What is a Vegan?
• A vegan is someone who, for various reasons, chooses to avoid using or consuming animal products. While vegetarians choose not to use flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, down, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals.
Why become a Vegan?
• People choose to be vegan for various reasons. Many vegans choose this lifestyle to promote a more humane and caring world. Many abstain from animal products because they find factory farming cruel and inhumane.
Others believe that animal agriculture destroys the environment. And some simply view veganism as a healthy diet that is low in fat, calories, and cholesterol and high in fiber and various vitamins.
Why become a Vegan?- moral reasons
• Most vegetarians free that they are ethically unable to eat animals that have been slaughtered for meat. Some also believe that factory farmed egg laying chickens and dairy cows live brief miserable lives. Egg-laying chickens are often raised in small cages with no room to walk or stretch.
Normally they can live up to a decade but most are slaughtered after two years. • Vegans also object to treatment of dairy cows. Like chickens, dairy cows are killed when their productivity rates drop. Cows can live up to 25 years, but most dairy cows die after five. Male calves, which have no value to dairy farms, are quickly sold and slaughtered in veal farms.
Why become a Vegan?- health reasons
• Veganism requires supplements and sometimes professional consultation to meet dietary needs. Most vegans can get all their nutrients without animal products. Vegan mainstay foods such as whole grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes which are naturally low in fat and cholesterol and rich in fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate and vitamins
C and E. The American Diabetic Association reports that vegetarians and vegans have lower body mass indexes, blood pressure and cholesterol levels than non-vegetarians do. They also have reported a decrease in rates of type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, prostate cancer, hypertension and heart disease.
Vegan Nutrition
• The key to a nutritionally sound vegan diet is variety. A healthy and varied vegan diet includes fruits, vegetables, plenty of leafy greens, whole grain products, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
