Surely you have seen many stories that refer to the slaughter of animals to literally become food, posts from friends and acquaintances who have taken meat out of their diet, the internet is filled with vegan recipes and alternatives and let's not go away, a huge percentage of restaurants have vegan dishes on their menu, if not all vegan & plat based. Moreover, supermarkets also support this philosophy with more bio and vegan solutions and generally not to be out due, you see that veganism or veganism has now established itself as a way of life and not a passing fashion. But what does it really mean to be vegan and what is the difference between not just eating meat or watching my diet?

Veganism as a philosophy has to do with everything alive around us and how deeply we believe that we coexist with it and what do I mean by that? Vegan you are not if you just take the meat out of your diet, you are when you decide that you are indeed against the mistreatment of animals by people for their personal needs. It is not enough to "cut" the meat, you have to say goodbye to everything real leather, the fur coat, the crocodile bag, the snake belt or the leather pony skin shoes. Stop using cosmetics companies that mistreat and experiment on animals - and believe me they are still infinite - make sure that your lifestyle from your food, your daily consumption habits and your beliefs are far from anything animal or ethical evil towards the animals of nature. Of course, this is very difficult is not something you accomplish in a day or a week. It is not easy to remove milk or cheese and any other animal product from your diet for good, nor to open your closet and throw away clothes. It needs a lot of attention because your health is shaken as it would in any other big change eg if you quit smoking. But you can do it gradually, reading and finding what suits you, whether it's called food, whether it's called a clothing brand with an ethical philosophy or so called a vegan beauty brand.

But why am I saying all this and where do I want to end up? Not in some campaign against meat-eaters but in a more general awareness that we all deserve to have towards animals and more to how we deal with the way they come to our plates ourselves. The normal thing is yes, the cow produces milk and the hen the egg, but it makes a difference to raise and slaughter animals to become jellies, meat, bacon, and everything else that we often unsuspectingly enjoy at a family table. But to get away from the food because many will say but I cannot cut the meat I need the vitamin and creatine, a myth that inexperienced doctors now debunk as the same protein as the meat has a mushroom. But I will take you to another major "crime" that takes place in too many countries, especially where wild animals live in jungles. Did you know that in addition to snakes and crocodiles that are skinned for their skin, rhinos, elephants, antelopes, and several other species of animals are slaughtered by humans in order to take their horns and create furniture and jewels from them? Did you know that even if you go to a zoo to gaze at you you go against your beliefs – if of course you embrace veganism? And yet, even the simplest that we consider something basic or necessary brings an animal to the limits of hardship and depression since there are many incidents where animals die in zoo cages from depression.

The fact that veganism is not a fashion, however, but a widely known and accepted way of life, is understood when in many countries the hunting of wild animals is prohibited and prosecuted, when the consumption and demand for meat decreases and on the contrary, the cultivation of plant foods and other sources of protein is increased, as we mentioned above. When more and more ethical brands of clothes and cosmetics are born. Change will not come by itself; it is a team effort and even in this case it needs many and not one.

 

Animals are not products. Life doesn’t have a price.

 

Until Next Time #nothinker

Xoxo
Elena Vafeiadi