Veganism As the Best Nutrition Choice for Ethical, Environmental, and Health Sustainability: Opinion Essay

The vegan diet is becoming increasingly popular. Several celebrities have been vegan over the past few years, and a variety of vegan products have appeared in stores. The vegan diet is a lifestyle that tries to exclude all animal products and limit the exploitation of animals as much as possible. The term vegan was coined by a handful of vegetarians who left the Leicester Vegetarian Association in England in 1944 and formed the Vegan Association (Adams, 2016). In addition to refraining from meat, like vegetarians, they decided not to consume dairy, eggs, or other animal products. The term vegetarian was chosen by combining the first and last letters of vegetarian. Veganism is currently defined as a lifestyle that seeks to exclude all forms of animal exploitation and abuse from food, clothing or other purposes. Taking into consideration the impact that people’s food choices can have on their health and the environment, veganism can be considered as the best nutrition choice on ethical, environmental and health grounds.

Veganism can be considered as the best nutrition choice on ethical, environmental and health grounds. Vegan diet is a type of food choice that contains little or no food from meat or by-products such as beef, poultry, fish, and/or meat from other animals. There are several types of veganism foods available today, however, none of them follow a specific pattern (Elliot, 2015). This diet is becoming increasingly popular around the world. One of the largest vegetable communities lives in India (35.71%) (Elliot, 2015). People who thrive on vegetarianism in countries such as the United States are (3.78%), the United Kingdom (8.57%), Germany (9.02%) and Italy (9.67%). This shows that veganism is a popular diet in many countries.

Most vegetarians follow a vegetarian diet because of their beliefs. Most of them follow a strict vegan pattern of completely giving up animal-related foods, including milk, chicken eggs, and other animal-derived products or products. Jains follow a solid vegetarian diet, as well as even the most difficult type of diet that include non-consumption of underground crops such as potatoes and onions (Hamershlag, 2015). Veganism diet can be driven by ethical choices, health choices and environmental consciousness. A brief background of livestock production will provide an insight on why people choose veganism dietary choices.

Background of Livestock Production

Growing animals not only allows farmers to take advantage of economies of scale, but also produces waste, greenhouse gases, and results in environmental destruction (FAO 2016). Raising animals indoors or in confined places can save money and protect animals from weather and predators. However, if a large number of animals live indoors and are close to each other, they will be at a risk developing diseases which can spread quickly. To combat these factors, farmers intensively use prophylactic antibiotics (Harris, 2015). In addition farmers use hormones which can help them to speed up animal growth a save money. However this kind of animal rearing, itself poses health problems. Chickens, for example, will be bread in such a way that their bodies will be heavier than what their bones can support. Breeding animals this way can be seen as animal cruelty.

Raising animals with an aim of profit maximization is also ethically wrong in many ways. This is because it raises concerns about the impact of animal production on humans. A research carried out by Adams (2016) identified that slaughter houses are exploitative to workers. This is because the speed at which slaughter machines are used can endanger the lives of workers. Furthermore, industrial meat production poses a threat to public health through the manner in which animals are reared. Overcrowding of animals weakens their immune systems and results in the creation and spread of pathogens such as antibiotics which makes animals to be bacteria. This can have negative effects on public health.

Industrial meat production can contaminate water supplies with wastes in the form of greenhouse gases. Elliott (2015) estimated that farm animals contribute 6 to 32% of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, livestock production has also raised concerns over issues of environmental veganism. One is that it uses too many resources and produces too much waste for the amount of food it produces. Secondly, to feed livestock, a farmer has to produce crops, and feed animals. Therefore, it generally requires more resources and creates more emissions than simply growing and feeding crops.

Veganism can be considered as the best nutrition choice on ethical, environmental and health grounds. Vegans generally avoid animal products for one or more of the various reasons which include ethical, health and environmental. The ethical vegan strongly believes that all living things have the right to life and have freedom (Herman, 2011). Therefore, they are opposed to ending the life of animals because they want to eat flesh, drink milk, or wear skin especially if there are alternatives. Ethical veganism also do not support the notion that animals go through psychological and physical as a result of modern agricultural practices (Nerwik, 2017). For example, ethical vegans’ small cages, where many livestock live, and often rarely leave between birth and slaughter. In addition, many vegans oppose the practices of the agricultural industry, such as eating eggs which were supposed to hatch and become chickens that could have been a living poultry. Therefore, they show their support for animals through choosing products that are not related to the livestock industry.

However several moral arguments have been raised against ethical veganism. For example Nerwik (2017) argued that if it is right for predators to kill and consume other animals as their innate tendency why is not right for humans to kill animals. If humans are a kind of animal that has innate tendencies, then it is also right for humans to kill and consume animals. The most obvious alternative for those who advocate an ethical vegan diet is to show that it is virtually wrong for one animal to kill or consume another. In addition, Patrick (2017) argued that there is a difference between killing and dying, as in the case of sick animals, but there is a moral difference between natural death. If it is morally right to kill animals with compassion, it is unclear why humans cannot eat them because if the animal dies of natural death, eventually, other animals or bacteria will eat it (Patrick, 2017). A similar example is an epidemic. For example, if there is a rabbit epidemic that threatens the lives of ecosystems and other animals, killing the rabbits to stop the spread of the epidemic would alleviate pain and suffering that would have been experienced by the rabbits. Therefore, if it is also practically possible to kill without pain, so the moral meaning that causes pain can be completely eliminated.

Some people choose to be vegan because of their potential health benefits. For example, a plant-based diet can reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and premature death. Although the vegan diet is generally considered to be higher in fiber and lower in cholesterol, protein, calcium and salt than an omnivorous diet, there are still misunderstandings and concerns about completely reducing meat, fish, eggs and dairy products from the diet. One common concern is whether a vegan diet provides enough vitamin B12 (Nerwik, 2017). B12 helps prevent nerve damage and is found in meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, but not in fruits or vegetables (Eliot, 2017). A recent study involving 48,000 people over 18 years compared the health of people who eat meat, dairy and vegans. They found that vegans had a lower risk of heart disease, but a higher risk of stroke, partly due to a lack of B12 (Nerwik, 2017). The researchers found that people who did not eat meat had 10 fewer cases of heart disease and 3 more strokes per 1,000 people compared to those who did not eat meat. The research showed that although a vegan diet had many benefits, a strict vegan diet could also lead to hemorrhage. This is because although low cholesterol prevents heart disease and ischemic stroke, there is evidence that low cholesterol levels (associated with vegetarian and vegetarian diets) may be associated with a small risk of hemorrhagic stroke (Nerwik, 2017). Apart from bone mineral density and fractures, which may be more common due to the potential for reduced calcium intake and possible B12 deficiency, vegans were less prone to heart disease due to low levels of cholesterol and problems of high blood pressure.

People may also choose veganism because of the impact of the livestock industry in the environment. The UN report in 2017 argued that products generated from livestock production require more resources and cause more greenhouse gas emissions than plant-based options (Hermerschlag, 2015). For example, the livestock industry contributes 65% of global nitrous oxide emissions, 35-40% of methane emissions, and 9% of carbon dioxide emissions Hermerschlag (2015). These chemicals are considered the three major greenhouse gases associated with climate change. Additionally, animal husbandry is a water-intensive process. This was supported by Hermerschlag (2015) who explained that to produce beef, a farmer can need 43 times more water than needed to produce grain. Livestock can also lead to deforestation when burning forest areas for grasslands or pasture. This habitat destruction has contributed to the extinction of various animal species.

A study conducted at Oxford University found that vegan diets can reduce carbon footprint (produced from food) by up to 73%. Assuming that people live in a utopian world where everyone is vegan, global farmland use will be reduced by 75% and there will be 60% less of greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural industry. In another study Hermerschlag (2015) identified that it takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, but only 180 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. When driving for 3 hours, the greenhouse gases emitted are still less than producing about 2 pounds of beef. Dairy products truck deliveries are the leading cause of smog much more than trucks and vehicles. Animal waste is commonly used for fertilization and spills into the nearest water body, making it a major source of water contamination. These statistics show that the choice of being vegan saves the environment.