Im a vegetarian, and I dont know whether to go vegan or not?!
Answers: Ive been a vegetarian all my life, and Im considering going vegan but I dont know. The rest of my family is vegetarian only, and I generally drink soy milk over milk, but I still eat cheese (non animal rennet). I eat free range eggs as well. So the question Im trying to ask is, is there any way I can still eat cheese and drink milk, knowing the cows arent abused? How do I know that the cows are abused? And do you think/is there anything wrong from eating free range eggs? any help is appreciated
I think that the issue you should be deciding is how you can thoughtfully and healthfully eat, and not define yourself to strict eating codes. There are plenty of animal friendly products such as farmstead cheeses, yogurts, and milks that are completely beneficial to your health that do no harm to the animals at all. What you need to do is find out the sources of your food. There is nothing wrong with eating cheese from small farms where the animals are allowed to graze on grass and live natural, healthy lives. You should not be eating big industrial cheeses and milks and yogurts, like yoplait or store brand yogurts, because this milk comes from abused and sick animals. There are many farm dairy products readily avaliable in health food stores and places such as whole foods. You can look up a list of farms and even visit them to be sure you are buying from a reliable source and supporting sustainable, animal friend agricultural practices.
When it comes to eating eggs, make sure the eggs you buy and eat come from a real farm, (not a giant industrial egg factory that allows the chickens a week or two in slightly larger pens, allowing them to get the fda stamp of "free range"). Eggs from real farms are very beneficial to your health.
I recommend reading one of these books:
real food, by nina planck,
or "the real food revival" (http://www.therealfoodrevival.com/)
They are full of good information for the concious and intelligent eater.
Check out www.slowfood.org and try googling farms from your area, visiting cheese shops (they usually carry farmstead cheeses, milks, yogurts, eggs, etc), whole foods/healthfood stores, or co-ops.
I don't think it is particularily healthy to be a vegan, because the diet tends to be supplemented by many "fake foods", vitamins, and "fake meats". Balance your diet and don't deprive yourself of vital nutrients or take tons of pills to supplement your health (your body doesnt really absorb these the same it would absorb the same vitamins from say, raw farmstead cheese, fresh tomatos, kale, ev olive oil, fresh farm eggs).
I hope this wasn't too rambly. Basically, know your food, where it comes from, and how it was grown. This may seem daunting, but I promise with the help of the internet it is not. Whatever you put into your body is a very big part of your energy and health, so it is up to you to educate yourself (and hopefully others around you) on compassionate, healthy, and cruelty free ways of eating.
go vegan you're one less to killing animals and you'll lose weight
:)
I'm vegan GO VEGAN
look at this adorable pig :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bivoir/2209...
whoops that's a ginnypig :/
real pig
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesirose/49...
You can't go vegan if you're still going to eat cheese and milk. Being vegan means not eating any animal products, not - "not eating animal products from abused animals".
Make your choice - cheese, or vegan. You can't have both, sorry to say.
I don't think there is anything wrong eating free range eggs. The chickens are being looked after properly and it is entirley natural for them to lay eggs. It isn't mistreating them to later eat those eggs =)
if you think about it, is it more torture for cows to be killed and eaten, or to have to live on a crowded milk and dairy farm all their lives, all cooped up?
It's your choice. But I think being vegan is a more ethical alternative. Free range doesn't guarantee the animals are being well treated. True they may have slightly better conditions than factory farmed animals, but there aren't any strict guidelines, regulations or laws to enforce any significant improvements.
Chickens bread for "free range" eggs in most cases still end up slaughtered for meat. I'm quite sure egg laying hens (even free range ones) don't live happily in fields and die of old age. They end up in pet food or on someones dinner plate.
I also feel it isn't right to consume dairy. Cows produce milk to nurture their babies. The milk belongs to the calf, not to us. So I feel like we are robbing the calf of its nutrients.
I guess its up to you to make a decision. But they are some of the reasons I switched from veg to vegan.
Good luck....
im vegan because the mother cow is forced to be pregnant to produce milk. when the baby is born, they immedietly take it away for the veal industry. :(
the mother cow cant produce milk without this happening..
If you knew what vegan means you wouldn't ask if you "could" still eat dairy and eggs and call yourself vegan. Vegans don't eat animal products. It doesn't matter how they were resourced.
Regarding if there's anything "wrong" with eating non-factory farmed eggs, I don't care one way or the other what you eat, as long as you're not spreading misinformation by using a label that doesn't fit you.
What is the point of calling yourself vegan but not changing the way you're eating or living?
Organic” simply means drug- and chemical-free—organic animals can be subjected to all the same types of cruelty that occur in factory farms, and as long as they are not dosed with drugs or fed food that was treated with pesticides, their meat and milk can be labeled “organic.” However, because farmers are accustomed to dosing animals with drugs to make them grow larger and increase their profit margin, very few have been willing to go chemical and drug-free. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, less than 1 percent of animals raised for meat in the U.S. meets the criteria for the organic label.6 Among the farms that are chemical-free, some may continue to dose animals with drugs and then fraudulently label their animal products organic. When the European Union randomly sampled “hormone-free” cow flesh from the U.S., they found that 12 percent of the meat had been treated with powerful sex hormones that are banned in Europe.
Bottom line, you can NOT know for sure you eat organic(drug-free) cheese, milk and anything animal related.
Well, there really are no "happy" cows anymore. And free range eggs don't necessarily mean that the chickens live a good life and die painlessly.
I didn't think I could live without cheese but five years later, I'm fine. After a while you just don't want it. I gave up dairy before I gave up fish because of the casein in dairy. It is very bad for humans. Causes overproduction of mucas and is linked to cancer.
Tofutti and Vegan Gourmet make some pretty good vegan cheeses. You might want to try those after a week free of dairy cheese to help with the transition.
Good luck and just do the best you can! Don't beat yourself up. Remember to just do what makes the most difference to the animals and humans.
well lady those animals you speak of are not real animals anyways they are all hybrids man made from natural animals, but your concerns shouldn't be that, its your health that you should be worried about and eatin eggs, drinking milk, and man deffinatly drinking soy milk is not healthy, you might has well drink the cow milk and eat the eggs if you going to do that, and you being a female soy is no good (its bad enough for the males) soy will eat out your reproductive organs and damage the rest of your body. so please lady don't worry about the lables worry about your health. and if you want to add some great food to your journey that are good let me know cause there are a lot more foods that know nothing of. and ill have a list for you, cause some things we so called non-meat eaters eat are still as bad as those meat product and some are even worst. but its great to see you are on that path to a health living.
In regards to "free-range eggs", although a better alternative to caged eggs, vegan is the best alternative still - even though it's all good (apparently), for the unfertilized egg-laying chickens, they still rely upon breeding chickens to create more chickens to eventually lay the eggs - male chicks, considered useless, are sold off to grow up and be used as meat, or discarded at barely a day old - they are either thrown into bins, and suffocate under one another, burnt alive in furnaces, ground-up alive in a machine that resembles a blender, or gassed (usually used in conjunction with the first)
- If you read animal rights books, particularly ones on farmed animals, you'll learn all of this in detail
I think it's great what you've done so far, so if you have troubles becoming a vegan (if you so decide to be one), then perhaps start by cutting down, bit by bit...
Every little bit counts.