I have never eaten meat.
This statement may be shocking to read at first due to the large amount of meat consumption in the United States. Growing up as a vegetarian surrounded by an environment full of heavy meat eaters was not easy. From living in Virginia, to moving to Sacramento, CA, and then to San Luis Obispo, CA, being a vegetarian has never been comfortable. Throughout my years of schooling, I was always the kid in my class that people never shared lunches with, and I was never able to eat the food at my friends’ birthday parties because the food usually contained meat. This burden of being a vegetarian was first set onto me by my parents, who have been vegetarian for thirty years now, when they decided to raise my sister and I vegetarian. I always felt like an outsider growing up during meal time, and to make matters worse, none of my friends or classmates were vegetarian, or even knew about the concept of being a vegetarian.
Years later, after many years of embarrassment and despise towards my diet, I entered college and my view on my diet and my health changed. A few months into my freshman year of college, I realized that since my college had very little vegetarian options on campus, most of them being unhealthy foods such as ice cream, cookies, and chips, I was eating unhealthily and my body was reacting; I was getting more acne, gaining weight, and losing self-confidence. That is when I decided to go vegan and eliminate all animal-based sources from my diet. My life drastically changed the day I stopped eating dairy and eggs. I lost all the weight I gained that first quarter of college, all of my acne disappeared, and I even found a boyfriend who was also vegan and never questioned my eating habits for the first time in my life.
To this day, whenever I tell people that I am vegan, their usual first judgment and responses are “Wow I could never do that”, “You must be so healthy”, “How do you get enough protein?”, and “I would die if I never ate meat”, to name a few. Many people in the United States are highly uneducated about a vegan diet and immediately make assumptions about the diet without even knowing the many benefits to it.
After being in India, South Africa, and Brazil last quarter while I was studying abroad, I came to the realization that the United States culture relies so heavily on an animal-based diet, however in many other parts of the world, typical diets consist of mostly plant based proteins, such as lentils and garbanzo beans in India, baked beans in South Africa, and black and pinto beans in Brazil. It is not necessary for people in the United States to rely so much on animal-based protein because there are so many other ways to get protein in a diet other than just killing animals to be eaten. In fact, the amount of animal-based protein, according to a study conducted on the Sources and Amounts of Animal, Dairy, and Plant Protein Intake of US Adults in 2007–2010, found that US adults consumed animal, dairy, and plant protein were 46%, 16%, and 30%, respectively.This demonstrates the large impact of an animal-based diet in the United States. This large percent of animal-based protein consumption may have detrimental consequences to one’s health. In a prospective cohort study that compared the diets and health of meat-eaters to vegetarians to lacto-ovo-vegetarians to vegans, the vegan diets seem to offer additional protection for obesity, hypertension, type-2 diabetes, and cardiovascular mortality. Vegan diets have also been studied to provide anti-inflammatory properties and can be even healthier for humans than the standardized American Heart Association recommended diet.
Therefore, go vegan and protect your health, because no one else will!
