To Stay Alive or Have Your Meat?

Global warming! Climate change! The world is ending soon! The phrases that are tormenting us from all directions. Commanding us to be our perfect selves, ecological, with proper diets. But what if I told you those aren’t just simple rumours? What if I told you to get rid of those “spam” messages you need to take action? What if I told you ignoring will truly resolve our planet dying in 2050? You don’t have to be flawless. The steps to save humanity, to save the world are easy - go vegan.

I’ve seen them all; the excuses why people won’t switch their diets. In fact, I have used them myself. I like my bacon too much. It’s hard, expensive. You can’t substitute the protein found in meat or Calcium in dairy products. My will is not strong enough. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You will most certainly discover a new dish to love. We’re in 2021, being vegan couldn’t be easier. A pack of chips costs pretty much the same. There are various techniques to meet the daily intake of nutrients. The most effortless one is to take vegan supplements. Once you establish what you are doing it for - the Earth, the animals, yourself, it’s a piece of (vegan) cake to keep staying on the track.

Imagine being able to lower world hunger, purify the air, clean the soil, reduce energy consumption and maintain a healthier lifestyle. Hard to picture? It shouldn’t be. The answer lays right before your eyes. Livestock already participates in damaging the environment by means of greenhouse gases, deforestation or creating dead zones in oceans thanks to the pollution from agriculture, but it will unmistakably degenerate in the future. The population is supposed to enlarge by 2.3 billion by the year of 2050. And this means a far greater demand for meat.

No one expects you to wake up one morning thinking “I'm never eating animal products” and then living by it. The process is slow. The best method is bit by bit to reduce meat. Kick off with your least favourite. Not the biggest fan of pork? That’s a good start. Work your way then to vegetarianism, later to veganism. However, you might go all out and still not manage to stick to it. Do not worry. Everything counts. For those isolated cases there is “flexitarianism”. A diet designed specifically for this. The principle is to lessen your beef consumption by 75%, pork by 90%, milk by 60% and half the eggs you would normally ingest. Swap those for more pulses and legumes and you partake the decrease of emissions from livestock by 50%.

So let’s erase that stigma around vegans. It is not a trend people try for attention. It is a call for survival. Vegans are often portrayed as bad. A muscular person is seen as “beefy”, while a lazy person named a “couch potato”. As a matter of fact, apart from drug addicts people with a vegan diet are viewed the most negatively. Unlike other problems, it is socially acceptable and, as it happens, even recommended. Or is it completely a deeply-seeded marketing strategy? Have you at any point come across an advertisement bashing non-meat eaters to sell their steak or burger? Have you found an online comment mocking them at all?

So let’s seize the brainwashing. Why do we perceive beef on our plates as beef, cows as cows, but not beef as cows? Is it to cope with the truth? Is it because we don’t want others to criticise us, to pit point our faults, weaknesses? The answer is “yes”. In addition, we don’t enjoy changes. It takes time and effort to learn new recipes, to research what to buy and where, to leave the old habits behind. We rather much continue with something faulty if it means not leaving our comfort zone.

Yet we must. There’s no time to examine whether it will make us uncomfortable or not. The globe is about to perish. Our list of chances to avert it shortening. So swallow your pride and substitute the milk in your tea for an almond alternative (my personal recommendation), give a vegan burger a try and make your scrambled eggs with tofu and chickpeas. The solutions are clear - either the mother Earth will deal with it or us. And to spoil you the truth; we won’t live through the first option. The choice is yours. Do you wish humanity to go on or do you wish the planet to carry on without us, our potential descendants? It is in your hands. Veganism is more than just greens and tofu. It keeps you fed, healthy, further away from type 2 diabetes, obesity, many types of cancer and it helps the planet to move forward.

(vegan dim sum - Dim Sum Spot, Prague)