You support what you eat

Eat how you wanna eat. Just know that what you’re choosing is one of the more important choices you get to make in your lifetime. It affects how good we feel, how long we live, how much damage we do to the world around us, and how much damage the world around us can do back to us too.

This year I fully transitioned to a plant-based diet. It wasn’t that hard. I like to cook and I still eat really well.

I am not pretending to be better than you, and I didn’t do it to be nice to animals. I did it for health reasons. With a strong history of heart disease and cancer coming from both sides to my gene pool, cutting my statistical likelihood by between 25-85% with one lifestyle change seemed like an easy win.

Yes, the 25% and 85% leaves a wide statistical variance, but while the scientific specifics differ, the trends all undeniably point in the same direction. I don’t care to debate it, because I won’t get 25% of a heart attack or an 85% of a case of cancer. You either 100% get something like that, or you 0% get it. I’m doing everything I reasonably can to be on the zero end of the data model.

And as 2020 has turned into a shitshow of a year, it is not lost upon me that our current pandemic (as well as most previous ones) very likely came from the animals we eat. As this lovely article points out, there’s another health angle to consider here too, and it’s akin to vaccinations. By not eating meat or dairy, I automatically remove a ton of pathogens and a lot of attack vectors from my life entirely.

Ultimately, it comes down to what we want to support and how we want to live. Will you have to take Vitamin B to stay healthy if you go all-vegan? Likely yes. Beats trying to stay healthy if you don’t though.

We can take our support away from the ugliness that is the factory farming industry. We can be safer. We can be healthier. Really, it’s not that hard. And it’s damn tasty, if you do it right.