Vegan Month

By Sophia Raffety


As you may or may not know, the month of November is ‘Vegan Month’. Organised by the animal rights charity Animal Aid, the aim of the month is to raise awareness of reasons to go vegan, and the benefits of a vegan diet. Being a vegan myself, I can personally recommend veganism.

What is a Vegan?
A vegan is someone who chooses to eliminate all animal-based products from their diet and lifestyle. A vegan does not eat meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, honey and other animal slaughter by-products such as gelatine (made from melted bones and hooves, usually from cows – generally found in mousse, jelly or chewy sweets ) or rennet (a liquid found in the stomach of a calf – used in hardening products such as cheese).

In addition to this, a true vegan also refuses to wear animal-based fabrics such as leather, suede or wool and avoids purchasing cosmetics or other products which have been tested on animals.

There are many reasons why someone would chose the vegan lifestyle, these include:

Animal Rights: Perhaps the most obvious reason for choosing veganism is the belief that factory farming, animal testing and cruelty to animals is morally wrong, and is unnecessary.

Health: When people find out that you are a vegan, they often worry that you are going to end up unhealthy and weak, so it may come as something of a surprise that many people choose a vegan diet for health reasons. Meat and other animal products are packed full of saturated fat and cholesterol, which can lead to various health problems including heart attacks and blood clots, in addition, animal-based products often contain additives and hormones, which can have negative effects on the body for example the common use of the female hormone oestrogen in meat production can cause men to grow female breasts. A vegan diet can reduce the risk of obesity, heart disease and cancer, to name a few.

Environment: Animal farming is also bad for the environment. The methane produced by flatulence of the billions of farmed cows is a huge contributor to greenhouse gasses. Humans have intensively farmed cows in cramped conditions to get as many of them as possible into a smaller space, because of this, there are now many times more cows on earth than would exist naturally, and so there is an increase in greenhouse gas production. Over-grazing and chopping-down of trees to create space for animal farming also ruins natural landscapes and can spoil land.

World Hunger: Feeding a cow on grain to produce meat uses five times as much food as is produced by that cow. Half the crops harvested on the earth are used to feed animals in meat or dairy production, so if we stopped farming animals and used all this food to feed humans, we would have 2.5 times the amount of food with which to feed the world’s population of humans.

Vegan Month is the perfect time to try out veganism, or even just vegetarianism. Reducing the amount of meat or animal products you eat makes a huge difference. Visit www.veganmonth.com for more information on vegan month.

For vegan recipes check out www.vegcooking.com, www.veganrecipies.org.uk or http://vegetarian.about.com/