GO VEGAN | Nashville Animal Advocacy

WHY GO VEGAN

Chances are, you’ve arrived at this page for a reason. Maybe you’ve looked at the food on your plate a little differently, maybe you’ve questioned the sustainability of your life choices, maybe you’ve started to find connections between your own life and all of the lives around you. Veganism is drawing you in, but you just need that extra push. Why should you go vegan? Let us tell you.

1. Animals! Duh, right? This is an animal advocacy group’s site after all! Animals benefit the most from veganism. As it stands now, non-vegan industries have made an assembly line of terrified sentient beings who don’t want their throats slit for chicken nuggets, who don’t want bullets shot between their eyes for food products, who don’t want their babies torn from them for the dairy industry, who don’t want to be divested of their skin and fur for clothing, who don’t want to be tortured and enslaved for entertainment. You going vegan reduces the demand for these heinous acts. You going vegan stops another contribution to animal suffering. The animals deserve better; they deserve the right to be free from unnecessary cruelty. And we promise, you won’t die from protein deficiency, you will find animal-free substitutes for every facet of daily life, and you won’t shrivel away from malnourishment.

2. Health. It isn’t just the animals who benefit from you going vegan—guess what, you do, too! Know what kills most humans? Heart disease, cancer, diabetes. Know what types of foods feed those diseases? Animal products. Know what foods support healthy cholesterol, healthy weight, and stop cancer in its tracks? Whole, plant-based foods. Go vegan, eat your veggies, and live a long, healthy life!

3. Mother Earth. Stop killing animals, get your health in check—seems like enough reason to go vegan, right? Well, here is another. Veganism supports the health of our planet, too! Farm animals require a lot of resources: land, food—not to mention the gross carbon footprint left by methane-rich cow flatulence. Go green; go vegan!

4. Hungry people. See the above point. Animal agriculture demands a lot of resources—and a lot of those could be used to feed the millions currently starving on Earth. Care about hungry children? Stop contributing to the industry that begets their sad fate.

5. Logic/reason. This kind of goes back to the first reason. Killing is wrong, right? Torture is wrong, too? Suffering shouldn’t be the norm? All of these are reasons to go vegan.

Okay, you came to your senses and realized you wanted to stop contributing to animal cruelty, wanted to live longer, wanted the Earth to last longer, and wanted to make strides to end world hunger. Great! You’ve made the first step, the commitment to a vegan lifestyle and set of ethics. But now what?

HOW TO GO VEGAN

1. Raid your cupboards, fridge, learn about sneaky ingredients. Dump out that half and half and replace it with one of Silk’s amazing almond milk creamers. Ditch the flesh burger and try a delicious Beyond Burger. Toss the fermented and aged mammary juice and gorge on Kite Hill’s yogurts or Miyoko’s mouthwatering artisan nut cheeses. It’s a great time to be vegan with lots of companies innovating all sorts of yummy substitutes. There will be some label checking in your future—particularly for the sneaky ingredients like gelatin, whey, and non-vegan D3. When in doubt, look for that V symbol or just the word: Vegan. TONS of companies have caught on to the increasing demand for vegan products and have helped make it easier for us to shop. And several sites, such as PETA’s, have lists of vegan foods that you’ve probably been eating for years and would never have guess were animal-friendly!

2. Check your closets and drawers. It isn’t just about food—several common textile materials are animal derived, too. Leather, wool, fur, and silk aren’t worth the fashion statement—not when the animals were slaughtered, stunned, and skinned for these materials. Besides, who needs skin and fur when there are so many friendly alternatives. Toss out that wool coat for something cute and acrylic! Wear faux fur and man-made pleather! Or just stick to classic cotton. The options are endless—and fashionable! Many top couture lines are ditching animal products off the runway and offering many chic alternatives that align with a vegan lifestyle!

3. Rummage through your personal care and housecleaning products. Cleaning products? Toothpaste? What’s not vegan about these, you ask? While the ingredients might seem safe, the testing behind many big name cleaning/personal products is not. That goes for toiletries, cosmetics, and even pharmaceuticals. Several name brands are using outdated animal testing practices that are not only incredibly cruel, but also useless for the products they’re selling. Rubbing nail polish remover into the eyes of rabbits doesn’t exactly tell me how quickly I can dissolve that unwanted blue nail polish, right? Nor does gassing a room full of beagles suddenly let me know cigarettes are addictive or can cause an array of health problems. Get behind cruelty free products that are not only practical for all your personal/home needs, but that leave the archaic cruelty behind.

4. Switch your idea of family fun. Obviously spending time with your family is vegan-friendly in itself—it’s just many of us grew up believing certain activities to be American pastimes without considering all the creatures involved in said activities. Zoos, rodeos, circuses—they’re all problematic. Animals enslaved, tortured to perform tricks, ripped from their natural habitats—doesn’t sound as fuzzy or heartwarming anymore, does it? What to do with your family? Try checking out circuses with willing human performers. Volunteer at a local animal rescue! Visit a farm sanctuary! Have a picnic at the park! Family fun should be fun for both human family members, and our animal friends, too!

5. Join us! You’ve done it! You’ve veganized the many facets of our life and started looking at all your actions to see if they line up with your new vegan values. So, now what? You could shout from the rooftops how easy and fun a vegan lifestyle is. You could share all the vegan memes on social media. Oh, and you could also join us at Nashville Animal Advocacy and help spread the message through activism. That could mean volunteering at animal sanctuaries, protest animal exploitation, or join us at a local vegan restaurant for camaraderie with like-minded individuals. See you there!

SEE OUR VEGAN RESOURCES PAGE FOR MORE HELP TOWARDS LIVING A COMPASSIONATE LIFESTYLE.