Why are you vegan?

I’ve heard this question quite a bit in the last year and a half of my veganism. And, well, it’s a difficult question to answer since my veganism stems from a deep range of materials and experiences: books, research papers, and documentaries, as well as conversations and self-experimentation.

But as an engineer, I aim to both understand my rationale for going vegan and simplify it into a set of logical statements. So, by coalescing my research and experiences, I’ve created a set of three simple statements (with supporting references) that represent the fundamental arguments that brought me to veganism:

It’s unnecessary for humans to consume animal products, i.e. we can thrive on a vegan diet [1, 2, 3].

Consuming animal products is one of the largest individual contributions to climate change [4, 5, 6].

Consuming animal products results in slaughtering ~75 billion sentient farm animals each year — animals that want to live [7, 8].

Restating the above three points whose evidence I provide below: consuming animal products is unnecessary and causes destruction to the environment as well as billions of sentient animals. And while I initially didn’t fully understand this logic, the research discussed in the “Further discussion” section below led me to understand that veganism was a logical conclusion that I couldn’t overlook.

∴ I do not consume animal products

Of course, there was also a part of me that had a lot of subjective thoughts/questions about veganism, and resources such as http://yvfi.ca helped me navigate these channels.

And it turns out there’s a lot of really amazing vegan food: like nachos with delicious walnut meat and cashew cheese!

Further discussion:

The first three references and discussions here address the point “Humans can thrive on a vegan diet”, the second three references and discussions address the point “Consuming animal products is one of the largest individual contributions to climate change,” and the final two references and discussions address “Consuming animal products results in slaughtering ~75 billion sentient farm animals each year — animals that want to live.”