Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet
Going plant-based benefits animals, the environment, and our own health:
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200 million animals who are raised, confined, and treated with cruelty only to be slaughtered for meat every single day would be saved if the majority of our global population adopts a plant-based diet.
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There are numerous environmental benefits of a plant-based diet including reduction in water usage by 55%, reduction in GHG emissions by 70% , and prevention of deforestation and habitat loss.
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A plant-based diet helps reduce our risk of numerous chronic diseases like high blood pressure, cancer, obesity, bodily inflammation, diabetes, cognitive decline, and more.
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Read these inspirational personal stories from our contributors:
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Food Choices: Plant-Based Diet
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I have been a committed vegan for about 10 years now, and I have never felt better. It was one of the best decisions in my life.
About 4 years ago I saw a note on my neighborhood Nextdoor group asking if there were any vegans in Los Gatos. I was thrilled to meet some other dedicated vegans in my neighborhood, and together we decided to form a nonprofit to educate our community about the advantages of a plant-based diet and to advocate for policy change in the town government.
Plant-Based Advocates website link: http://www.plantbasedadvocates.com/
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Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet
There are enormous environmental benefits of a plant based diet. Eating lower on the food chain saves a lot of resources, uses the least amount of energy, produces much less waste and pollution, and creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions. A Plant based diet uses far less land, and frees up land for wild animals. Livestock production takes up almost 80% of all agricultural land. A plant-based food system would decrease our agricultural land use by 75%, allowing for the rewilding necessary to maintain our ecosystems. In addition, according to Oxford University, cutting meat and dairy products from one’s diet reduces an individual's carbon footprint from food by up to 73 percent. Eating a plant based diet is also beneficial for human health since a diet heavy in animal products has been linked to heart disease, certain types of cancer, and diabetes.
Lisa Wade, Founder, Plant-Based Advocates
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Kathleen Kastner, M.S., has been vegan since 2002 and is certified in plant-based nutrition with the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine: www.pcrm.org.
www.kathleenkastner.com
Compassionate Eating
A plant-based vegan diet represents the yoga philosophy term of ahimsa, non-harming, while providing a wide variety of health benefits. Plant-based foods have ZERO cholesterol and are high in fiber. Animal products, such as meat, fish, shellfish, dairy and eggs, are high in cholesterol and have ZERO fiber. Lowering your cholesterol and increasing your fiber can help you reduce your risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, by keeping your arteries, cells and colon clear of fatty plaque. If you want to lower your cholesterol or blood pressure, replace animal products with fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes, and keep the oils and fats low in your diet. A plant-based diet can also help lose weight and keep it off permanently. By practicing this compassionate way of eating, you are also helping to save the ten billion farm animals and trillions of fish, who are killed in the U.S for food yearly. Farm animals and fish, like our beloved companion animals, feel fear, pain, love and affection. There are thousands of delicious plant-based food options available that don’t cause harm to animals. You can substitute beans for meat, chickpeas for tuna, hearts of palm for crab and tofu for eggs. There are lots of plant based milks and yogurts made from soy, oat, rice, almond, cashew, coconut, hemp and peas. Miyoko's Creamery is a popular vegan brand for cheese, cream cheese and butter. Animal agriculture is also taking its toll on the planet, with high greenhouse gas emissions and
the use of a tremendous amount of land and water. Rainforests in the Amazon are being cut down to grow soybeans to feed farm animals instead of feeding starving people. As the human population grows, our resources are being depleted. According to National Geographic, it takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, 468 gallons for a pound of chicken, 576 gallons for a pound of pork, and 880 gallons for a single gallon of milk. In a time of great drought, these numbers are even more significant.
There are hundreds of vegan blogs and books to help you navigate this way of eating and living. Forks Over Knives, Oh She Glows and Nora Cooks. Recommend watching the inspiring documentaries, Forks Over Knives, What the Health, Game Changers and Cowspiracy.
Mohan Gurunathan is an engineer and activist who has worked in Silicon Valley for over 20 years. He is an expert in food system sustainability and regularly gives talks around the Bay Area. Mohan played a leading role in convincing the City of Mountain View to include plant-based diet promotion as part of its sustainability plan. He also serves as an advisor or board member for several environmental and advocacy nonprofits.
Mohan Gurunathan:
If you grew up in the US, you probably grew up eating hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, ice cream, grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, and many other foods that are staples of our cultural identity. Not only do we love these foods, but they are woven into the fabric of our traditions, our connections to our past and present, and our very idea of what it is to be American. Unfortunately, there is an inconvenient truth that was never explained to us: the production of these same foods is contributing to the destruction of our planet.
There is no single human activity that affects the earth as profoundly as human agriculture. Through agriculture, we have created a world which can feed nearly 8 billion people, but this has come at a steep cost to the forests and wild ecosystems of the planet. ast areas of the planet have been razed to create land for growing crops and livestock grazing, rainforests have been destroyed, rivers have been depleted and polluted, and thousands of species wiped out in the process. And within agriculture, the vast majority of damaging effects result from the production of animal products: meat, dairy, eggs and fish.
It is a well-known fact of biology that around 90% of food energy is lost with every step you take up the food chain. As a result, the production of meat, dairy and eggs requires anywhere from 4x to 100x the amount of land, water, energy, fertilizer, and other resources, when compared to plant-based foods with similar levels of protein and calories. Additionally, producing animal-based foods creates large amounts of toxic waste (manure), as well as the powerful greenhouse gasses, methane and nitrous oxide.
In fact, the farming of livestock animals for food (also called “animal agriculture”) is one of the biggest contributors to all of the following serious global problems: global warming, deforestation, species extinction, air and water pollution, ocean dead zones, freshwater scarcity, antibiotic resistant diseases, world hunger, animal cruelty, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and more.
Without widespread dietary change to more plant-focused diets, it will be impossible to limit global warming to 2 degrees C, nor to solve the multitude of other problems caused by animal agriculture. The good news is that we have a single, simple action that each of us can take every day through which we can collectively solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. The most powerful tool to save the world is right in front of you: your fork! Simply choose to eat vegetarian or vegan, whenever possible.
Here are some other simple ideas on how to make positive changes towards a plant-powered lifestyle.
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Replace your cow’s milk with a plant-based milk alternative. There are so many great options available today.
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When you go out to eat, look for veggie items to try.
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Try some of the plant-based meat and cheese products available in supermarkets (Impossible, Beyond, Gardein, Quorn, Violife, many more).
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Use the Internet to look up “veganized” versions of your traditional recipes.
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Teach your friends and family about these issues!
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Share delicious vegetarian/vegan food with others.
Every meal is an opportunity to protect the earth and ensure a livable planet for future generations. Bon appetit!
Nivi Jaswal is an intersectional vegan advocate and social entrepreneur in the Greater Boston area. She founded The Virsa Foundation Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit and the JIVINITI Research Program after healing her chronic illness through a “whole food plant-based” lifestyle. In addition to holding a BA (Psychology, Sociology), an MBA (Consumer Behavior Marketing) and extensive international brand management, product innovation, corporate strategy and communications experience in the consumer packaged goods, medical devices and media & research sectors, Nivi is a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) trained at the Mayo Clinic and a Lifestyle Medicine Coach certified by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
Nivi Jaswal
While there is strong clinical evidence around both the preventative and healing benefits of plant based diets, personal transformation stories touch, move and inspire most humans more than data ever will. My story starts with my family’s medical history – literally, a long list of chronic diseases and short lifespans. I grew up with the assumption that I could only delay that one dreadful day whereupon I too will be tagged a patient and die a young death because of faulty genetics. As fatalistic as that might sound, thousands if not millions of South Asians are tragically living with this mindset. Science has been quick to point out anomalous genetic mutations that make us prime targets of early onset of cardiovascular disease and deadly disorders rooted in Insulin resistance, and we’ve been too quick to believe the verdict. By the Spring of 2019, I had cleansed my body of all the diagnoses I had received in 2015, at a young age of 34. The Academy Award for my miraculous recovery goes solely to plants and the most therapeutic way to fuel our bodies i.e., a low-fat, whole food, plant-based oil-free approach. Specifically, I had chosen to follow Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.’s protocol describe in his book “How to prevent and reverse heart disease”. In under six months, I had challenged the “diabetes is in your genetics” theory and won!
As a non-profit founder in the U.S. and with a zeal to give back to my home country of India, I wanted to explore health metrics of some of the most vulnerable communities amongst us – rural women artisans. Artisanal peoples represent indigenous ways in which humans ate, sang and dressed ourselves. They hold the golden key to a past that rapid urbanization (and westernization) is erasing from our collective memory. I wanted to go visit these women in my home state of Punjab, who the world has left behind. Women who continue to painstakingly embroider a long-held, orally passed down tradition many Punjabi women choose to adorn on their weddings. Something so special yet so painfully neglected. During health camps organized between Fall of 2018 until Spring of 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our volunteers discovered that more than a third of our small sample of artisans suffered from uncontrolled, untreated hypertension and high blood sugar levels. Several came forward to discuss fertility issues and mental health issues, which in a staunchly patriarchal culture, is a taboo for women to openly talk about. During these two years, The Virsa Foundation embarked on a mission to cook alongside our artisans in the community kitchens of the Sikh temple in their village – and have them experience low-fat, whole food, plant-based oil-free meals. Some of them took our recommendations to heart, one among them was an elderly artisans Mrs Pal Kaur – who consented to a short film be made about her amazing health transformation. Like I mentioned before, stories touch, move and inspire humans more than data ever will. Mrs. Kaur’s health and healing journey had an infectious effect on other artisans she embroiders with. Here is the film – a testimony to how under-represented communities can participate in their own wellness when they are empowered with the knowledge of how to make easy, locally and seasonally available healthy choices.
Lauren Ornelas is Food Empowerment Project's founder and president. Lauren has been active in the animal rights movement for more than 30 years. She is the former executive director of Viva!USA, a national nonprofit vegan advocacy organization that Viva!UK asked her to start in 1999. While Lauren was the director of Viva USA, she investigated factory farms and ran consumer campaigns. In cooperation with activists across the country, she persuaded Trader Joe’s to stop selling all duck meat and achieved corporate changes within Whole Foods Market, Pier 1 Imports, and others, and she helped halt the construction of an industrial dairy operation in California. Lauren was also the spark that got the founder of Whole Foods Market to become a vegan. In addition, she served as campaign director with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition for six years. Watch Lauren's TEDx talk, The Power of Our Food Choices.
Lauren Ornelas
Our food choices have so much power! They have the ability to help us create the world we want to see if we make the decision to eat our ethics. If you don’t want to cause harm to non-human animals, are against animal cruelty, and have access to healthy foods, it makes sense to be vegan. If you believe that we have a responsibility to those who provide it to us, such as farm workers, and if you don’t believe in supporting slavery and/or child labor, cease buying commodities that are directly or indirectly connected to that. And if you believe that everyone deserves to have access to healthy foods, do your part to speak up.
It is not just about our individual choices but our collective voices that can improve the lives of human and non-human animals locally and globally.
When it comes to non-human animals, it is so important that we move to expand our circle of compassion to include all non-human animals, beyond dogs and cats, and to include all whom human existence harms. So that means not only not eating them but also not buying products that are made from or tested on animals or patronizing events or enterprises that exploit them.
At Food Empowerment Project we have quite a few vegan resources on our website in English and Spanish:
www.foodispower.org
https://foodispower.org/our-food-choices/veganism/
We also have the following websites and companion booklets full of vegan recipes, especially for those who want to celebrate and/or share their cultures’ foods:
Many of us went vegan because we didn’t want to contribute to the suffering of others, and we feel the same goes for those who feed us: farm workers who pick our produce. We must amplify their voices and stand in solidarity with every boycott they ask for along with any legislative or regulatory changes needed to improve their lives.
As a resource we have Eating with a Purpose:
https://foodispower.org/our-top-15-eating-tips/
Just because something is vegan doesn’t necessarily mean it is cruelty-free. Slavery and child labor are prevalent in the areas where most chocolate comes from, and yes, this includes vegan chocolate! It is only consistent in our ethics to also consider who else is suffering for the foods we eat.
As a resource we have a list of chocolates that we do and do not recommend based on country of origin – the list is updated once a month, and to be on our list, companies have to make at least one vegan chocolate.
To help make it easier to access this information, we also have free apps that can be downloaded for anyone who has a smartphone:
https://foodispower.org/chocolate-list/
It is also imperative that we understand that it is not easy for everyone to go vegan. Many Black, Indigenous, and Brown communities lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables, much less plant-based milks. Even here, we all have a role to play in the solution by demanding corporations end their role in communities facing food apartheid.
Anyone can help by signing our petition against Safeway’s policy that restricts other grocery stores from moving in when they relocate to another area, mostly impacting older adults and Black and Brown communities:
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/126/103/102/safeway-neighborhoods-need-healthy-foods/
Also, by supporting living wages for all workers, we can ensure that everyone has equal access and the ability to afford healthy foods.
Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) is a vegan food justice organization started in 2007.