Why I turned Vegan.

I've been a vegetarian most of my adult life since age 10. I still crisply recall the day I gave up eating my most favourite food as a child - Chicken. Growing up, I loved accompanying my father anywhere he went. This would mean sitting on his bike's petrol tank or standing in the front of his other two wheeler and tagging along him to buy vegetables, groceries, hardware, his official visits and every other place. I even recall a day I unstoppably kept asking him to take me to his workplace and he did. One such visits was to a butcher shop to buy chicken. I stood and watched my father converse to the shopkeeper, after which the man went ahead to open a giant, overcrowded chicken shed where there was only enough space for the chickens to stand and not be able to sit on what seemed like flooring laden with manure. He caught one of these chickens by the feathers. The bird was terrified and screaming relentlessly. I was told to not watch the rest of it and distanced from the site but the 10 year old child in me remained curious to see what was going on. I found a small corner where the butcher shop was clearly visible from. The chicken was beheaded, but it's body kept trembling until there was no life left in it. That day is etched in my memory. I came back home very quietly and asked my parents if that bird is what we eat? Yes, I was told, and that was the day that the willingness to ever eat any animal left me and never returned even when I was travelling to countries where vegetarian food wasn't widely or easily available.

I'm thirty now and two weeks back, I made a decision to go Vegan. For folks who aren't entirely informed of what vegan is, its an adoption of a lifestyle where one does not eat or use animal products. Vegans choose to not consume eggs, dairy, and all other animal products like leather, honey,  ghee, in addition to meat and poultry. Vegetarianism simply avoids eating animals, but veganism also asks us to consider how we allow them to live.

I've been asked the 'Why Vegan?' question everyday since. Some people like me are more comfortable articulating thoughts in writing than explaining every person on why I've made a certain decision. So Here's why I made this choice.

1) I could go on and on about what the meat, poultry and dairy industries are doing to animals but I honestly do not think there are people anymore who haven't seen a documentary or movie or read about the state of slaughterhouses, farm animals and other impacts of speciesism. I know that it is widespread informed ignorance and I do not wish to alter choices that others make. I chose to go Vegan because It's the easiest way to help animals if you care about cruelty. I love all my animals - present and past. Yes, there are researches that prove that every vegan helps save 200 animals per year apart from all other benefits of adopting a vegan lifestyle, but the reason for me was convenience of doing the good I could manage to do. I would love to be the person that's physically present helping an animal that's suffering, but I'm not. I'm a working woman who juggles between work and home and the endless chores of daily life that do not leave sufficient space for me to go out and provide all the help that the animal welfare section of the society needs. But I always believe that every bit you can do counts and adds up to a larger good. This was the most obvious step I could take to not support animal exploitation, if not make a big difference.

It doesn't even mean treating all species the same in all situations. For me, It only means not using an individual species as the basis for sustaining another species because as a matter of fact, an animal's innate desire to avoid fear and death is no different than that of humans.

2) Against contrary belief, Vegan is not a hard lifestyle to follow. For a day or two after I went vegan, my body took the time it needed adjusting to a new diet but given that Vegan lifestyles have gone mainstream as more people stand in support of animals. Vegan dairy alternatives, recipes, desserts, eat outs are abundant and it doesn't make you the person that cannot find options on a food menu anymore. Except that you now leave an impact every time you order food or shop and on every instance you choose to switch from an animal product to a vegan option. Businesses supporting a vegan lifestyle have made it a cakewalk for people to have the regular convenience of ordering food in, eating out, maintaining great health and in turn also avoiding killing animals and leaving a smaller carbon footprint then why not?

3) Its good for the body. It took me a lot of reading to curate a diet that provides enough nutrition for a human body to thrive. Not only has turning vegan made me more mindful of what I eat, it's full of foods that have truly make me feel better and energetic while maintaining nutrition. Dairy, animal products and sweets naturally contain the most amount of excess fats that I did not need. By turning Vegan, it's a natural elimination of foods known to cause obesity, diabetes and numerous other diseases.

4) Its not sustainable. To me, there isn't a better explanation to this than what Mathew Scully says in his post in National Review here. The lines below from Scully's piece sums up what runs on the mind of a vegan when they make this seemingly hard lifestyle switch.
"One day, humanity will be done altogether with feeding on animals, for reasons of ethics along with the health and ecological reasons that are also staring us in the face. When an industry inflicts boundless abuse on animals, weighing ever more on the conscience of men and women everywhere, adversely affecting human health, and moreover when its a blight on the natural environment, its not implausible to imagine that industry's eventual extinction. Unthinkable to most people today, obvious to most people tomorrow: we are all better off without the whole sorry business; and in the vocabulary of civilised people, who will miss the term 'Slaughterhouse'?