Imagine you're living in a utopia and everyone you know is prudently naive, intellectual, and conscious about everything around you. You spent hours talking about philosophy, existence, bird nests, newly discovered tropical plants. The air you are breathing is always fresh, the tap water is so delicious and pure you don't want to waste it while bathing and cleaning. It's like an aged wine. This is a world where mass production of every food is limited by laws which ensure your nation won't waste any, where bad capitalists do not exist. Any kind of bad "-ism" was annihilated many years ago. Sexism, racism, speciesism are forgotten words. There are no zoos, safari tours, experiments on animals because it is a constitutional act too. Can you imagine? Of course, you can not.
We, human beings, were never like this, and never will be. We are still acting with our survivalist instincts. We are still selfish and reckless about every living and non-living creature. But in a very tiny place in my brain, I can imagine not all above but sort of a world in a 100 years time. I am a believer.
I am a childless, married, a 29-year-old female, so I don't have to think about creating a better world for my grandchildren. But I have a very crowded family and lots of friends I care about their future and present life. I believe living on this planet as an individual have to cause minimum harm. Harm to water, air, people, animals and the soil must be at its least. Our carbon footprint should be minimized in every way we could. This is where veganism starts.
I became a vegan 1 year ago, vegetarian/pescetarian 4 years ago. It started with questioning the fallacy of animal eating, continued with any kind of animal usage. I had started with only eating fish, then I realized my mistake, fishes were animals too, they can feel pain too. The key point there was "pain". Killing a cat and a dog is still a taboo for us but when it comes to farm animals, everyone finds it normal and natural.
Then I became a vegetarian. After 3 years of reading and researching, I became a vegan. So I did stop buying leather, wool, and silk. But it is not enough. Consuming itself is an ecological damage. When it comes to calculating carbon footprint and climate; adopting a vegan diet is not enough. It is just the start fire gun. We have to recreate our habits and behaviors that are engraved into our life if we care about our planet and new generations. Buying internationally shipped products, plastic usage, having a car, the fashion industry habits need to change. But this is the another article's, another big subject.
Since 2017 July, I am facing several questions about veganism. This article is about how I am answering these questions. A walkthrough for beginner vegans, curious omnivores and vegetarians. Read this as a Veganism 101 cheat sheet.
I always try to provoke people with my answers. Preaching is not my style. I recommend you as vegans to answer them with humility and try not to offend people who have sympathy and conscious for animals and ecology.
The first question is always:
"Why are you vegan, isn't it hard? "
It was hard when you are not prepared for social interactions. It was hard when you invited to a barbecue party with co-workers and the only option is grilled onions. But next time I have learned bringing my vegetables with me. It was hard when people say "But I love cheese, I can never be a vegan. Don't you miss doner kebap when you see it on the street?" Frankly, it was hard at the beginning. I won't deny. Because the taste information in my brain and mouth until these years has been shaped around meat and dairy. I had a love affair with Turkish yogurt, I was making my own homemade. So yes, for the love of tasting and eating habits, it was hard during the first months. But when I think about the cruelty, blood, and misery, there is no room for any good taste of them in my brain anymore.
The answer to why I'm being vegan is not just a simple sentence. It is absolutely about ending cruelty. This is the unquestionably first reason. Many reasonable people can understand and make a correlation between eating animals and cruelty. There are tons of videos on social media about how the meat industry treats them. But if I stop just there, the next question is always,
"I don't eat that much meat either. What if we breed our own cows humanely in our little adorable village farms and use their milk for cheese, yogurt, and butter?"
This naive looking expectation is impossible since we're all living in big cities but; "Why we need to produce and consume dairy? Is it because our mothers taught us? Is it because the only way of gaining Calcium is eating cheese? Is it because you can't drink wine without cheese?"
On a daily basis, in 2018, in Istanbul, I have all the opportunities for a healthy nutrition style to live a healthy life. Even if I wasn't living in a big city, I would be able to supply my body's daily needs with simple touches on my diet.
So we do not need little, innocent dairy farms of our own. We do not have any right on a cow just because we can domesticate and dominate them as humans. Cow milk is for baby calves. We can gain Calcium from dark leafy greens, collard greens, turnip greens, kale, tofu.
And then this magic question occurs:
" What about GMO of soy products? Also, they are expensive and hard to find in small cities?"
As vegans, we do not have to consume soy products. This is not mandatory. But with a little research, you will find that soy; which is produced for humans are not related to GMO. The soy for feeding farm animals contains GMO. Two cups of chopped and boiled dark leafy greens are enough for our daily Calcium needs.
Then the nightmare of every vegan comes:
"What about Protein and B12, why do I have to take pills for B12, this is not natural?"
In elementary school, we taught that Protein resources are meat, chicken, and fish. This is not wrong. We can gain highly amount of protein from them. But this is not the only way for Protein intake. Plants have Protein too. Beans, lentils, peas, peanuts, quinoa, pistachio and pumpkin seeds are high in Protein and the Amino acid lysine foods.
When it comes to B12; things get harder, because of plant foods contain a very small amount of it. So we have to take it from supplements. There are B12 pills produced from Chlorella and Blue-green algae. And please do not forget that even if you are consuming meat, you can still have a low amount of B12 in your body. So taking a little B12 pill twice a week is not a big deal in my opinion. And what is natural actually? The idea of a cow, chicken or pig never saw sunlight, pumped with growth hormones and suffered their whole life does not sound that natural.
I kept the famous defense for the end of this article.
"Our ancestors were omnivores. Eating meat, eggs, and dairy is natural"
It was natural and necessary while the human race was evolving. If our ancestors had been adopting a vegan diet, we could not evolve into Homo Sapiens.
We are not trying to survive in jungles anymore. We can, interrogate, think, object and protest our race's old, wrong looking and wild eating habits.
We have scientist that proofed a cow can get depressed when farmers took away her calves after birth. We know that baby calves are crying for their mother's milk while we are sucking her udders with machines for dairy.
In nature, a mammalian baby does not need the milk of another mammal to grow if we are talking about naturalism.
It is always hard to break habits if it is related to eating. Many people ignore veganism even if they find it rational. They do not want to think about what they are eating. People don't want to know where the food on their plate is coming from. Besides eating habits, vegans have to change their mindset about daily routines. Changing shopping rituals, replacing the fashion brands we loved, finding a local vegan restaurant, or consuming Vegan and Cruelty-Free cosmetics can be challenging, will be challenging. But we have to do this for a better and humane world.
Long story short:
Veganism is NOT just a diet. It is NOT about just animals, but also about ecology and our planet.
Go vegan! Save lives and our planet!