Could this be my most controversial Substack post out of all 55? In my experience of being a vegan, quite possibly. People hate the implication that they’re living their lives wrongly. And by suggesting they should go vegan, you’re implying that their current diet is bad not only for animals, but also for the planet and for their own health. No wonder people get defensive.
So I’ll just lay out the case for veganism and not point fingers. Especially not fish fingers.
The case for health: you’ll live longer
You might well prefer bacon and sausages to a lifetime of veganism. But a lifetime of veganism will be longer (or, as the joke goes, it’ll just feel like it).
A study of Seventh Day Adventists published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal in 2013 discovered that ‘vegans have a 9% lower risk of death from all causes compared with omnivores’.
Then there was another 2022 study in the BMJ, which found that ‘higher intake of total protein was associated with a lower risk of all cause mortality, and intake of plant protein was associated with a lower risk of all cause and cardiovascular disease mortality. Replacement of foods high in animal protein with plant protein sources could be associated with longevity.’
We also know from this 2022 University of Oxford study that vegans are less likely to get cancer, as ‘compared with regular meat-eaters, the risk of developing any type of cancer was lower in low meat-eaters (2% less), fish-eaters (10% less), and vegetarians (14% less).’
And sure, Kingsley Amis once quipped that ‘No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home.’ But with several of the elderly people I know who died of cancer (including my daughter’s paternal grandparents), it struck in their early seventies, when they were still living independently. I reckon they’d have liked a few more years with their grandkids.
There are people who claim ‘we’ve evolved to eat meat’. Quite the opposite - we’ve evolved away from eating meat. We aren’t cavemen anymore, and meat damages our health. There’s a saying: ‘Eat dead meat, become dead meat.’
Sure, some forms of meat are worse for us than others - processed, cured and smoked meats such as bacon, salami and other sausages are worse than, say, poultry. Organic, free-range, grass-fed animals are of course better for us than their factory-farmed equivalents.
However, the fact remains that overall, meat is bad for us.
The case for animals: why contribute to suffering?
The average Brit is incredibly inconsistent when it comes to animals. They’ll dote on cats and dogs, and spew hatred and death threats at anyone who harms them, such as the infamous lady who put a cat in the bin.
But they’ll also happily tuck into a fry-up or a Sunday roast. They think vegans and vegetarians are weird and don’t understand them. The Royle Family clip where Nana asks Antony’s vegetarian girlfriend, ‘Can you have wafer-thin ham?’ sums up the latter.
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