Self-quarantine, Work from home, baking hobbies & boosted online presence, a year of the pandemic has certainly added several new elements to our lives. An interesting one among them is Veganism.
The term isn’t as unheard of as it was a decade ago & refers to a diet that excludes any & all dishes/ingredients obtained through animal sources. Oversimplifying it, remove dairy from vegetarian diets.
While the reasons people have for going vegan has several variations covering everything from body chemistry to global warming, it is backed by research that the option to go vegan has been looked up online and explored a lot more frequently since March of this year than ever before.
But why are more people switching to veganism since COVID-19 appeared? Here’s everything you need to know about it!
There’s a handful of most common reasons for people to turn vegan, all of them genuine and supported by facts & figures.
#1 Compassion for animals
While a few abstain from meat consumption as the vegetarian options simply don’t harm any of the Animalia kingdom, modern veganism doesn’t necessarily oppose a natural food chain with humans consuming animals.
The pressing matter that makes them draw the line is the cruelty towards animals in the current poultry, meat & dairy industries. From the filthy & cramped conditions of the wet markets & farms to the harsh treatments the animals go through forcefully to reach the optimum weight for slaughter in the most profitable way possible, the current animal welfare laws are far from acceptable.
Dairy cows are kept in a state of constant pregnancy and lactation until they stop producing milk and are slaughtered. The calves are often deprived of their mother’s milk. Chickens, pigs & goats are force fed hormones & usually become too big to move by the time they reach the slaughter stage.
Of course, all these factors have trickle down effects for the people consuming the meat produced this way, we’ll discuss that in the next section.
#2 Health consciousness
Surprisingly, all that protein filled meat & dairy isn’t all that good for the human body. The science, and marketing schemes, supporting consumption meat & dairy are all age old.
According to modern studies, dairy milk is actually bad for adults, it being hard on the stomach, fluctuating our estrogen levels, and seldom causing osteoporosis and fragile bones (the exact opposite of what it is marketed for!)
With the pumped hormones & growing conditions of the animals, new diseases come into the picture & the bacteria associated with them often enter the human body as well. This point got put across pretty well with the COVID virus being the result of consuming bat meat.
#3 Caring for the environment
Did you know that the meat and dairy industries contribute to global warming, pollution & climate change at a rate faster than the gas and oil companies?!
Switching to a vegan diet could help reduce your carbon footprint through food consumption by about two-thirds. Young people aware of the pressing concerns regarding climate change have this as their primary reason to turn vegan.
The key takeaway here would be understanding that there’s a good probability that several animal-related illnesses would be less likely to spread in a pandemic pattern if the majority of the world chooses to switch to veganism.
The health concerns, life threatening at that, might’ve kick started the journey to veganism for many. However, most stuck around because of the plethora of meal options available in a vegan diet, healthier similar tasting alternatives to meat & dairy products as well as the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ long confinement at home that made exploring something new feasible & exciting.
Read More about mental health during pandemic: Read More
