You Shouldn’T Really Be Vegan
With thousands of posts and tweets online claiming that being vegan is for the best, is it really true? According to the Dalhousie University located in Halifax, Nova Scotia there are about 2. 3 vegans in Canada (with British Columbia being the most popular), 2. 5 of that 2. 3 percent are located here in Ontario. Many people blindly choose this lifestyle because of the questionable claims that a diet without meats claims. Although limiting your meat consumption provides valuable benefits to your health, completely cutting it out is far worse than a diet with “too” much meat. In this essay I will be talking about how a vegan diet is actually for the worse with the following reasons, it's bad for your health e. g. not enough protein and protein quantity, not enough fats, not enough Essential Minerals, its bad for the environment e. g. too much demand, food scraps and its not worth it e. g. reduces global warming, reduces animal production, Makes you feel better in your body.
The most widely known problem with a vegan diet is the lack of protein vegans consume. Beef, lamb, fish and chicken have around 16 - 30 grams of protein per 100 grams of the product. Meanwhile the main sources of protein for a vegan diet (vegetables, beans soy, rice etc) contain around 5-10 grams of protein per product. Even though there are more concentrated sources of protein they either do not contain as much protein as meats or contain too much-unneeded stuff. For example a common choice to boost your protein intake for vegans is hemp protein powder. Although HPP (hemp protein powder) contains about 15 grams of protein per 30 grams, it contains large amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). This is bad because a study the US National library of medicine and the national institution of health has associated excessive intake of HPP can lead to cancer.
A vegan diet also has low protein quality. Protein quality is important for muscle growth and weight loss. Which is a main reason why people turn vegan. It is also good for bone density. Also the higher quality of protein found in animals is better/ more easily absorbed by the body compared to protein derived from plants. Overall protein makes Hair and Nails and your body uses protein to build and repair tissue and a vegan diet lacks you from this. On top of protein it is also tricky to get certain fats with a vegan diet. Although there are many great was to get healthy fats with a vegan lifestyle e. g. olive oil, soybean oil avocado, almonds etc these foods also contain unneeded and unwanted things such as what was brought up before PUFA. Almost all oils that are found in vegans foods are oils that are high in PUFA. Oils such as soybean oil, rice oil, margarine, vegetable oil, sunflower oil and flaxseed oils are all oils that contain high quantities of PUFA.
Vegan diets also lack certain important fats such as CLA (conjugated linoleic acid ) which is mainly found in beef, butter and eggs. CLA helps you lose body fat, improve insulin function and helps build muscle. Another fat that vegans lack is DHA ( Docosahexaenoic acid). DHA is a fatty acid that is mainly found in fish such as wild salmon, sardines and mackerel. Although it is possible to get this fat through fish oil, it is in very poor quality. Another reason why you should go vegan is because it may cause disease such as Cancer, Type 2 diabetes and Bone Health. Vegans consume a considerate amount of fruits and vegetables, which is known to protect the body from many different types of cancers, but a new study shows that an excessive intake of legumes (an essential food that vegans consume), soy and can lead to prostate cancer. Bone health may also be a issue you might want to consider before you turn vegan. Although studies in the past have shown no difference between vegans and omnivores in bone density, a new study says something different. New evidence shows that woman's hip/spine bone mineral density was significantly lower in long-term vegans. They believe this is the cause of a lower calcium and protein intake since the lacking of this mineral is known to be associated with bone fractures and bone loss in the elderly resource from the EPIC-Oxford study on vegans also backs up this claim that the lower bone mineral density results are due to the lack of protein and calcium.
Many people choose to become vegan not only for the health benefits, but for the benefits to the environment. Many believe that if we all become vegan animal production will stop and the environment will naturally heal itself, but this is far from the truth. A study by the US National Academy of Sciences shows that if the entire population would turn vegan. It would leave many people insufficient of many different nutrients, a demand that we can uphold. People also do not take into consideration that many of the fruits and plants vegans consume do not grow in your local farm, instead it has to be shipped from across the globe which is far worse for the environment than consuming a chicken from your local farm. As more and more people become vegan in Canada and the us the demand for greens by the western world becomes too excessive for the producers since they also depend on it themselves, an example of this is Kenya. On Tuesday January 23 Kenya temporarily banned the importation of avocado (a food vegans usually buy) because the country's advocate supply was at risk. The Agriculture and Food Authority of Kenya said that the average price of a 90kg-bag of avocados had reached 2, 560 Kenyan shillings which is 26 Canadian dollars. Kenya is not the only country to be affected by the demand of the western world. Australia and Mexican avocado supply has been shifted due to the demand by vegans. A vegan diet is also known to produce too much food waste, a problem that is already getting too bigger by the day. The IME (Institution of Mechanical Engineers) had done a study that found that between 30% and 50% (1. 2-2bn tonnes of food) produced around the world will never be eaten. Also in the UK 30 percent of vegetable crops are not harvested due to failing to meet retailers expectation. This is the current situation, and with more and more people turning vegan everyday it will just add to the problem. "If you stop eating beef, you can't replace a kilogram of it, which has 2, 280 calories, with a kilogram of broccoli, at 340 calories. You have to replace it with 6. 7 kilograms of broccoli, " Tamar Haspel wrote last year for the Washington Post. "Calories are the great equaliser, and it makes sense to use them as the basis of the calculation. "
Another current problem that would just worsen if people were to become vegan is the amount of resources being vegan actually takes up. Although it is true that a vegan diet would take up far less land then a (researchers found out using biophysical simulation models that a vegan diet would take up about 0. 5 acres while a human's diet that consisted of meats currently would take up about 2. 5) non vegan diet, it might not be this true when applied to the entire population. This is because we use different types of land to farm and grow different kinds of foods. The three main types of land are Grazing land which is usually not able to grow crops, therefore, is used by animals to eat and roam (animals such as cows and horses), Perennial cropland where crops are grown year round and then harvested usually hay and grain are grown to feed the animals, and Cultivated cropland where you find vegetables, fruits, nuts all foods that a vegan needs. Researchers were surprised to find out that the vegan diet was the only diet not able to be farmed on perennial cropland whereas the animal diet would be able to survive on all three types of land. This, in turn, would waste a lot of food since perennial cropland accounts for about a quarter of the worlds agricultural land.
Another resource that is being wasted with a vegan diet is energy. New research from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that eating greens is actually worse than eating meats. Paul Fischbeck, professor of social and decisions sciences and engineering and public policy said “Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon, ” “Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken”. Fischbeck, Michelle Tom, a Ph. D. student in civil and environmental engineering, and Chris Hendrickson, the Hamerschlag University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studied the food supply chain to determine how the food demand by the western world is affecting the environment. Specifically, they studied how growing, processing and transporting food, food sales, and service, and household storage and use take a toll on resources in the form of energy use and GHG emissions. They came to a conclusion that when eating the more healthier foods that are recommended by the US Department of Agriculture's (which is extremely similar to a vegan diet) energy use went up by 38 percent and GHG emissions by 6 percent. Another main resource that is wasted is water. About 550bn cubic meters of water is wasted globally in growing crops that never reach the consumer and the demand for fresh water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion cubic meters a year by 2050. Even though it is true that vegans have a lower freshwater food mark, similar to before if it were to be applied to the world the results would be much different. The study listed above by Michelle Tom and Chris Hendrickson also found out that freshwater footprint would go up by 9 percent.
In conclusion becoming vegan would be actually for the worst many reasons. For one it would be bad for your body your body would be lacking protein since protein and protein quality is lacking in a vegan diet. You may also be at risk of health problems such as cancer and bone health. It would negatively affect the environment since there would be too much demand for fruits and vegetables and it would create too much waste. Finally, it takes up too many resources such as land, energy, and water. Although limiting your meat consumption would be good completely cutting it out should not be a choice.
