Vegan vs. Plant-Based & Why Both Matter

When I first adopted a vegan lifestyle in April 2017, it was the beginning of an exciting, illuminating and sobering journey that I've come to fall deeply in love with. Suddenly, my entire world view had been flipped upside-down. Everything I thought I knew about food, nutrition and health was revealed to be false, meaning that much of what I'd been taught throughout my life was completely untrue. It was daunting to realize that I knew so little and had so much to learn, but I was ready. Because of my personal health struggles, I was fully prepared to re-learn everything I thought I knew about healthy eating and living a holistically healthy lifestyle. 

What I didn't expect was that my veganism would grow beyond my motivation to live a healthy lifestyle. While I'd always been quite sensitive to social injustices, going vegan made it abundantly clear to me that the way I lived previously contradicted my desire to live in an equitable and just world. I became aware of the multitude of abuses that arise from our agriculture system, and as the information mounted, the more I realized that veganism was about more than the simple act of eliminating meat and dairy from my diet.

For the first time I made the connection between the food choices I made several times a day, and various forms of social injustice and destruction.  Prior to going vegan, I spent about three years of my life as a pescetarian, not considering the fact that within my lifetime we're likely to witness fishless oceans. It simply didn't dawn on me that every time I ate seafood, I was contributing to a demand for fish that is currently depleting life from our oceans.

Source: Cowspiracy

​In all the years that I ate meat, I never once considered the abuse, pain, torture and utter turmoil that exists within these massive slaughterhouses that produce our meat. It wasn't until I challenged myself to watch videos and look - really look - at the pain from which my food was produced that I was fully and utterly turned off from the notion of consuming meat. It was through veganism that I learned that my natural inclination for empathy also extends to non-human beings. I was finally humbled enough to question the notion of human dominance. For the first time, I saw non-domesticated animals as sentient and just as deserving of life as I am. 

After watching What The Health, I learned about the horrific health consequences facing poor people of color who live near large-scale industrial animal farms. To make it worse, these health consequences aren't limited to nearby residents or poor, overworked farm workers. Large-scale animal agriculture is also responsible for polluting our air, our water, and our crops. Indeed, we can point directly to animal agriculture as a major contributor to climate change. Without question, the world's appetite for meat is literally making our planet sick. 

But it's also making us sick, too. My original motivation for going vegan - my health - never wavered, and while I educated myself about veganism as a lifestyle, I also delved into the nutritional aspects. I started watching lectures and reading books, gathering knowledge from doctors, scientists and holistic healers alike. From T. Colin Campbell to Dr. Greger to Karyn Calabrese to Chef Akhi to Dr. Sebi and more, the idea that gaining health comes from eating plant foods in their most whole, unadulterated form became a common theme. It's been almost 2 years since I've changed my diet and every day I marvel at how much my health has improved and continues to improve in ways that I never imagined possible.

The opposite is also true, however. Not eating whole fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, seeds and herbs contributes greatly to poor health. With enough research it becomes painfully obvious that diet is the most crucial factor when it comes to cultivating and maintaining optimal health. Most of the chronic diseases that are negatively impacting and ultimately claiming the lives of our friends, families, coworkers and acquaintances can be traced back to poor dietary choices. (Please, if you can, make time to watch the lecture above, it's worth it.)

I've come to realize that there is a schism that exists within the vegan community, with die-hard vegan-for-the-animals folk clashing with self-described plant-based folk. While one side ignores the notion that diet and health are intricately connected, the other side neglects to consider the greater humanitarian value of making the right food choices. From my own experience thus far, the two concepts are inextricably linked. As an individual concerned about my health, my choices matter. As a human sharing this planet with other beings, my choices matter. As a person concerned about the welfare of future generations as well as the future of the planet we live on, my choices matter. 

I embrace the vegan label just as wholeheartedly as I commit to a whole food, plant-based diet because I care about the health of the world as much as I care about my own personal health. It is of very little benefit to me to be healthy in an ill world. Indeed, I can only ever be as healthy as the world that I live in and the people who inhabit it with me. As much as we may want to pretend that we are all islands, we aren't. What we do (or don't do) affects our planet and its inhabitants, just as surely as we as individuals are affected by the health of our planet and fellow citizens.

Our collective choices matter, and we're slowly but surely being forced to face that fact. Whether it be mounting collective medical debt, poor air quality, impotable water, dying oceans, or any of the major crises that currently exist, those of us who are able are going to have to take up the mantle. For the sake of ourselves, for our loved ones, for the poor, the innocent, the disenfranchised, and for all the generations to come, we must make more responsible choices. And it all begins on our plates.