OMNIVORE OR HERBIVORE? THAT’S THE ECO QUESTION!

The planet is heating up, animals are facing extinction, the plastic epidemic has gone too far, and so vegans are on the rise! There is no doubt that cutting meat and dairy out of your diet is the biggest way you can massively reduce your contribution to global warming. But is it necessary to be vegan to help the planet, and is it being done right?

I have been a vegetarian my whole life. My mother stopped eating meat at age 17 due to ethical reasons and raised my sisters and I with the same view that all life is equal. I have never had too much issue with others eating meat, as long as it isn’t wasted. I see it as a natural thing to survive in the natural world, but in modern society less so. I’ve always said you shouldn’t be a meat eater unless you could kill and prepare an animal yourself in the wild, which i definitely could not.
Yet I cannot in any way say that i have been Eco friendly throughout my life simply due to my food choices. Until recent years being veggie has been a bit difficult. Restaurants only ever really offered a few vegetarian options and even small supermarkets didn’t stock much for us. Plus there have always been non obvious meat ingredients in food, such as gelatin and hard cheeses, that have been hard to avoid. So up until recent years when vegetarian options have been more readily available, I have rarely looked into whats in my food and where it comes from.
Eco-vegans are great and I fully admire people willing to make such a big lifestyle choice in order to help protect this planet. However, I do wish people would also have more empathy for animals, regardless or not if you eat them, and being vegan or vegetarian doesn’t automatically mean everything you eat is Eco friendly.

You may be surprised to know that there are no current laws around the selling of cows milk like there are eggs, and 20% of dairy cows in the UK are kept indoors the whole year round. There is no current guarantee that any milk bought from a supermarket has come from free range cows. This really upsets me as I have always refused to buy or eat any eggs that aren’t free range and would have done the same with milk if this information was better publicised. I was mislead by pictures of happy cows in fields on every milk bottle, It never occurred to me that dairy cows wouldn’t be let outside!
Then we come to palm oil. I’m hoping most people have heard that our consumption of this ingredient is leading to the extinction of orangutans. But did you know that the mass deforestation to make way for growing palms is also threatening elephants, rhinos, and tigers? It scares me that i may have to explain to my grandchildren what an elephant looks like as they may never get a chance themselves to see one. The equivalent of 300 football fields of tropical rainforest is destroyed every hour to make more room for palm farming. This not only destroys the habitats of many animals but the lack of trees means higher co2 emissions due to less photosynthesis. Unfortunately, many vegan foods still contain unsustainable palm oil.

Being vegetarian or vegan is definitely better for the environment, but there is still more to be done. In my opinion there needs to be a change in mentality around meat. I travelled to Egypt a few years ago, and before travelling anywhere i research what vegetarian food they have. I discovered that they don’t really understand the concept of being vegetarian there as much of what they eat daily is already vegetarian. Meat is a lot more expensive and therefore reserved only for special occasions or the wealthy. In comparison, people in countries like the UK and USA will have meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner! This is definitely overkill (literally) and not necessary!

So fair enough if being vegetarian or vegan is too difficult for you, it’s getting easier but can be very frustrating. I myself would find it very hard to be vegan even though I’ve been veggie my whole life. But If you are going to carry on eating meat and dairy, cutting the amount you consume in half will still have a positive global impact. More importantly I think we all need to be a hell of a lot more responsible with our buying of food. Read the ingredients, check out the supplier, question where your food comes from! Spend the extra 20p to buy a product that doesn’t use palm oil or is free range. Packaging is also important, buy products in glass jars instead of plastic. Research the companies and supermarkets you use to find out if they are Eco conscious, or better yet buy from local farms and producers. Cutting out meat and dairy is not the only solution to cutting down your carbon footprint, but do something!