Meat is Murder: Tasty Tasty Murder

The topic of conversation the last few months has been veganism. It’s quite strange that I have recently come around to the idea, after being a principle defender of the stance that it is unhealthy and you can’t get all the vitamins and nutrients you need. Well being one for delving into scientific research, I had a look into the facts and it seems I was proven wrong. I already knew the thousands of arguments against animal cruelty, and the health benefits of vegetarianism. But of the environmental implications, and humanitarian issues I knew much less. (Which if you aren’t aware of you should look into).

Having a vegetarian sister and cousins, the idea of being a vegetarian has been swimming in and out of my mind for years.  I mentioned before about Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, which you should read purely for comedy value. The book didn’t change my thoughts in anyway. I just enjoyed the way it presented the information. I have never understood why the whole topic of vegetarianism gets some people so angry, but if you view animals as a resource, and combine that with the fact that eating is a social experience, you can begin to understand. Loving a hot topic of debate I found myself on to the topic of conversation months later with my best friend.

Most recently I happened to be able to get free tickets at the Barbican to see a documentary called Planeat. The synopsis was “How excessive consumption of meat and dairy causes large-scale environmental and health problems”, so I decided to go. (It was free, and sounded interesting.) The documentary itself wasn’t fantastic but some of the facts were quite shocking. Purely from a health standpoint alone, the facts were quite inspiring. (The documentary will be available online later at http://planeat.tv/.) The whole euphoria and atmosphere of the experience made me totally delirious. I was going home to make my family vegan. It was all totally possible, and highly probable. I would sit them down, run through the facts, and lay it down cold and hard. Then I would offer to cook all their meals until they learnt to do it themselves. Wow, I was so delusional; a sucker to the documentary’s great marketing. I’m not even vegan myself. Anyway luckily I came back to reality, and realised perhaps slow and steady would be a much better course to follow.

It did make me decide that eventually I will follow a plant-based diet, for all the reasons already mentioned, but mostly for health. It’s nice to challenge yourself sometimes, and since I haven’t been dating dairy for around 5 weeks (So I had the odd yoghurt or ice-cream), I’ve realised how good it is just to practise a bit of self-control. So if you care about yourself, animals or future generations I would recommend you find out the facts yourself. (And think twice about that delicious KFC)