What I hadn't anticipated is how mindful you become about food and cooking. You literally have to consider every ingredient. I do not see this as a burden - what better way to be aware of everything that you are putting into your body.
But it doesn't stop there, you start being more aware of products that you are using on your body, such as shampoo and body wash. You start thinking about things like where do all of the used toothbrushes go? I estimate that there must be around 5 billion or so toothbrushes disposed of every year. This is a guesstimate, but could even be a conservative one, if you consider that the world population is over 7.5 billion and around 1 billion plastic toothbrushes are disposed of in the US alone. Even here in Australia with a population of around 25 million we are disposing of 30 million a year. I have taken into account the fact that unfortunately there are many people throughout the world who do not have access to a toothbrush.
It is the little things such as this that start to weigh on your mind. It is not just the cruelty to animals, the needless slaughter, the waste of natural resources such as water in producing meat and dairy, not even the deforestation of the rain forests, but the combination of all of these things and the many other related environmental issues, too numerous to mention. It really does concern me how little thought must be going into our daily lives.
It is not a reason to not follow a plant based diet, it is the realisation that this is surely the only way for compassionate, mindful, emphatic, and caring humans to live their lives. What is so amazing is the extent of the massive anomaly between those that have made the choice and the rest of civilisation who continue to mindlessly partake in the meat and dairy industries elaborate, brain washing marketing campaigns. Unfortunately the budget for endorsing broccoli for example is no where near that afforded by the meat and dairy industries and their government subsidies funded by tax payers-yes even vegans are paying towards this.
Once you have made the decision to turn your back on the barbaric and unnecessary treatment of animals for human consumption those very animals that human beings appear to adore, it is.almost impossible to understand why everybody doesn't feel the same way. You want to shout from the roof tops, engage in conversation with everyone who still consumes meat and dairy to discuss the error of their ways.
BUT you know this is not realistic, it is not going to achieve anything and you will simply be ridiculed and face the same old, same old uneducated, unresearched arguments about protein and it being natural for humans to eat animal flesh.
What is reassuring is the amount of medical evidence that backs up the benefits of a plant based diet and the negatives of consuming meat and dairy.
It will undoubtably be a slow process, and there will be a lot of counter arguments made by the meat and dairy industries that have so much to potentially loose if the trend does start to move in a plant based direction. I do believe however that things will start shifting towards plant based, I have to believe this, not least because the planet cannot continue to sustain the current volume of meat and dairy consumption.
I am also slightly puzzled as to who is actually eating the annual 315 million tonnes of meat globally, as all the meat eaters I seem to speak to say, I hardly eat any meat, just a couple of days a week. Perhaps this is another example of cognitive dissonance.
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