TL;DR: Veganism is a good choice ethically, environmentally, health-wise, and for other reasons like individual and collective cost. Veganism just makes sense.

I’m Lucas Gelfond, I’m 15 years old, and I’m interested in veganism. I’m currently a vegetarian and I’m looking to transition to full veganism in the next year.

Whenever this comes up — whether it be a friend telling someone else or someone questioning my decision to not eat meat that is being served, I’m met with ridicule and question. Rather than responding as I usually do — fumbling with my phone to quote facts and getting into a full-blown argument, I thought I would explain it all here. In writing.

Background

I will be the first to admit that meat is delicious. While there is some meat that I would never eat even if the moral, ethical, and health implications weren’t present (fast food, deep fried anything, etc), I loved a good steak or burger. I also loved my seafood, whether it be oysters, salmon, or sushi. Meat made my tastebuds water, and because my parents and many around me ate meat I didn’t question it. I was convince that eating meat was normal and essential — slaughter could be humane, I needed it for health, etc.

When I was in 6th grade (12 years old, in 2013) one of my younger cousins decided she was going to go vegetarian. Her entire immediate family ate meat, and a lot. I was over to their house for all of the Christmas Ham, burger and hot dog barbecues and all. I was intrigued by her decision. I thought about it for a little bit and I agreed with her — on a basic ethical level, I didn’t agree with eating meat, especially after seeing videos of how human-like animals could be. It was very upsetting to think that I was voluntarily harming and killing these animals and as such I cut out meat from my diet entirely. For 6 months. But I played a sport every Friday with friends that often ended in a Five Guys (fast food) stop and with constant pressure from friends and family, along with nothing other than my basic thoughts about immorality, I felt alone and defenseless. One night I caved and I started eating meat again. I ate meat for the next three years.

I don’t know when or how I started thinking about veganism. Maybe it was repeated trips up to my younger cousin’s house (who had moved away but we still saw quite often) who had been a pescetarian for nearly four years now, despite being in 6th grade. I do remember watching some videos about veganism that an athlete that I knew was making. Coincidentally, this athlete was in the same sport that I was in when I stopped going vegetarian. I watched a video one day — I believe it was this one, and was so compelled that I decided I would go vegan. But quickly, faced with the harsh reality of the difficulty of going vegan, I decided I would go vegetarian, but after having little success I went pescetarian. This pescetarianism (mine including seafood like crab and oyster) was much easier for me and very attainable. I’ve kept it religiously (to the best of my abilities, there have been accidents but all unintentional) and have done so since then (September 28th, 2015). Except in rare occasions — theme parks, street food, I’ve had very little trouble keeping it at all, always having good food as an option.

After subscribing to Reddit’s /r/vegan I wanted more. There was the same forces making me want to stop — tasty food, pressures around me (especially about nutrition and my height potential, being a short person), but I persevered on. One day, in my biology class, we did a nutrition project in which we had to track our nutrition for two days and see the result. I was over my protein levels for both days and managed to stay healthy on my newfound pescetarian diet. With new evidence under my belt about its healthiness, I decided that I would go vegan for a week as a birthday (May 8) present to myself. For a lot of reasons. So I did it. Religiously. And it wasn’t too bad. I made it a full 6 days before giving up on Saturday. It wasn’t terrible.

Tomorrow, I go vegetarian (no fish or seafood) indefinitely and vegan for two weeks. I’m tracking my nutrition to prove that it is healthy for my physician and parents. And I couldn’t be more excited. After these two weeks, after I can prove that I can get my essential nutrients to my parents (scientifically), I plan to ease myself in to a fully vegan diet.

Veganism appeals to me because it is (at least in my opinion) the correct choice on so many levels. It’s ethical, environmental, and health implications are powerful. And I care about them all.

Ethics

Ethically, I can’t justify what happens in the meat industry. I don’t think it’s just to slaughter an animal simply to satisfy our desires (it is unnecessary, we can survive without animals on a vegan diet). There’s also a whole lot of horror including torture, artificial insemination, and more that occur in animal agriculture that I won’t mention because of their graphic nature but are quick to convince anyone of the wrongness of animal agriculture. Rather than listing off abuses of animal agriculture (which you can find very easily from organizations like PETA and others, I may edit this to add examples of these later) I’ve decided to debunk some vegan myths instead.

There’s a whole lot of arguments that carnists make to me that I think don’t make sense, simply from an ethical standpoint. I’ll quickly try to address them here. Props to YourVeganFallacyIs.com for being my constant consultant when I’m asked these sort of things. Some of their stuff is here, paraphrased in brief:

Simply because animals eat animals, that doesn’t make our animal consumption just. Animals do many things that we (hopefully) unanimously consider to be unethical like rape and as such cannot be considered the ethical gold standard for us to model ourselves on.

Despite having a historical basis for eating meat, we do not need to anymore. Despite our canine teeth and our ancestors who ate meat, while we can eat meat, we no longer have a need for it. We can all live perfectly healthily on a vegan diet that makes no use of animal products and as such our consumption of animal products is only voluntary and for our enjoyment. Despite our past, we now have the capability to survive on a vegan diet and stop animal suffering, so why don’t we?

The dairy and egg industries are unethical as well. In both, females are kept while males are discarded at birth (often killed in grinders and such) because only females can produce milk and eggs. This also breaks up families which, to no surprise, causes emotional toll.

Veganism is a movement. With 5% of the US being vegetarian and half of that being vegan, going vegan, while seemingly trivial in the 7 billion people on Earth, one person going vegan can have monumental effect when combined with all of the other vegans in the world. While one person’s contribution individually may have little impact, there is a collective impact and by dividing the collective impact by number of vegans, we can see that each person does have a measurable positive impact on the issues that non-vegan diets contribute to.

Veganism also can be perfectly healthy. Animals do not produce their own chemical energy (unlike plants) and instead depend on eating plants and other animals for nutrition. They cannot produce anything other than what they are given initially (conservation of mass) and we can deduce that because of this we can get these same nutrients by skipping animals entirely and eating plants (the only way animals get energy) directly. There are some vitamins/nutrients — B12, B3, and others that are harder to find from non-animal sources because the animals synthesize these vitamins/nutrients themselves, but they are always available in other ways like fortified cereals and such or supplements.

Eating meat is also not one’s personal choice. It affects all of us because of its impact on the environment and in that it hurts an animal directly. When one hurts another organism, it no longer is just their choice. And one cannot claim to love and protect animals as a carnist because they actively fund the torture (in addition to the previous abuses listed, artificial insemination, cattle prodding, and other terrible conditions that I will not link here because they are so horrific and graphic) and abuse of animals.

There’s also many straw men arguments presented as well. On a deserted island, it is nearly impossible that a vegan’s only choice would be to eat meat — for animals to exist feasibly, there would need to be some sort of plant sustenance on this fictional island as well. And the idea that if we were to stop eating animals that they would overpopulate the Earth and or would go extinct simply doesn’t make any sense.

Overall, I do not feel ethically comfortable funding, promoting, and allowing the systemic torture and abuse of animals. While I will not link material about abuse because it is so graphic, it is in abundance and can easily be found in documentaries like Earthlings and from organizations like PETA.

Health

As many have said, dairy is unnecessary to our diet. Large organizations also agree with a general meat and dairy cut down, including the American Dietic Association, Mayo Clinic (skip to “The health factor”),Harvard University, and others. Acclaimed movie Forks Over Knives also argues that plant based diets in other countries account for their lack of diseases like heart disease and more. I recommend watching the trailer.

The Environment

The United Nations considers diets with meat and dairy unsustainable when coupled with overpopulation, and this UN report as quoted by the Guardian also mentions that “Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions”.

On a basic scientific level as well, meat and dairy are nonsensical. In short, much energy is lost when it moves from plants up through the food chain. A rule called the rule of 10 states that only 10% of energy makes it through each stage of the food chain. In essence, without jargon, eating animals uses at least 10 times as many plants/as much energy as eating plants directly. This incredible inefficiency as demonstrated by the rule of ten can be eliminated by eating from plants directly. As population surges, eliminating this inefficiency is critical to feeding the world.

The documentary “Cowspiracy” (trailer) covers this well. Their website also has a good list of facts including that animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases, livestock and byproducts account for 51% (32 billion tons of CO2), and that “Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide — a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide”.

Other Effects

Going vegan, along with these three main reasons has more effects as well. Vegan diets are often quite inexpensive and there are many economic vegetarians. By eating nutrient dense foods like lentils (USDA avg $1.39/lb), black beans (USDA avg. $1.49/lb) and other protein and nutrient dense foods, much money can be saved in opposition to ground beef (BLS avg. $3.85/lb) and cheddar cheese (BLS avg $4.83/lb) as an example. In addition, circumstantially, when this Business Insider writer ate on $2/day for a month, nearly all of their food was vegan simply because of cost.

This is in addition to the global economic incentive of $1.6 trillion for dropping meat

While there are other effects of being vegan, like the claim that many make that veganism feels better (which I noticed during my vegan week, whether or not it was a placebo), few have scientific or logical backing (unlike the points from before) and aren’t nearly as significant as those stated before.

Wrap-up

Overall, veganism just makes sense. Whether it be for the ethical, environmental, health, or other (including economic) effects, veganism is good on so many levels. There are pitfalls no doubt — difficulty of eating at some restaurants (which is getting better as vegetarians and vegans increase in number) and taste (which is also rapidly improving), its pros heavily outweigh its cons.

Going vegan is often met with much backlash, despite its positive effects mostly because many are accustomed to meat and don’t want to be brought to harsh ethical, environmental, and health realities that a meat, dairy, and egg based diet presents. I hope this post serves to at least help a little bit, no matter how infinitesimally small that bit is to defend veganism and to clear up some misconceptions.

This is why I want to be and will eventually be vegan — for the many positive effects and for the relative ease of starting (just a change in diet!). So now I ask you, the reader — what is stopping you?