It’s useful for people to see the documentaries that show the immensity of animal suffering in the production of animals as food. People may think you’re preaching, so it’s important to know when and how to introduce these. But I do know that human decency and eating animals are diametrically opposed. I’m a foodie who used to make my own cheese. There is no way I can consider dairy cheese “delicious” ever again, knowing what I know, seeing what I’ve seen. It is traumatic to know what the animal “food” system is –for anyone who is willing to look, anyone who values human decency.

I ask again, why would I not be vegan? How could I not be?

Dr. Stacey J. Anderson (aka Chef Stacey) is a professor of public health by day, a ferocious vegan foodie by night. She is a certified Master Vegan Lifestyle Coach and Educator (MVLCE) from the Main Street Vegan Academy. She owns the educational venue, Vegan Buen Vivir, a scrumptious way for the vegan-curious and new vegans to learn how to dive head-first into the vegan good life, with lots of great cooking and eating along the way. Chef Stacey lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and her two incorrigible cats.