Vegans Rule the World

My favorite thing in the whole entire world is hands down, no questions asked, absolutely positively one thing: food. Food is by far the most important thing in our lives because it’s unavoidable, we need food to survive. And the beautiful thing about food is that when you eat it you make it a part of your body. Food becomes you. This is why I care so much about making proper food decisions. If you were to take away my clothes, my home, my blackberry, my car what would I have left? My body and the food choices I’ve made within it. So what I put in this machine of mine is very important to me on both the personal and environmental level.

One of my favorite personal attributes is that I am a vegan. A legume munching, soy guzzling vegan. I choose three times a day to refuse dairy and meat and opt for a more Eco-friendly dish. Not only do I whole-heatedly endorse veganism, I am an obsessive compulsive food label reader. I thrive off of organic and locally grown food. If I can’t pronounce it, I won’t eat it. That simple. I’d like to refer to myself as a naturalist when it comes to my diet, others would rather call me a leaf munching lunatic.

With each meal I encounter opposition to my lifestyle. “Why would you do that?” “What do you eat?” “Where do you get your protein?” “Is this really making a difference?” And I always answer the same way: an organic vegan diet is my own personal health insurance. I’m avoiding harsh pesticides, antibodies, steroids, and hormones every time I sit down to eat. Not only am I providing a sustainable lifestyle for myself, but this is the best thing I can do to help the planet which has been so generous to me.

I’ve done a lot of reading on the matter because as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs I love the environment, and as I mentioned before I love food. The two go hand in hand even though you wouldn’t think that by looking at the food staring back at you on your dinner plate. The more I read the more I realize it is increasingly clear that the choices we make about food today are leading to environmental degradation, enormous human health problems, and unimaginable cruelty toward our environment. One of my favorite quotes comes from Ghandi who said, “Violence begins with a fork.” Although this could be interpreted many ways, I like to think of it as a sort of motto to live by which means: The choices we make about what we consume echo throughout this world in unimaginable ways.