“Why I’m Vegan” | 3 REASONS for going GREEN!

posted in: Diet | 0

Vegans don’t eat bacon, ice cream or cake? Why? Let me give you 3 reasons why someone decides to become a vegan.

Welcome to MyHolisticStrength, my name is Sandro and I’m a vegan. (Mostly*)

Definition

Let’s go ahead and define the word “vegan”

Veganism is a branch of vegetarianism. Both vegans and vegetarians don’t eat any meat. The difference is that vegans also don’t eat any dairy products, eggs or any animal byproducts, such as honey.

3 Reasons Someone Might Decide to eat Vegan

1. Emotional

These people are huge animal lovers. They have a hard time bringing themselves to eat another living thing. They look at all animals the way maybe you and I might look at a dog, cat or other pet. They have such a strong love for these types of animals that to them it would be like eating a friend.

2. Ethical

These people are morally outraged at the way these animals are being treated, just for our consumption. Some of these mistreatments include, forcibly impregnating dairy cows so that they produce more milk, or injecting turkeys with so many hormones, to produce larger turkey breasts, that they can’t even stand up right.

The point is not to give you a guilt trip or make you feel bad about how these animals are being treated. The only reason we mention this is so that you can better understand where some of these morally outraged individuals are coming from. You see, they boycott the food industry when it comes to meat because their goal is to eliminate or at least, minimize, the mistreatment of these animals. To them it is completely unethical.

3. Health

This is where I personally fall into. The reason why I’ve decided to eat more a vegan or vegetarian type of diet, is because it’s been shown many times that consuming less meat and minimizing dairy products can help with overall health and longevity.

3a. W.H.O.

On Oct 26th 2015, the World Health Organization came out with an announcement that it now considered processed red meats as a carcinogen, which means something that causes cancer. It put them in the same category as smoking cigarettes.

If you’d like to read more about this announcement, here are some links.

http://goo.gl/Ah1QoG
http://goo.gl/GmiaUL

Physiology

Another way to look at it, is to see how our bodies are designed and built.

3b. Intestines

Human intestines are designed to be long and bumpy. The reason for this is so that the food can stay in them as long as possible. Being absorbed of all their nutrients and minerals, before they are moved onto the large intestine.

DID YOU KNOW?

Did you know that the length of human intestines is 25 feet (7.6 meters)! That’s 20 feet (6 meters) for the small intestine, which gets it’s name not for it’s length but for it’s diameter. And 5 feet (1.5 meters) for the large intestine.

To put that into perspective, if you were to take human intestines and stretched them out vertically, 25 feet (7.6 meters) is long enough to be taller then a 2 story building!

Carnivores

In contrast to the long bumpy intestines of humans, carnivores have short and smooth intestines, almost pipe-like. The reason for this is because animal flesh ferments at body temperature extremely quickly. Their intestines are designed for the food to be absorbed of it’s nutrients and then disposed of as quickly as possible.

Due to the length of the digestive tract in human beings, animals flesh is slowed down and tends to rot in the intestines. This sets the stage for many health problems.

3c. Teeth

You might remember in school learning about how in the animal kingdom, animals with sharp teeth ate meat and animals with flat teeth ate plates. Unfortunately, in our case it’s not that simple. Since we don’t fall into either of those categories. We fall somewhere in-between.

You see, we don’t have sharp japed teeth like carnivores. Carnivores have predominate, sharp canines and sharp incisors, but jagged molars. They are not designed for chewing. Instead, their jaws are made to rip into flesh and swallow it almost whole.

But in herbivores, their jaws have absolutely no canines. They have flat and smooth molars that have been ground from moving their jaws side to side.

Very different from humans. Our jaws go up and down, we have small and dull canines, still sharp incisors, but we have molars not as smooth as herbivores. Our molars are more designed for crushing and not grinding.

Omnivores

We as humans fall into the third category of omnivores. You might be thinking that we are contradicting our selves here. Doesn’t an omnivore mean something that eats meat and plant matter? Well, not exactly. An omnivore actually means something that eats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains. And in some instances, like in bears which are also considered omnivores, small amounts of meat, like salmon. Another example of a large animal that is an omnivore, is a gorilla.

We are not Herbivores

Now you may have been expecting me to say that we are herbivores. That we should eat exclusively grass and plants. But that’s not the case by the structure of our teeth. Besides that, we could go into deeper detail about our digestive tract. Herbivores typically have more then one stomach.

Exercise

One thing I got asked a lot when I made the switch to a more vegan or vegetarian diet, was if I noticed any difference in my strength, endurance or overall physical performance when working out. And the answer is not at all. I have noticed no decrease in strength, stamina, endurance or overall performance. If anything I feel lighter not my feet and less bloated. After any given meal, I feel I could almost immediately go for a run. Whereas before with maybe eating a large meal with a lot of meat, I would feel sluggish and weighted down. I’d have to wait several hours before I felt I could actually do anything active.

Protein

What discussion about vegetarian or vegan diets wouldn’t be complete without bringing up protein at least once. It seems to be everyone’s favorite thing to ask about when they find out you don’t eat meat. We seem to live in a society that is obsessed with animal proteins. But that’s a discussion for another time. I actually have plans to talk about this really soon. Once it’s up, I’ll post a link here for you to check out.

http://goo.gl/

There you go

Now, the purpose of this discussion was not to convince you either for or against having a vegan diet. It’s up to you to use your own discretion, your own personal research and your own personal feelings about the matter to decide what kind of a lifestyle or diet is best for you.

What’s Next?

My next video post is going to be follow up this one. Where I’ll be talking about the vegan diet in a little bit of a different light. When that is posted, I’ll be sure to post a link here for you.

http://goo.gl/teoZZh

LINKS

How to Develop HEALTHIER Habits | 3 Tips
Welcome to MyHolisticStrength

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