Monday, February 21, 2011

What made you do it?

This past week someone asked me if I remembered what it took to finally make me decide to switch to a vegan diet- to finally eliminate all dairy and eggs from my already vegetarian diet.

I definitely do. 

I remember allowing myself over Christmas vacation to watch some videos and learn all I could about factory farming. I had already read a little bit about it before going vegetarian, but I went even more in-depth over my Christmas break. I knew the videos were going to be difficult to watch, but I also knew that I had to do it. I had to finally see where my food was really coming from. I won't lie - they made me cry. But they also made me wake up and say to myself, "I cannot contribute to this industry any more." Sure, there ARE some small farms out there who DO treat their animals well, but sadly, they are not the farms that supply meat, eggs, and dairy to my local grocery stores, Costco, or any of the stores I buy my food from.

I decided to post the videos here with hopes that maybe even one person will allow themselves to watch them and make even one small change (such as buying almond/soy/rice milk instead of cows milk or trying out Meatless Mondays.) I know I keep saying this, but I WISH I would have watched these when I was 20 years old instead of 40. 

I used to say to myself, "I love animals too much to watch videos like that." 
Now I know I should have been saying, "I love animals too much and that is why I need to watch these videos."

As painful as they are to watch, they are necessary to open your eyes to where your meat and dairy TRULY comes from. It is NOT the happy cow on a happy farm, like the commercials show us. There are not wide open pastures like the packaging of the meat shows us. Yes, at one time I did believe that the cows, chickens, turkeys, and pigs I ate lived happy lives on wide open farms and died painlessly and humanely for my nice neat package of meat. I feel so terrible for ignoring it before, so all I can do now is try my best to educate even just one person...to make even just one tiny change.


This video is narrated by Alec Baldwin and is called "Meet your Meat" 
 


This video is narrated by and stars Paul McCartney.




This video (click this link)  shows how much suffering chickens
used for Mc Donalds food endure
(please think about this one the next time you want to order chicken nuggets, chicken sandwiches, salads with chicken, egg mc muffins, etc.)


**If you just want to READ about the issues and not watch the videos, Farm Sanctuary has some wonderful education pages found here.
Chooseveg.com also has some great educational resources to read.

Please remember, even just choosing to go meatless for just
one day a week  can make a difference!


Let me know if you decide to make any small changes. I'd love to hear about them! :)

4 comments:

  1. I am a fan of all John Robbins books (Diet for a new america, Food Revolution), Sarah Kramer (How it all vegan, the garden of vegan) and Isa Chandra Moskowitz books. They certainly make it much less 'scary' to be veggie. I was often turned off by lots of veggie recipies, all the ingredients seemed too 'weird' or hard to find. Books like these cooking so much easier to attain cruelty free!

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  2. 40???? Show me your ID! I'm sure its your inner peace and healthy diet that make you look so youthful. I can relate so much to this post, and have been vegan for about 1 year and a half. I'm starting my own blog myself, so I like perusing others, and yours really speaks to me. I've also had similar frustrating restaurant moments! Mine was ground beef instead of turkey though! I hope you'll follow my blog when its up and running!

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  3. Thank you so much Anneka! Keep me posted when you get your blog up -I'd love to read it! I need to start posting more in this one. Life got busy, but now I have some more free time, so time for me to start writing again!

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  4. I finally started it! Its called http://planthappylife.blogspot.com/ Theres not much info about me yet, but I have a recipe! Hope to see you stop by!

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