Reasons to Eat a Plant-based Diet
A plant-based diet consists of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, herbs, and spices and excludes all animal products, including red meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products. Diets rich in plant-based foods are beneficial for many reasons. Click below to learn more about how plant-based choices support a healthy planet, compassion for animals, your own health, and human rights.
Modern high-pressure agriculture commonly keeps cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other animals in overcrowded stalls, cages, crates, or sheds where they are often unable to turn around or take even a single step for their entire lives. They are deprived of veterinary care, exercise, sunlight, and even the feel of grass beneath their feet. All the farmed animals are individuals with feelings - they experience love, happiness, loneliness, and fear, just as dogs, cats, and people do. More than 25 billion animals are killed by the meat industry each year.
FOR THE ANIMALS
A plant-based diet can provide all the nutrients you need.
In general, people who don't eat meat [source]:
- Weigh less than people who eat meat.
- Are less likely to die of heart disease.
- Have lower cholesterol levels.
- Are less likely to get High blood pressure, Prostate cancer, Colon cancer, Type 2 diabetes.
FOR YOUR HEALTH
Although we often think of animal agriculture as harming animals, it also causes both direct and indirect harm to humans, often disproportionately affecting communities of color and/or low-income regions.
FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
FOR THE PLANET
Animal agriculture practices are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that rival those of transportation, mass deforestation, mass water consumption, and damage to our oceans and other ecosystems, threatening biodiversity. The impacts of animal agriculture on the environment are severe.