Veganism: Beyond Personal Benefits to Worldwide Benefits

If you’ve decided to go vegan, surely, you know about the benefits it brings to you.

Those benefits may even be the reason why you chose to become a Vegan.

Health benefits include lowering blood sugar and improving kidney function, lowering chance of heart disease, and reducing pain from arthritis.

While the benefits start with you, the benefits go far beyond the personal level? Possibly to the global level!

So what are the other benefits of Veganism?

While other benefits range from environmental to economic, I’ll cover the environmental benefits in this week’s post.

Veganism Fights World Hunger

Did you know that about 90% of grain is used to feed livestock in the United States?

Farmland that could be used to grow crops such as potatoes, onions, and other food is completely dedicated to growing grain for livestock.

If more people reduced their meat consumption, there would be more food available to humans around the world.

To put this into a global perspective, the population is estimated to reach or surpass 9.1 billion by 2050.

Studies have shown that there isn’t enough land to raise and feed livestock to a population of that size.

Veganism Conserves Waters

It’s well known that water scarcity is a problem worldwide. Many people do not have access to clean drinking water or have to deal with periodic water scarcity.

Livestock drinks more water than anything as their being raised. They also pollute the water making it unsafe for anyone to drink or use the water for anything else.

Veganism promotes more plants to be harvested and cultivated.

What does this mean?

When plants are prioritized water there will be enough to go around. Plants require less water than livestock to grow so water can be reallocated to the local communities.

To put things into perspective, it takes 100-200 more gallons of water to produce a pound of beef than a pound of plant food.

Veganism Keeps the Soil Clean

Similar to the previous section, livestock also has an impact on the soil and environment they use.

When there isn’t a balance between livestock and crops, the livestock weaken the soil making it hard to grow anything after.

In order to support a demand for meat, there needs to be enough space to raise them. Often, this means that forests are cleared to make room.

Raising a variety of trees and plants keeps the soil healthy for years to come.

To put things into perspective, each year we lose forests around the size of Panama to livestock. This accelerates climate change and destroys habitats.

Veganism Decreases Energy Use

Raising livestock not only uses a lot of water, it also uses a lot of energy.

The total energy includes factors such as time to raise the livestock, resources needed to feed the livestock and packaging.

To put things into perspective, it takes 8 times less energy to raise plants and plant-based products.

Veganism Cleans the Air

Raising livestock pollutes the air.

The amount of pollution livestock emits is more than all the cars, trains, planes, and other types of transportation around the world.

Plants clean the air naturally through taking in the carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen.

Final Thoughts: Benefits of Veganism

Going vegan does more than just lower your risk of heart disease and your number on the scale!

Its benefits go from zone zero (you) to zone five (the world)!

If you think about it, it’s pretty amazing how your one decision affects people worldwide!

Let us know the comments if you know of a benefit, you’d like me to expand on!