VEGANna take over the world

You’re waking up in the morning on an average school day. You head towards the kitchen grabbing your breakfast, skim milk and lucky charms, yum. What if I told you that the colored marshmallows in your lucky charms are made of leftover animal bones, skin, cartilage, beaver anal glands and even coal tar. Or your skim milk contains an unsettling amount of cow pus and bacteria, really appetizing, right? Our planet is dying, 40% of Americans are obese, nine billion chickens are being killed in the US every year and we are spending fives times more than our defense budget on healthcare. If only there was one simple way we could solve all of these world issues. Well, I’m here to tell you that in fact, there is a way. Eating a plant-based vegan diet is able to save the planet, save our health and save our animals by drastically decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, saving water, not clogging our arteries with cholesterol, decrease chances of heart disease and not having to kill innocent beings to consume at our dinner table.

Do you know where 51% of green house gas emission comes from? Not cars, not burning of fossil fuels, but animal farts and manure. Surprisingly, cows produce methane in their digestive cycle. Methane is thirty times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Methane is also found in chicken and pig manure. Although there are many ways to control this methane such as changing the feed or even killing the bacteria inside the stomach, this would demand even more chemicals in the animal’s body. The real solution is to switch to the vegan lifestyle. 150 acres of the amazon forest is getting cut down every minute of the day! 90% of that is to either plant food for livestock and cattle or to place more animals there. A substantial amount of water is required for cows. In fact, one is able to drink up to 250 litres of water a day living in a warm environment. You might be thinking, what can one person become vegan actually achieve? Well, every day on a vegan lifestyle you save 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 square feet of forested land, 20 pounds of carbon dioxide and 1 animals life.

Despite the countless benefits of a vegan lifestyle, only 7% of US citizens are vegan. Adopting the vegan lifestyle may still be out of the question for you as you’re probably concerned about protein. Unprocessed Plant-based foods are all low in calories, and all contain protein. It isn’t possible to be protein deficient without being calorie deficient. Another downside to consuming animal products is that they are very high in fat which leads to 40% of American adults and 1 out of 5 American children being obese. Cholesterol levels are higher than ever, Heart disease is at its best. Every human and animal have a cholesterol lining their veins. Dietary cholesterol is unnecessary and only found in animal products. A vegan blood test is 100% healthy and not deficient in most cases.

Let me blow your mind, we are herbivores. Our physiological features match those of a herbivore. It’s very important for a given animal to eat what they are physiologically and anatomically designed to eat, to improve the chances of survival and health. By connecting the dots, you notice that a vegan lifestyle is what you need to adopt in order to have optimal health. Over 9 billion chickens are killed for food in the US only, some people refer to this as "animal holocaust". The USDA doesn't have a definition for "free-range". Animals are living creatures too and should be able to live their lives. Milk is for baby calfs to double their weight in 6 months, today most calfs don't even taste the milk of their mothers as they're separated at birth.

SODEXPOSED

By: Alessia

A vegetarian student is hanging out with her friends when one says “let’s go to Burger King”. They sit down at a table and dig in, everyone but her. She stares at the burger and wonders about that animal that has been slaughtered. She’s aware of her choices on what to put in her body, She aspires to live a healthy life and believes that animals should be able to, too. She is disgusted.

Kids are developing unhealthy habits of drifting towards meat options at restaurants or even at school. With the population rising, chickens are being grown unnaturally with the use of hormones for cheap. Of course, when we eat chicken, we eat these hormones too, which is why eating chicken often while growing and developing has more serious consequences on health. How are people getting involved with this issue? How are parents aware of what their kids are eating.

Parents send their children to school each day, most middle schoolers buy their lunch at the canteen managed by Sodexo. How are parents aware of what children eat each day, and more importantly, how do we know what quality sodexo food is at? The highly famous “Chicken 65” on Fridays, at $1.60. How is it possible to have good chicken at only a dollar and 60 cents. Kids aren’t aware of what they eat. The results to a recent survey says that 3/4 of an average eighth grade class never think about whats before them at the lunch table.

Canteen meals have been expected to be of the same quality as fast food. Fast Food Companies claim to have strict policies about the safety of their food, but how can we trust them? McDonalds—and fast food in general—is reputated to not be a balanced meal choice. However, McDonalds themselves believe that their food covers all the bases. A big Mac currently costs $4.80. If a Big Mac was made from free range corn fed chicken, it would cost $13, and not everyone can afford that.

As I mentioned earlier, 13 dollars for a burger isn’t affordable to many people, “Would you rather have to pay 30 times that money for your future healthcare due to the food you eat” said an anonymous student. It’s not just the poor meat at McDonalds that gives them this reputation, but the amount of oil and fried items on the menu. Seed-based oils aren’t usually very healthy, for example, Canola oil. Soy oil is highly processed, harmful to health and used in every McDonalds burger. And this is the standard expectancy of canteen food in the US. There currently aren’t any laws regarding the kinds of food required to be served at schools in the US. Is there a solution?

Vegetarianism. A trend today is to become “Vegan” or “Vegetarian”. There are many theories on how veganism and vegetarianism can solve environmental issue. The number of vegans has doubled in the US since 2009. Slowly, more and more people are taking on this lifestyle whether its for their health, religion or simply animal rights. The average person in the UK consumes over 85kg of meat per year and your average american consumes around 7,000 animals in a lifestyle. 7,000 animals. The real question here is, is there a solution? Is vegetarianism the solution? Is it the future? Red and processed meat consumption are associated with colon cancer. Evidence compiled that diets with high intakes of fruits and vegetables may reduce cancer risk. If more people took part in developping a vegetarian lifestyle, animals wouldn’t be killed at such a fast rate. According to the European Food information Council, 1 or 2 portions of meat suffice to get the weekly protein requirements.

The process and decision of becoming vegetarian or potentially vegan doesn’t happen immediately. Some people believe that they aren’t ready to take on the extremes on being vegan.