Why plant-based?

In the past three years that we've been adopting a plant-based lifestyle, we've encountered three main reasons people move into this way of eating and living: health, environment, and ethics. Often, someone will start exploring plantful eating because of one reason (for us, it was health), and over time incorporate the other two. It's kind of a three legged stool. Many plant-based friends share this experience; read Forks over Knives success stories for examples of the health angle.

Plantful friend, here are three reasons why we believe you should make the switch. Though we're not medical professionals, we'll give you the overview we wish we had three (or 30!) years ago:

1. The health benefits: whole food, plant-based diets have been associated with lower rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and other diseases, as well as overall lower body weight, fewer hip fractures in the elderly, and many times a much longer lifespan with a longer health span (not just living longer but living more healthy years). Hard to believe, right? Some of what's behind this is that plants contain high amounts of antioxidants which are able to fight free radicals in the body; free radicals lead to disease, so the more antioxidant-rich diet you consume, the better equipped your body is to fight off disease. Additionally, only plants contain fiber which aids heart health and digestion (hello, microbiome). And finally, only plants contain the thousands of phytonutrients scientists are just beginning to name and understand. By cutting out the middle...uh, cow, you're going straight to the source of all the nutrients. We recommend reading How Not to Die,

   
   

2. The positive impact on the environment: Plantful eating is also great for the environment. It reduces the number of animals farmed for food, the amount of crops needed to feed those farmed animals, and therefore the amount of waste dumped into our ecosystems and methane and carbon dioxide emissions. It reduces the amount of deforestation all over the world which further contributes to global warming, and thereby preserves endangered animals and precious ecosystems on land and in the world's oceans. We recommend reading We Are the Weather.

   
   

3. The ethical implications: Long story short: neither milk, eggs, nor meat are necessary for human nutrition, but profitable industries around them cause immense, grotesque suffering in animals smarter than cats and dogs, at a scale you wouldn't believe. We too had looked away from this heart-wrenching fact our whole lives. Here are some more facts: milk is a byproduct of pregnancy – it's for the offspring. "Dairy cows" don't simply produce milk; they're selectively bred, forcefully impregnated, then forcefully separated from their offspring who scream for them and their milk. Meanwhile, plant-based cheese pizza is delicious! "Chicken breast" is the actual flesh of an actual bird kept in deplorable conditions and then killed. Meanwhile, chicken is no health food compared to plant-based alternatives! Honestly, this is all something we hadn't given much thought to a year ago. You walk into a grocery store and there's your milk and meat! As modern folk, we're so disconnected from the process of how and why our food is produced and brought to our local stores that we often don't give a single thought to what the processes were that got it to that point. When we begin to understand that our diets don't need the flesh, secretions, and fluids of other species, it becomes really difficult to choose to keep eating them. We recommend reading This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You).

   
   

We'll say more in our newsletter and future blog posts: it turns out, a plantful habit is cheaper, tastes better, and creates good community.

It's so important to push past the noise of social media with influencers left and right throwing all kinds of "data" at you, and look into these topics for yourself. We're guessing that if you're here, you're enough of a self-starter to roll up your sleeves and dig into some articles, books, documentaries, and podcasts to get a better look at the implications of a plant-based diet on your life and the lives of those around you, human and furry friend alike. Thanks for being here, and happy investigating!

Peace, love, and plants,

John & Heather