7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan: 5. For Our Health
- Vittoria
- Jan 6, 2018
- 9 min read
Welcome to my series 7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan (and so could you)! In honour of Veganuary I will publish everyday on the first week of January 2018 from Monday 1st to Friday 7th, and by the end of the week I will explore all the motives that compelled me to choose this lifestyle. As I mentioned before, I believe in the power of information and even if you feel like this is not for you, you might end up discovering something you didn’t know and make a more informed choice going forward.
One of the biggest reasons why people choose not to adopt a vegan lifestyle is because they think it is extreme and nutrient deficient. In fact, one of the biggest myths about vegan or plant based diets is that they lack in protein, iron and vitamins. However, it has been abundantly proven that following a healthy, balanced vegan diet ensures a host of health benefits as well as prevention of some of the major diseases striking people all over the world. So my fifth reason is for my health.
We have grown up being fed information by various sources that meat, dairy and eggs should be part of a balanced diet for optimal health. But the incredible number of sick, unhealthy people in the world are starting to prove the opposite.
Meat
World Health Organization declared processed meat a "carcinogen" that increases your risk of colon or rectum cancer by 18 percent. While cutting back on your meat consumption in any form is a great step to take, the fact remains that eating any meat, poses several serious long-term risks to your health.
A vast array of studies from top universities and independent researchers has found that eating chickens, cows, and other animals promotes cancer in many forms. Large studies in England and Germany showed that vegetarians were about 40 percent less likely to develop cancer compared to meat-eaters, the most common forms being breast, prostate, and colon cancers. A 2014 Harvard study found that just one serving a day of red meat during adolescence was associated with a 22 percent higher risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer, and that the same red meat consumption in adulthood was associated with a 13 percent higher risk of breast cancer overall. The American Diabetes Association has discovered that people who eat high amounts of animal protein are 22 percent more likely to develop diabetes, and high saturated fat has even been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and cognitive decline.
The reason why so many people struggle to cut out mean is because we somehow believe that dietary protein is found only in animal while all plant foods have protein! “This may come as a shock to many people, but it’s a scientific fact. 20 to 40% of the calories in beans, broccoli, and spinach come from protein, rivaling the percentages of calories from protein in most types of meat. Even fruits like peaches and avocados derive approximately 7% of their calories from protein, while strawberries and oranges provide 8% to 9% protein content.”
So how much do we need for optimal health? The World Health Organization recommends that we get 5% of our calories from protein, with pregnant women needing slightly more at 6%. “Considering that raw fruits and vegetables average between 5% and 15% protein content, and cooked beans and legumes boast 18% to 30% protein content, even the strictest vegans will easily consume ample protein when eating enough food to meet their daily caloric needs.”
The average meat eater will consume around 16% of his calories from protein, and excess protein consumption leads to a number of health problems more than three times the amount recommended.
Fish
"People are encouraged to believe that a healthy diet is one which includes fish. The reason being that some fish contain the types of ‘good’ fat that our bodies need. There is a widespread misconception amongst the general public and health professionals that fish is the only source of these good fats." As we have already discussed, eating the right kind of fat is crucial, as we don’t want saturated fats, found mainly in meat, dairy and animal products, but also in many processed foods.
However, human beings have been so successful at spreading pollution that environmental contamination is widespread and all oceans now contain toxic chemicals (Read more about this on my post about Water). Pollutants are now part of most food chains and they become more concentrated the higher up the chain you go. Mercury, organophosphates, PCBs, dioxins, and radioactive pollution can be found in fish and its highly toxic. Humans should avoid mercury in their diet as it acts like a poison, affecting their kidneys, heart and central nervous system. Exposure to mercury is a particular risk for unborn children where the main organs, especially the CNS, are still developing, that is why pregnant women are advised to stay away from fish during pregnancy.
Oily fish such as herring, salmon, mackerel, sardines and fresh tuna are more prone to this problem and unfortunately are the ones with highest source of EFAs, particularly omega-3 fats. In fact white fish, such as cod, haddock and plaice, don’t and nor does tinned tuna.
The richest sources of omega-3 fats are not fish at all but plants. Seed oils such as linseed and rapeseed as well as soya oil are rich sources as are seeds and nuts themselves particularly walnuts. Green leafy vegetables are also a source. Plant oils are far more effective than fish oils in reducing the chance of cardiac death in high-risk patients, the risk of dying from secondary heart attack, and also reduce the number of painful, non-fatal heart attacks.
Dairy
Would you drink dogs’ milk? Money’s milk? Dolphin’s milk? Of course not! That milk is produced by a mother of that species to grow their babies to optimal health, and then the adult of that same species evolves its diet to “grown up” food. Yet somehow we are the only species on our planet to actively consume the milk intended for someone else well past infancy and in most cases for the entirety of our lives.
This was also proven by a large observational cohort study in Sweden where they found that women consuming more than 3 glasses of milk a day had almost twice the mortality over 20 years compared to those women consuming less than one glass a day. So the high milk-drinkers did not have improved bone health, in fact, they had more fractures particularly on the hips.
Most people even fail to understand that in order for a cow to produce milk it has to be pregnant. A cow is not a milk machine, as all mammals it produces milk when it expects a baby calf and that milk is sufficient to see a little calf grow to a full cow or bull. “Weighing around 100 pounds at birth, a calf typically gains approximately eight times its weight by the time it is weaned. But unlike humans, once calves are weaned, they never drink milk again.” Cow’s milk contains on average three times the amount of protein than human milk and this leads to metabolic disturbances and detrimental bone health consequences. This is also why we have seen an increase amount of intolerance in recent years: our bodies are not meant to ingest another species’ milk!
And if all the above hasn’t opened your eyes imagine a cow attached to a machine all her life, she is artificially impregnated, she grows her baby calf in her belly for 9 months, starts producing milk, then as soon as the baby is born it is taken away from her because humans have to steal her milk. She is desperate and confused, her baby is killed after few months for veal or if it’s a female will suffer the same fate as her mother. When all the milk is artificially pumped out of the cow she is impregnated again!
During years of this process she becomes sick, the machines suck puss and illness as well as milk, so the cows are constantly given antibiotics and strong medicines to keep them alive. The milk you drink is boiled to the point that all the nutrients are gone, the surface is scraped to remove all the blood and puss, and all that is left is the chemicals the cow has been given all her life and all the hormones she has been fed to make more milk than natural and from constantly being pregnant.
If this doesn’t turn you off from the idea of milk, I don’t know what will. Not only is it detrimental to our heath, but it also causes unimaginable pain to billions of cows each year!
One of the main thing people claim they can’t live without is cheese! That is because cheese contain a compound called casomorphin. If it sounds familiar it is because casomorphin comes from the same family of morphine and it shares the same opioid properties. When you eat cheese your brain goes into a state of euphoria, and when you stop your body goes into withdrawal. But that is not the worst of it, cheese is a high-fat and high-calorie food in fact, depending on the variety of cheese you eat, you can get about 100 calories per ounce and about 6 to 9 grams of fat, mostly of the saturated kind. Cheese is also loaded with sodium, and the amount of salt you eat has a direct effect on your blood pressure. Salt makes your body hold on to water. If you eat too much salt, the extra water stored in your body raises your blood pressure. So, the more salt you eat, the higher your blood pressure.
One recent study looked at diets high in animal proteins and they found that eating a diet containing meat and cheese during middle age can double the risk of death, and quadruple the risk of death by cancer.
According to Peta “the cows are treated like milk-producing machines and are genetically manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones that cause them to produce more milk. While cows suffer on factory farms, humans who drink their milk increase their chances of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many other ailments” and this extends to cheese, as it's produced with the very same milk we drink.
According to the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, “one-fourth of an average 12-inch cheese pizza contains nearly 13 grams of fat, including 6 grams of saturated fat and 27 milligrams of cholesterol” which can cause diabetes and heart disease further down the road.
Eggs
"Eggs are the single largest source of cholesterol in the American diet, and although it’s true that dietary cholesterol doesn’t have much of an effect on blood cholesterol levels (only about a 10% increase), that’s not the reason why we should be avoiding dietary cholesterol. The problem is the pro-inflammatory and oxidative effects dietary cholesterol has been shown to have on your LDL (Low-density lipoprotein). This in turn can damage the endothelium (the lining inside our arteries) and increase cardiovascular effects".
A single medium sized egg contains 186 mg of cholesterol, which is 62% of the recommended daily intake. A recent study found that frequent egg consumption might be as bad as smoking when it comes to carotid artery plaque build-up. The Harvard Physicians Health study, which followed 20,000 doctors for over twenty years found that those doctors consuming at least one egg a day had a significantly higher all-cause mortality risk, which essentially suggests that consuming even just one egg a day is significantly associated with a shorter lifespan.
Vegan Diet
According to the China Study, a plant-based vegan diet can reduce the risk of mortality from conditions such as: type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, hypertension, stroke, obesity and some cancers including prostate and colon cancer. This is also proven by a series of studies conducted on patiences following a vegan diet vs non-vegan:
A 2016 study from Oxford argues that the mass-adoption of a vegan diet could cut 8.1 million deaths a year. This is just a summary of some of the biggest benefits of a vegan diet, but I encourage you to do your research. Here are just some of the resources I used when looking into this lifestyle:
Has this opened your eyes?
You can look into the below resources and change your life today!
Websites:
Documentaries (all on Netflix):
What The Health
Forks Over Knives
Earthlings
Cowspiracy
YouTube:
Or follow my series to discover even MORE reasons to go vegan!
"7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan (And So Could You)"
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