Top Vegan Recipe Books | Sustainable Living | Luxiders Magazine
WHY CHOOSE VEGAN?
From meat-free Mondays, to completely eliminating meat and dairy on an absolute scale, vegan lifestyles have gained immense consumer traction in recent years. But why choose vegan recipes over those which are not? Are vegan diets healthy, and how can you save the planet just by eating food?
Health
Veganism has been scientifically proven to lower blood sugar levels, reduce the risk of heart disease and improve kidney function, to the extent where the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) have professionally recommended vegan diets to those suffering from type 2 diabetes and obesity. Vegan diets further help to protect against certain types of cancer and increase longevity overall.
As popularised by the Netflix documentary film ‘The Game Changers’, vegan diets have been proven to produce the optimum state for the human body to function: boosting energy levels and helping to maximise endurance, whilst also reducing blood cholesterol, internal inflammation and normalising blood pressure. For these reasons, many leading athletes- from sprinters to powerlifters- are increasingly becoming vegan, in order to gain a significant advantage over their omnivorous competitors.
ETHICS
Being vegan can save over 100 animal lives per year. Many of which are subject to intolerable, inhumane living conditions throughout their time on Earth: cooped up in confined spaces, being constantly pumped with artificial hormones with little access to natural light. Broken bones, osteoporosis and malignant tumours in farm animals are common, as are stress-induced abnormal behaviours as a result of improper treatment. In the case of egg farming, a lack of exercise can cause some hens’ bodies to degenerate, whereas over a third of British dairy cows suffer from mastitis, a painful udder infection known to elicit premature death. Even when animals are not exploited before slaughter, in the words of the Vegan Society ‘farming is always an abuse of power’, and prevents the animals from living a natural life.
Environment
The production of meat and dairy is intrinsically unsustainable. Currently accounting for 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions and 83% of farmland, the meat and dairy industry is set to become the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas on Earth. In light of our immanent climate crisis, change has become imperative.
A study by researchers at Oxford University revealed that cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73%, describing a vegan diet as the “single biggest way” to reduce your environmental impact on Earth. Indicating that choosing vegan recipes does not only do good for our own health, but good for the planet too.
