were the facts that we faced four years ago, that led us, as extremely devoted lifelong meat eaters, to make the decision we made. We loved the taste of meat and dairy, but that didn’t sit right with us. We wanted to make a change. So we went vegan.
That’s all the bad news out of the way. Now for the good news.
Making the decision to cut animal products out of our diet was the best decision we ever made. It’s not restrictive. We eat a wonderful variety of foods and have all the flavours and choices we want.
Since becoming vegan we’ve both become infinitely more open-minded about our food choices. Closing the door on meat, dairy and fish has enabled us to open up a thousand other exciting plant-based doors. Our attitude to food now is far more broad-minded than ever before and, as a direct result, our diet is more diverse than we would ever have imagined.
Ian especially really enjoys ‘veganising’ dishes, and cooking delicious vegan food has become our hobby, passion and our job. When we nail a brand new dish, and we mean really nail it, we get a dizzy sense of satisfaction. High-fives, fist-pumps and whoops are all commonplace in our kitchen. One of the dishes we’re most proud of is our Crispy Chilli Tofu, which mimics one of Henry’s old pre-vegan favourites, Crispy Chilli Beef, perfectly.
Contrary to what the media would have us believe, choosing to become vegan is a powerful and motivating change, and it is actually really easy to do. The power to save the planet is literally in your hands.
Taking shorter showers or using your bathwater to flush the toilet will all have a great impact. Replacing your toothbrush with a wooden one and cycling everywhere will help in so many ways, too. But avoiding meat and dairy is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on the Earth. A plant-based diet – or a more plant-based diet – is better for the planet and will drastically reduce your annual carbon footprint.
Even the least sustainable plant-based food is more sustainable than the most sustainable animal products.[39] That’s something we like to remind ourselves if we ever worry about using ingredients that have questionable sustainability or have travelled far.
A global switch to more veggie-focused diets could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds and save 8 million lives by 2050.[40]
Red meat is responsible for 10 to 40 times as many greenhouse gas emissions as veggies and grains. [41] Beef creates up to 105kg of greenhouse gases per 100g of meat, compared to tofu which produces less than 3.5kg.[42]
Put simply, cows create a lot of methane – basically they fart and burp a lot. Feeding cows grass is a very powerful way to create greenhouse gases. And dairy is not off the hook either. It takes about 1,000 litres of water to make 1 litre of dairy milk, compared to 297 litres for the same amount of soy milk.[43] The least sustainable plant-based milk is significantly more sustainable, from the perspective of emissions, land use and carbon footprint, than the most sustainable dairy milk.[44]
It’s also worth noting that by supporting dairy production, you are still supporting meat production.
They are part of the same manufacturing process, subject to the same questionable welfare issues, and retired dairy cows are often used for meat. It’s not much of a life …
People love dairy though. Cold milk on cereal, melted cheese on toast, clotted cream on scones, milk chocolate, whey protein, lattes … the list goes on and on. For a lot of people, dairy’s a difficult thing to kick because it’s everywhere. A couple of hours spent reading blog posts and watching videos that highlight the problems that surround the dairy industry in terms of ethics, health and the environment should show you that dairy isn’t all that cool.
Dairy alternatives have really improved over the past couple of years and, as they get more popular, which they will, the products available are only going to get even better, making the transition away from dairy much easier. See here for more on the plant-based alternatives that we enjoy regularly.
SO HOW EXACTLY DOES EATING VEGAN HELP?
All the energy we ingest through food has, originally, come from plants. This is the energy cycle we learned about in school. We are able to harvest and eat those plants to get all the energy, nutrients, minerals and vitamins we need from them (more on this later).
When we rear animals for eating, we take this efficient form of plant energy and use it to sustain animals, like cows and sheep, so we can eat them later. This is much less efficient! Also, since animals are living creatures, most of their food is actually used for energy for their own day-to-day activity. Only a tiny fraction of the nutrients and energy in the food they eat ends up in the meat we buy. Cows convert only 4% of the proteins and 3% of the calories of the plants we feed them into beef[45] – 97% of the calories they consume is completely lost to us. To produce 1kg of beef requires over 13,000 litres of water, a water footprint six times larger than for pulses.[46] Meat accounts for 22% of all water use.[47]
According to researcher Joseph Poore, from Oxford University, about 55% of the world’s land is farmed, and 80–85% of this is used to raise animals.[48] If as much of the land currently set aside for grazing animals regrows as trees, it will help remove carbon from the atmosphere – it is estimated there could be a reduction in greenhouse gases by as much as 30–50%. In addition, more than a billion extra tons of food crops could go to humans if we stopped feeding them to animals. [49]
So not only is a plant-based diet better for the planet in terms of the processes involved in rearing animals, but it can free up land for animals to live naturally again, and trees can grow in those spaces, which can then start to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. This is still the best approach for getting carbon out of the atmosphere – known as rewilding. It involves restoring natural forests, mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass beds. These natural habitats are the best way researchers have identified of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And it would solve both climate breakdown and the extinction of species at the same time.[50]
Of course, we’re not suggesting it’s as simple as everyone, worldwide, stopping eating meat and redistributing the grain set aside to feed animals to hungry people while we all start planting trees. At the global level we need to consider the complexities of politics, the mechanisms of food distribution and the realities of farmers’ livelihoods. And at the local level we need to consider things like soil health, crop cycling and animal habitats.
We’re not claiming there’s some kind of magic solution, but the answer lies in this direction. These facts go to show how inefficient our current main choice of protein is, and why it’s literally chewing up the Earth’s resources.
WHAT ABOUT THE FARMER?
