Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org



A Plant-Based Lifestyle Isn't Radical, It's Urgent and Simple

From Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today / Animal Emotions
January 2024

We can build a more peaceful and healthy world right now, so let’s start eating for the future we want today. A more compassionate world is just a meal away. ~ Zoe Weil

Zoe Weil
Zoe at age 16 with her friend Wooly Baba

Zoe Weil, founder of the Institute for Humane Education, wrote a thought-provoking essay that raises an important question that radiates into many others [see If You Love Pets, Why Do You Eat Pigs?]. It made me come to realize, once again, that choosing a plant-based diet—a vegan ethic—isn't radical but rather an intelligent personal choice that has wide-ranging positive effects including our health and well-being and the health of our planet.

Zoe is correct when she writes, "Our relationship with animals is full of contradictions," and one of her underlying messages asks us to consider how we deal with the cognitive dissonance associated with treating companion animals in far more compassionate ways than so-called food animals. She also correctly notes, "Vegan diets are easier than ever, and we can speed the process of building a more compassionate world."

Here are some of the issues at hand

  • Who, not what, we eat is a moral question.
  • What matters is that nonhumans can feel, not how intelligent they are.
  • There aren't degrees of sentience. An individual's pain and suffering is theirpain and suffering; within and between species comparisons are meaningless.
  • People who claim they love animals and harm and eat them need to deal with the cognitive dissonance they experience, if they do so.
  • From a United Nations Climate Action essay: "Plant-based foods—such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, peas, nuts, and lentils—generally use less energy, land, and water, and have lower greenhouse gas intensities than animal-based foods."

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

 


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