Continuing my “Five things that will turn you vegan” series (snappy title, I know), we’re turning our collective gaze from Netflix to YouTube, where brevity reigns supreme and cats are worshiped as demi-gods. These videos range from a couple of minutes to an hour long, but each is filled with information from different areas of veganism, and each is entertaining enough to hold your interest too. Simply click on the title of each post to be redirected to the video!

Beyond carnism and toward rational, authentic food choices

Melanie Joy at TEDxMünchen

Ever notice how diets like veganism, vegetarianism, or pescatarianism have these special names, but the diet they all deviate from – a ‘normal’ diet –doesn’t? Well, turns out it does – carnism. By giving it a name and exposing carnism as just another ideology, Mealanie Joy argues that it becomes easier to inspect it as an irrational behavior that contradicts our nature. Her matter-of-fact approach, combined with the wealth of research she has undertaken into the psychology of eating meat, makes this a TED Talk that has changed many people’s lives irreversibly.

“Every day we engage in a behaviour that requires us to distort our thoughts, numb our feelings, and act against our core values…And every day, we could choose not to engage in this behaviour.”

Short film by Lifelong Fitness

“He’s not your normal seventy-seven year old”, says one of Jim Morris’s many admirers, and he’s not wrong. In this short documentary the septuagenarian hunk proves that you don’t need animal protein to pile on the muscle – that is, in case the elephant, rhinoceros, or hippopotamus weren’t proof enough already. Morris has also invoked the often-overlooked argument for matter-over-mind: adopting a vegan diet for health reasons allowed him to open his mind to the ethical arguments taking place n the animal rights movement, which further cemented his dedication to a plant-based lifestyle.

“No matter what his age may be, he’s young… He’s not your normal 77 year old.”

For those health-nuts out there, Rip Esselstyn is here to tell you once and for all to cut the meat, cut the dairy, cut the eggs, and thrive on the nutrient-dense plants you were built to eat. A small-town firefighter from Texas, Rip and his co-workers transformed their fire station into a ‘House of Health’, and his observations on the importance of community and a support network in maintaining a healthy diet are really worth listening to. He also explores the role habit plays in losing weight, making the point that, quite simply, if you don’t have crap food in your house, you can’t cave in and eat it without thinking, and it becomes a lot easier to fight the ‘five-headed dragon’ of diseases that plague the modern day American diet.

“As far as protein’s concerned, it’s a boogie man… the medical term for a protein deficiency is kwashiorkor, and you don’t know it, and you don’t even have to mess with it.”

The Most Important Speech You Will Ever Hear

Gary Yourofsky

One of the world’s most prolific and controversial vegan activists, Gary Yourofsky tells us at the onset of his speech that “people eat meat, cheese, milk and eggs for four reasons: habit, tradition, convenience, taste.” He then proceeds to systematically deconstruct each of these behaviours in a comprehensive and eloquent speech that leaves no stone unturned in arguing for a plant-based lifestyle. Though his approach is not for everyone, it’s safe to say that Yourofsky has turned more people vegan than almost anybody on the planet, giving hundreds of lectures in schools and colleges ever year to thousands of individuals. When an audience member uploaded his talk to YouTube in 2011, that figure exploded to millions. Yourofsky has since re-uploaded the video himself with subtitles in thirty-three languages for maximum-efficiency activism. Give it a watch – it really could change your life.

“…Everybody talks a good game. I’ve noticed that people are quite the smooth talkers when it comes to peace and compassion… but veganism: this is now a chance to actually walk the compassionate walk that everybody’s always talking about.”

Newsnight

Though it might seem counter-intuitive to include a video of a squirrel being eaten in this list, George Monbiot’s argument is hard to fault. Consuming roadkill or animals dead of natural, he says, takes you out of a system which fuels climate change and animal cruelty, whilst simultaneously giving you access to small amounts of meat containing zero anti-biotics, chemicals and other bad stuff. This replicates the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whose meat intake was drastically lower than most modern humans. If you don’t view the body as a fundamentally sacred thing (after all, even if we don’t eat a dead animal, other things certainly will), it’s a hard argument to refute. Just don’t expect me to do the same to a dead person.

“I regard almost all farmed meat as unethical.”

Side-note: Monbiot’s book Feral is really worth your time if this kind of ‘rewilding’ interests you.