Experimenting with food
At first, going vegan seems like it limits your food options. However, you soon realise that it just forces you to think outside of the box and get experimental with food, rather than repeating the same old boring meals over and over again because it’s what you know. I recently made brownies with chickpeas, using a recipe I found from an online vegan blogger, and although it sounded suspicious, it was extra gooey and therefore amazing!
Health
Cheese, milk and meat are all proven in various ways to be very unhealthy. There are scientific journals dedicated to proving this sort of thing, and as I’m not qualified to make any such factual assertions (you can go and search it on the web), I can tell you instead that when you cut out dairy, you feel like a whole new person. If you’ve been trying to lose weight for years using all sorts of different diets, look no further! Going vegan has an almost immediate weight loss effect, but it also makes you less lethargic, so you have the energy to go out and exercise.
Animal welfare
This is an obvious one, and the purpose of this article is not to lecture on animal ethics. However, if you aren’t comfortable with the notion of killing an animal yourself for food, perhaps it would be better for your mental wellbeing to try, you know, not letting someone else kill animals for your food. Think on it.
You still get a wide variety of food
Although you can get experimental, there are also a lot of vegan meat and dairy substitutes you can use, including sausages, bacon, mayonnaise, cheese sauce for macaroni cheese, and almost uncountable varieties of milk (soy, almond, oat, rice, coconut…). I recently made a vegan toad in the hole, and it was really, really yummy. You can get the recipe here.
It’s good for your budget
Some vegan substitutes can be expensive, but if you’re sticking to basic ingredients like beans, lentils and chickpeas, then a vegan diet is ridiculously cheap. See if your university has a food co-op, because if it does then they will sell those sorts of basic ingredients at cost price and in bulk.
It’s better for the environment
The livestock industry accounts for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, eight percent of global human water use, antibiotic resistance, vast amounts of deforestation, and overfishing, to name just a few. You can read this report to find out more about the environmental impact of raising animals for meat and dairy, but with figures like these, you can see why going vegan is such a great way to love the planet.
