What are your feelings about eating meat.

I’m vegan so that just about answers the question, but that wouldn’t be a very long blog post so here are just a few reasons that people commonly give for not going vegan that I have debunked.

You’ll be deficient in B12

Everyone should take a B12 vitamin. The only way meat eaters get B12 is because the animal they are eating was given a supplement. Why not just cut out the flesh eating and take a supplement yourself?

I would be vegan but….

Vegans don’t want to hear your excuses as to why you’re still eating meat. The only reason you’re justifying it is because you need to justify it to yourself

I do like animals…

If you let some animals live with you, and eat others, you are a hypocrite. The only difference between a cow and the animal that lives in your house is perception.

Vegans are destroying the environment

One of the arguments I often hear from me is that the rainforests are being cut down to grow soy. Here is the truth, most of that soy, in fact around 80% of it goes to feed animals that will later be slaughtered to make your ‘food’. Not to mention the amount of methane gases and water that cattle farming produces and uses.

It isn’t healthy

Another argument I often hear is that soy contains oestrogen, making it unhealthy for humans to eat. Correction, soy contains plant oestrogen, not hormonal oestrogen as we know it. You know what does contain hormonal oestrogen, animal flesh. Plus there’s no obligation to eat soy. You can get all your basic nutrients from whole plant foods.

Cortisol

There seems to be quite a craze at the moment of people trying to reduce their cortisol. Well, one way to definitely increase your cortisol is to eat the flesh of an animal that was terrified at the point it died, raising its cortisol astronomically.

Antibiotic resistance 

Antibiotic resistance is a big concern amongst many medics at the moment, do you know what largely contributes to that? Eating animals that were pumped with antibiotics.

But I only buy humane…

The argument that animals are killed in the most humane way possible is frankly bull shit. There is no way to humanely kill a sentient being. I pose this question to you. How would you like to be killed

That is also quite a wide group of people who defend their decision to eat flesh by saying that it is more humane than halal slaughter. Here is the truth. Most halal meat is produced with the same regulations that are to non-halal production, and stunning is widely practiced. If you accept conventional meat but reject halal meat, it’s important to be specific about what ethical concern you’re raising — otherwise it has racist undertones rather than animal welfare. There is no ethical way to eat meat. Free range, organic or factory farmed, they all end up being killed the same way, in the same slaughter house.

But veganism just starts with food. It’s a lifestyle and one that once you’ve had your eyes opened to, it’s very hard to go back on.