How do you know if someone's a vegan? Don't worry they'll tell you!
Hey guys! So, not to make that very very lame joke true but I have decided to take on the
vegan diet/lifestyle for the month of October. Why just for the month of October you maybe
asking. Well to be completely honest, and since YouTube
is a place to be ourselves. It's because I'm afraid of failure.
No, but really, I am just such an all or nothing kind of person that once I commit to something
I will kind of go crazy and be really extreme about it.
I wanted to give myself a month to learn what it was going to be like to actual be a vegan.
What parts were going to be difficult, what parts wouldn't be so difficult.
And allow myself to mess up or accidentally eat animal products without getting mad at
myself or whatever. I'm telling you I take things way too extreme.
So I'm giving myself a month goal of sticking to it.
If I mess up, that's okay! It's going to be a learning process.
And I also maybe, a little bit, wanted a potential cop out in case at the end of the month I
thought this was awful. But turns out the month of October is vegetarian
awareness month I believe, and November first is National Vegan Day, or something. So if
I give up on Vegan Day that'll be really sad. So I'm hoping I can stick to this.
Currently, as I'm recording this video, it's been exactly one week of no animal products
whatsoever in my diet. And I gotta say, I'm feeling pretty good.
It hasn't been too hard. There haven't been many times where I'm just annoyed that I can't
eat something. Little disclaimer though, I already really
don't eat a lot of meat, so it's not a huge transition for me to cut out dairy products
that are in my diet. So it wasn't this big drastic change for me
so far. The main point for this video though is to
explain why I've decided to embrace the vegan lifestyle, at least for a month.
And also what that might mean for this channel. It's somewhat scary though to think completely
different than almost everything I was taught from the moment I was born.
I was always taught that you needed animal products for protein and milk to be strong
and you would eat eggs for breakfast everyday. That was just the way we were taught to think,
so I didn't really know any different. To hear the complete opposite of those ideas
really changed my thinking and honestly was terrifying.
At the same time as a communications major in college, my main focus was rhetoric and
being able to take the words, images, ideas that are being presented to you, look past
the surface level and really find the truth and make your own opinions. Not just based
on what is given to you. So that's what I decided to do!
In the past I didn't really think much of vegans.
Not positive or negative, I just didn't really think of the idea much.
Other than that it seemed maybe like unrealistic and unnecessary.
I just saw vegans as extreme animal lovers and having really intense willpower.
About two years ago. I just kept stumbling upon so much pro-vegan information. I kind
of couldn't avoid my ignorance anymore. This lead to me watching tons of documentaries
based on what you eat, where it comes from, how it effects your body and what not.
And with each documentary my ideas and feelings towards veganism really grew more and more
and more. Some of these documentaries are: Food Inc.,
Forks Over Knives, Vegucation, Cowspiracy, and 101 Reasons To Go Vegan, which is actually
a presentation online. You can watch it on YouTube.
I will link all of those documentaries below. You can watch most of them, I believe, on
Netflix or on Youtube, but I will put everything below so you can check it all out.
After watching these I had three main issues that were really sticking in my mind.
Those are my health, animal cruelty and our environment.
Now I don't want to rant at all and tell you why you should be a vegan. I'm not trying
to push this on anyone by any means. I just want to explain what pushed me over the edge to try this.
Obviously health is important to me.
I want to live a long life where my body is healthy enough to do what I want it to do.
I good example of how health is related to being a vegan is the topic of milk.
I'm sure everyone's seen those "Got Milk?" ads but what most people don't know is that
under the Federal Dairy Promotion Program, dairy farmers are actually forced to pay for
those ads. The American government literally tells us
that we need to drink milk in order to be strong and grow.
And this isn't even true. Studies have actually shown that milk might
be depleting the calcium levels in our bones. Wait, what?
Now isn't that opposite of what we're told? Yes, yes it is.
So here's what happens. Your body needs to maintain a certain PH.
Now milk raises the acid levels in your body. To fix this, your body compensates by using
calcium to balance out those levels. Where does it get the calcium?
Your bones. When I read that I was like...
I got nothing. That doesn't make any sense to me.
So after all milk might not be the best source of our calcium, if it's taking calcium out
of our body. There are plenty of other ways to get calcium,
be strong and have your muscles grow. Not to mention, milk is intended for a ninety
pound calf to drink and grow eight times that. Eight times that!
Just while it's drinking the milk. It then stop drinking the milk.
So the cows aren't even drinking the milk when they're older.
Why are we drinking another species milk through our whole entire adult life hood.
It doesn't really add up anymore now does it.
There are tons of other health issues that I found but for sake of time, let's move on.
Sadly there are endless videos and images depicting how just disgraceful ninety to ninety-five
percent of the animals are treated that are eventually going to become the food on our
plate. I don't know about you guys but putting that
bad energy and sad, sick animals into your system doesn't feel right and can't be good
for you. Watching these videos is so horrific. Half
the time I find myself looking away. I can't even bear to watch what they do to
these animals. It is just disgusting.
However, these videos would effect me for a couple days, it would honestly make me sick.
The one time I watched one right before my mom was making dinner, and it was some kind
of animal product. And I couldn't eat it! I was like, not doing
it tonight! But I guess just because it's been embedded
in me that that's just what we do and that's just how the world is, I would get over it.
Shortly after watching these videos I'd find myself going back to eating a chicken sandwich
or bacon for breakfast or whatever. I don't know why we're so desensitized to
it that it was okay. Even though I know that they're being treated
so horribly, I continued to eat the food. I kind of just figured, oh it's fine. I'll
eat free-range, it'll be okay, those animals are treated well. Everything's okay and right
and good. That's not how it works.
Even free-range doesn't really mean anything. At most they get a couple more inches of room.
In certain parts of the world eating dogs and cats is a delicacy, but most Americans
would find that absolutely repulsive and disgusting. But where's the discrepancy between a dog
and a pig. We're just conditioned to see one as a pet
and one as dinner. Overall my current view is that if I'm not
willing to go and do what is done to those animals before I eat, then I really don't
have a right to eat it. My final push towards veganism came in the
form of this mind-blowing, amazing documentary called Cowspiracy.
Just to real quickly summarize, the documentary follows Kip Anderson who, in my opinion was
a very extreme environmentalist. He would take sparse showers and when he did
take showers they would be very short. He sold his car and road his bike everywhere.
He recycled religiously. He was doing everything environmentalist tell
you to do to make our planet better. After further investigation Kip uncovers that
the most destructive industry at fault for global warming, water scarcity, species extinction,
habitat loss, deforestation and marine pollution, is in fact the animal agricultural industry.
It's just crazy that you don't hear about this even from environmentalist when that
information is available to us now. One of my favorite statistics from this documentary
that really hit me hard was that it takes 660 gallons of water to create one hamburger.
Which is relatively equivalent to two month of not showering.
So I could go two months not showering or eat one less hamburger and save 660 gallons
of water. I think I'm gonna pass on the hamburger. I
like to be clean I'm sorry. After learning all of this information and
so much it just became really hard for me to justify eating animal products.
I am by no means trying to persuade anyone to become a vegan.
Nor am I looking down on anyone who eats meat. Again this is very very new to me and I just
want to put this information out there for any of you who don't know about it.
I highly highly encourage you to do your own research.
Check my facts. If you disagree with anything I said, please
comment below. I want to hear these.
I love having my opinions challenged because if anything it just helps me learn more.
I mean, I don't know a lot about this. I've just recently even started researching.
Any information's helpful. Either for or against being vegan.
Bring it all on. As far as how all this new lifestyle will
be effecting my channel, I thought it might kind of fun to do like a once a week show
you guys what I ate for the day. Just to show you guys how I'm doing and if
I'm struggling with trying to be a vegan or if it's going smoothly.
If I'm eating super healthy awesome meals or if I'm binging on Oreos, cause yes, Oreos
are vegan. I also do better at things when I know I have
to be held accountable. So I figured why not just put it on the internet
for everyone to see and that way If I royal fuck up, everyone will know about it!
It seems like a great idea. And then I don't know if there's something
exciting going on during the day maybe I'll vlog throughout it and that could be fun too.
We'll see where this goes. But hey, an extra video a week, maybe, not
sure if it'll happen every week. I'm very unsure about this all.
Thought it could be cool. So let me know your thoughts on it.
If any of you out there are vegan and have any tips for me I would love for you to share
them. It would be great to have a little support
system. I know, I'm sure a lot of you are going to
be like, don't do it! There's just that, kind of, stigma against
vegans in the world. That's just how it is.
Yeah! I'm really excited! I think this is going to be good.
I'm praying that stick to it, and do really well.
I also welcome any of you to try this with me.
I know we're already ten days into October, I should've let you guys know ahead of time.
I didn't plan. I actually didn't want to tell anyone about
this. Referencing the joke I made at the beginning of this video.
I just didn't really want to make a thing about it because I'm not doing it for anyone
but myself so I wanted to keep it to myself but I figured I'd share.
Alright guys well thank you so much for watching! I'm excited to show you guys the first little
what I ate Vegan Vlog. So I will see you guys either in my first
video of that or next Monday!
It's so hot in here! Thank god I didn't take this jacket off though because my bra is showing.
Fricking bras, who needs them am I right? Free the nips!