Food for thought - or the yeast?

Dairy ends up being the point of contention for many people trying to transition to a less animal product heavy diet. All that cheese, butter, cream, ice cream, cream cheese, and what not are hard to make alternates of that are exactly the same in texture and flavor.

Why eliminate dairy?



What do I substitute it with?

There are so many brands of non dairy milk now in the market. Soy milk, almond milk, coconut Milk, rice milk, Hemp Milk, macadamia nut milk, hazelnut milk, Oat milk, mixed milks. Brands Almond breeze, So Delicious, Silk, califia farms, pacific and many more.

There are many brands that also offer vegan cheeses such as Miyoko's kitchen, Tree line, Chao Field Roast, Daiya, Follow Your Heart, Tofutti and so on.

Many Ice creams as well made with coconut milk, cashew milk, almond milk etc. Brands so Delicious, Nada Moo, Coconut bliss, soy dream, almond dream and many local brands.

Or you can soon find milk made by yeast which is basically dairy milk as it uses the cow's dna sequence. Animal Free Cow's milk!

Why kill a cow and calf when we have so many options!

Wait there is more.
Cows are often killed by the dairy industry to keep milk prices high! This was revealed in a nationwide class-action lawsuit against dairy cooperatives, groups of farmers who pool their supplies but, as a whole, serve as middlemen between the farmers and dairy processors. The settlement was $52 million. The cows are not going to see a penny of that.

The Us government gives billions in $ to the diary industry in subsidies. Because of falling demand, they also bought $20 million worth of cheese.

Why a Sustainable Plant Based Diet?

This year saw a trend in big money investors like Microsoft's Bill Gates, Twitter Co-founders and Google co-founder Sergey Brin all investing plant based fake meat/eggs companies. 

Why We Must Shift to Sustainable Plant-Based Eating

These investors recognize that the planet cannot sustain its current level of industrialized animal farming. There’s a big problem with our reliance on meat, dairy and eggs, and it’s only going to get worse.

If you’re an animal lover, you already despise the grinding, horrifying cruelty of today’s factory farms. Gone are the bucolic, rolling pasture lands dotted with roaming farm animals that our grandparents remember. Farmers just can’t meet the staggering worldwide demand for meat, eggs and dairy by doing business that way anymore.

To make raising livestock profitable, chickens are caged together so tightly they can’t spread their wings or walk around – ever. Pigs are jammed into gestation crates they cannot turn around in, their teeth and tails cut off without anesthetic to keep them from chewing at one another out of madness or boredom. Cattle are kept constantly impregnated so their milk will never stop flowing, while their newborn calves are carted off to become veal.

If the plight of farmed animals isn’t enough to turn you plant-based, have you taken a close look at the effects of today’s farming practices on the environment? The statistics are sobering:

• 76 percent of all U.S. farmland is used only to graze livestock. That’s 614 million acres of pasture, 157 million acres of public land and 127 million acres of forest.
• In addition to the above, if you also factor in the land used to grow feed for animals, a staggering 97 percent of U.S. agricultural land is devoted to sustaining livestock and poultry.
• Animals raised for food create 89,000 pounds of manure per second, causing extensive groundwater pollution.
• 30 percent of the entire land surface of the Earth is used by livestock.
• 70 percent of Amazon deforestation is directly due to clearing land to provide livestock grazing area.
• 33 percent of the world’s arable land is used to produce feed only for livestock.
• More than 70 percent of the crops we grow in the U.S. are produced just to feed meat-producing livestock.
• 70 percent of available water is used for growing crops, most of which feed livestock, not people.
• It takes 13 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.
• 
  

Despite all of the above, worldwide meat production will explode from 229 million tons in 2001 to 465 million tons by 2050, while global milk output will increase from 580 million tons in 2001 to 1043 million tons by 2050.

“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” according to a report issued in 2012 by Stockholm International Water Institute.

Our current system simply won’t enable us to feed 9 billion people a the current rate at which we consume meat, eggs and dairy. Crunch the numbers and it becomes disturbingly clear that something must change – soon.

That’s why smart, high dollar investors are eyeing companies which understand this coming crisis and are offering solutions. They’re out in front, paving the way for a plant-based future. 

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/the-skyrocketing-business-of-vegan-food-aims-to-save-the-world.html#ixzz2ph9QOCYp

Humane - what humane

When I first started about changing up my diet after reading a few things here and there.. I gave up meat and then I went about trying to find more "humane" options.. cage free eggs. Milk from Pasture fed and happier cows.
Then after finding out more and more about those farms and reading stories on vegan food blogs, I decided to replace each of the products which used animal ingredients one by one..

Whenever I read a detailed post, the questions that would come to my mind were "what the heck.. Why are these people doing all this." and not questions like " Where will I get my protein and nutrition" or " Omg I love cheese, I have to give it up?" Or "surely this is all made up information by hippies and I cant care about each and every extreme post out there"(Real questions by people in discussions).  

I just knew that I couldnt cause that much pain and suffering and there would be ways to either substitute some or just change up my taste buds.. It took a while to sub out everything especially the milk in our tea, mainly because I was not cooking breakfast for a long while. Once my health improved enough to take that over, milk was out the door. 

As for "Humane". to this day I dont understand the meaning of the term. By definition it means having or showing compassion and inflicting the minimum of pain.

Who decides how much compassion and how much pain?

Are cage free eggs "Humane" because the hens have some space to move around, even if their beaks are cut off so they dont peck at each other?

Are low calf cull rate dairy farms "humane", because the cows are not impregnated every few months and their calfs not killed(they all grow up and end up in the beef industry instead).

If there any such thing is "humane" slaughter. How about humane murder.. the notion of "humane slaughter" is at odds with the physiological reality of concussing, electrocuting, slashing open the veins of, and/or violently decapitating an animal, the idea that one can be "humane" while killing for profit is self-contradictory.

I just dont get the usage of the word humane. It seems like a band-aid term to band-aid our conscience and continue eating whatever we want to. 

Read more from a farmer's perspective here
http://www.humanemyth.org/haroldbrown.htm

and more here
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sue-cross/humane-slaughter-a-contra_b_2220480.html

Why Vegan videos

Offensive or not

So I posted this yesterday on my Fb status.
'If you can respect "my personal choice" to "pick any currently not acceptable by society behavior", then I will "respect" "your personal choice" to eat meat/dairy/eggs. - via Several sources.'

It is a quote with several interpretations. What I am talking about is "a choice", not the person.

For example, while growing up, several of us made decisions and choices that our parents did not agree with, disliked, got offended by, or even hated. Did that mean that they did not love us anymore. It is the choice they do not like.

My brother is currently a big carnivore. I love him as my brother, but I do not have to like or respect his choices in food. In fact, he hears exactly that from me every time we talk. But I love him, the person. 

To put it in better terms..please see the Extract below from Colleen's post. Entire post here

“Eating meat is my personal preference, and since I respect your desire not to eat animals, I would appreciate your respecting my preference to dine on them.”

The problem with this justification is that it assumes there is no victim, no other.

As a society, we collectively decide that certain behaviors, certain actions, certain personal preferences are inappropriate or morally reprehensible, particularly when they cause injury or harm to another. When confronted, abusive parents or spouses often protest that it is nobody else’s business how they treat their child/wife/husband, that people should not meddle into their affairs, and that they can do what they like in their own home. Though there was a time when the law protected such people and practices, this is no longer the case.

As conscious consumers, we make choices every day about the products we buy — we choose those that do not contribute to child labor, those that use the least amount of the Earth’s resources, those that do not exploit indigent farmers. How, then, can we possibly ignore the animals whose miserable lives have been so violently cut short because we hold onto a particular taste preference or habit? The animals whose bodies we have locked up, used up, and cut up for our enjoyment are no different than the victims of domestic abuse who, if they had a choice — if they had a voice — would choose not to be tormented or killed.

A choice made from personal preference might be the color I paint my bathroom, the kind of car I buy, or the way I style my hair. But a personal choice to hurt someone else???"

Sure, my fb post is probably not the best way to put things, it is offensive, distasteful, and other adjectives. It got the attention though, didnt it.


How is it a personal choice of someone who is being abusive to their family, children or their pets?

A personal choice that someone is getting hurt and tortured so bad as a direct result of someone else's action.

Does it matter that the "someone else" we are talking about is not someone's family or friend but an animal. That animal is a sentient being. That animal is my family. My family is being hurt. How is it "a personal choice".
And How do I "respect" that choice.

Please watch Earthlings here if you havent.
Or under cover videos at MFA here

---------------------------
Update:2018
It is interesting to read old posts back and see the transition journey. Transition into veganism takes years with several stages of understanding, evaluating that understanding and feelings, the helplessness, the anger, the motivation to do more and so on.

In the bigger picture of things, everyone including me, vegan or not, makes certain choices (personal or otherwise), that will not be a good one. Those choices made unknowingly, knowingly or however, can affect just me, or can affect someone/some living being somewhere to any extent, small or big, and tey would still be personal choices (unlike my interpretation above). Every small choice that I make is going to affect some living beings. Who farms my food, processes it, distributes it, markets it. Farming inherently will displace/hurt/kill some small animals. So many sentient living beings are part of the whole process that is life.

We dont however use this information(this overwhelming information that everything is going to affect someone or the other) as an excuse to Not do things. There is always more information to be found,more options to be found, changes to be made based on the current options and information. We haven't stopped at changing our diet. There is more things to be done, for fair treatment of people employed in any food or commodity field, and more to be done to protect our environment, and this planet.
Every step takes its own time. The point is to keep doing something for some step/cause/issue for this planet. This singular planet full of life in this vast universe, there might be more but we havent found any yet. So this is our only home. 

Videos on dairy

Mostly words. A life of a Cow.

Why would anyone want to inflict so much pain on a mother, any mother.

More to be added..

Numbers 3 - world hunger

* 6.6 pounds of grain -> 2.2 pounds of chicken meat -> makes only 35.2 servings

* 6.6 pounds of grain -> 84.5 servings of food

* Half of the worlds grains and Soy beans are fed to farmed animals. The argument that vegans eat more soy.... really.

* The food production would have to increase internationally by 70% to feed the world population in 2050

* Bringing the meat consumption of the US down to what it was in 2000(82.5 pounds per person per year), will free up 400 million tons of grain for human consumption. -> can satisfy caloric needs of 1 billion people!

Stats from VegNews.

Phil Wollen, Australian Philanthropist, Former VP of Citibank, Makes an amazing Speech.

Watch his speech above or read the transcript below. Just a few minutes of your day.

---

Transcript, borrowed from http://freefromharm.org/videos/educational-inspiring-talks/philip-wollen-australian-philanthropist-former-vp-of-citibank-makes-blazing-animal-rights-speech/

King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester “How do you see the world?”

And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”.

Shouldn’t we all?

Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair.
I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realised I had heard these screams before.
In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf.
Their cries were the cries of my father.
I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals.
And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy.
Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco.

CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the livestock industry are killing our oceans with acidic, hypoxic Dead Zones.
90% of small fish are ground into pellets to feed livestock.
Vegetarian cows are now the world’s largest ocean predator.
The oceans are dying in our time. By 2048 all our fisheries will be dead. The lungs and the arteries of the earth.
Billions of bouncy little chicks are ground up alive simply because they are male.

Only 100 billion people have ever lived. 7 billion alive today. And we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week.
10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species.
We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history.
If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus.
It is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions.
The world has changed.
10 years ago Twitter was a bird sound, www was a stuck keyboard, Cloud was in the sky, 4 g was a parking place, Google was a baby burp, Skype was a typo and Al Kider was my plumber.
Victor Hugo said “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.
There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world.
That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union!!
Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer – when it shouldn’t even be a question.
Meat is a killing industry – animals, us and our economies.
Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero!!
They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA – and they still won’t be able to pay for it.
Cornell and Harvard say’s that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO.
Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it.
Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry.
It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef.
1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.

If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.
Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport . . . . . planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.
Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?
The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.
We are facing the perfect storm.
If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age.
But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry.
The good news is we don’t have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it.
George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn’t run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks.

This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever.
The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. This cruel industry will end because we run out of excuses.
Meat is like 1 and 2 cent coins. It costs more to make than it is worth.
And farmers are the ones with the most to gain. Farming won’t end. It would boom. Only the product line would change. Farmers would make so much money they wouldn’t even bother counting it.
Governments will love us. New industries would emerge and flourish. Health insurance premiums would plummet. Hospital waiting lists would disappear.
Hell “We’d be so healthy; we’d have to shoot someone just to start a cemetery!”
So tonight I have 2 Challenges for the opposition:
1. Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet?
2. I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on I DARE YOU.
Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril.

The peace map is drawn on a menu. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.
Justice must be blind to race, colour, religion or species. If she is not blind, she will be a weapon of terror. And there is unimaginable terror in those ghastly Guantanamos.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn’t need this debate.
I believe another world is possible.
On a quiet night, I can hear her breathing.
Let’s get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers.
Please vote tonight for those who have no voice.
Thank you.

Why Vegan- Part 4

So, if you think that there are higher powers like the government or corporations, who will protect you from all the crazy additives, processed crap, genetically modified, cancer causing, deathly horrendous things........ you would be So Wrong...

For example, think about Smoking.

Smoking is directly linked to several cancers. Over 40 carcinogens have been identified in cigarette smoke. In the US, smoking is estimated to cause 90% of lung cancer. Men who smoke two packs a day increase their risk more than 25 times compared with non-smokers. Of the 180,000 people diagnosed in the United States alone each year, 86% will die within 5 years of diagnosis.

And what does the government do? put a tiny warning at the bottom of a pack.. Get the drift??

This is exactly the problem with the food industry. No one is going to tell you dairy is bad. The dairy industry, like the tobacco industry is large enough to lobby and make you believe otherwise.

You know Why it is difficult to quit Smoking.. because it is addictive and the withdrawal effects make it very difficult... do you think a smoker can think clearly and logically think and decline a smoke, without rock hard determination?

It is a similar problem with things like cheese. They are addictive.. If you say you cannot give up cheese because you love it too much.. it is like a smoker with lung cancer saying I cannot give up Smoking because I love it too much.

That is Not your logical brain speaking.

Numbers 2

The ecological Footprint:

■ 70 per cent of forestland cleared in Amazon was to get plain pastures for livestock

■ 6 kilograms of plant protein when consumed by the animal makes 1 kilo gram of animal protein that can be further consumed. This is called energy-in to energy-out ratio and is on an average 25:1. 25 calories consumed by an animal produce 1 calorie of protein. This ratio is the lowest in a cow – 40:1.

■ 40 percent of all the grains of the world, grown on one third of all arable lands, are fed to the livestock.

■ 73 percent of maize, 95 percent of oilmeal is fed to animals.

Excretions:

■ Livestock excreta is 130 times more in volume than that of the entire human population put together.

■ Rate of production is 87,000 pounds per second

Emission:

■ Belching and flatulence of cattle releases methane. And as per the industry figures, the ratio of meat to the total carbon emitted is:

■ 1 kg of beef – 34.6 kg carbon

■ 1 kg of lamb – 17.4 kg carbon

■ 1 kg of chicken – 4.75 kg carbon.

Source below. Viewer discretion is advised for some meat pictures : http://www.gobartimes.org/themes/gobartimes/poster/2010_march_meat_mania.pdf

Why Vegan? Reverse Diabetes

A 2006 study, conducted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine with the George Washington University and the University of Toronto, looked at the health benefits of a low-fat, unrefined, vegan diet (excluding all animal products) in people with type 2 diabetes.⁵ Portions of vegetables, grains, fruits, and legumes were unlimited. The vegan diet group was compared with a group following a diet based on American Diabetes Association (ADA) guidelines. The results of this 22-week study were astounding:

• Forty-three percent of the vegan group and 26 percent of the ADA group reduced their diabetes medications. Among those whose medications remained constant, the vegan group lowered hemoglobin A1C, an index of long-term blood glucose control, by 1.2 points, three times the change in the ADA group.
• The vegan group lost an average of about 13 pounds, compared with only about 9 pounds in the ADA group.
• Among those participants who didn’t change their lipid-lowering medications, the vegan group also had more substantial decreases in their total and LDL cholesterol levels compared to the ADA group.

Read the rest of the article here http://www.pcrm.org/search/?cid=129

and some success stories at PCRM here http://www.pcrm.org/search/?cid=612

Video about how a plant based diet helps reverse type-2 Diabetes.

Why Vegan? Part 4

Why no dairy?

If you think about the figures,theres a 50% chance of bull calf being born .. and even with a requirement of the bulls in india by farmers, the dairy industry produces so much in excess that about 8 Million calves are slaughtered or starved to death every year.

There is no way to ensure the pasture fed, free range, well cared for, not slaughtered or anything esp in India. Cow slaughter is illegal in India and so is dowry, bride killing, and girl child abortion.

As far as US is concerned, there is a big veal and beef industry but the dairy industry still produces an excess of about 700,000 calves/year which are disposed off at birth. and most pasture fed, happy cow labels are misleading. check http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/index.html for your local dairy listings. even 5 star rating means low cull rate, not NO cull rate.

Why Vegan? The last heart attack

Dr Sanjay Gupta at CNN explores plant based diet and its effects in reducing and reversing heart disease and talk to Bill Clinton. Watch the video here.

Why Vegan? Part 3

Why Cow's milk, or goat's or buffalo's milk? why not Hyena's milk. it is much higher in Calcium! its because these animals are herd animals, herbivores, docile and easy to control. If we could control the carnivorous and ferocious hyena, they would be factory farmed for their milk too.

There is NO nutritional component of Cows milk that is necessary for humans more than a hyena's milk.

Cows do not "give" milk. We steal it from them.

Humans are the only mammals drinking any kind of milk into adulthood. -Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

See her video here..

Why Vegan? Continued..

Photo courtesy: julieoneill.

That is a dying baby calf.. starving slowly to death in a local, small, family run, "caring" dairy farm in the holy city of Rishikesh.. where cows are "worshipped".

From Julie's blog post.

"In north India there is a holy city called Rishikesh. It is a par­adise for yoga lov­ing veg­e­tar­i­ans. The respect for cows fills the air here. As they roam freely, vis­i­tors and res­i­dents alike gen­tly stroke their fore­heads and offer them treats of fruits and veg­eta­bles. Through the streets traffic patiently waits for the noble beasts to pass.

Here espe­cially, the cow is con­sid­ered sacred and no meat is allowed in the entire city! But plenty of milk is con­sumed. I decided to pop into a small fam­ily run dairy just off of the main drag in Rishikesh. I fig­ured that if any­where in the world mother cows would be treated well it would be here. If there was any­where that I could have a guilt free cheese sand­wich it should be here. The fol­low­ing pho­tos are from this small fam­ily run dairy."

Please read her entire post here. http://www.julieoneill.com/blog/?p=1438

Why Vegan?

It is not about giving up your favorite foods!

It is about replacing them with similar foods which are pain free!

It is not about restricting your diet and suffering from the nutritional consequences.

It is about opening it up instead, to fresher plant based foods and knowing what and how nutritionally balanced food your body needs!

It is not difficult to go Vegan. Just think about anyone you love, who has feelings and can feel pain, going through the pain and suffering animals have to go through.

It is about living healthy, eliminating diseases created and made worse by us, by our food choices.

It is not just a diet, it is a state of mind about everything around you. If you dont eat your dog, you cannot possibly wear fur.

There are lots more facets to this state of mind. Find atleast some in yours.

Videos on Veganism

A short movie ( in Hindi ) which explains importance of Veganism. (No blood or gore, just a nice message in the video)

Expand your circle of compassion and the love will come back to you a thousand times.

Same video in English.

We are simplifying our lives, buying less and living more because we know that the Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.
But there is one connected choice that sometimes gets overlooked. It's one of the most far-reaching personal, practical and ethical choices you can make. With this choice we can help...

... feed ourselves and every hungry person on the planet.
... end deforestation -- replenish the deep woods of the North and save our disappearing rainforests.
... revitalize our rural landscapes and save family farms.
... stop the number one polluter of water and the number one waster of water.
... return our oceans to thriving underwater worlds teeming with life and wonder.
... make cancer and heart disease a rarity instead of a common occurrence.
... stop the unnecessary suffering of billions and billions of animals.
... and return wild lands to their rightful owners.

This powerful choice can be done by everyone every day... by you... right now.

Vegan.

Every day you are invited to make choices. Live your values. Change the world.

It's that simple.

Numbers

• 1 pound of cheese = 10 pounds of milk

• 1 gallon of ice cream = 12 pounds of milk

• 1 pound of butter = 21.1 pounds of milk

• 1 pound of ghee(clarified butter) needs about 28 pounds of milk

• Americans eat the equivalent of 10 acres of pizza every day! Americans eat an average of 29 pounds of cheese every year—over a lifetime that’s more than a ton of cheese

• Average U.S. cow produces 53 pounds of milk= 6.2 gallons a day.

• Cows eat over 90 pounds of food each day

• Cows drink over 35 gallons of water every day, in the summer time that is sometimes

doubled

Skepticism or Inaction ??

I am the aggressive passionate activist in the house and hubbs is the skeptical practical thinker. Between the both of us, our discussions about, any issues I come across or things I would like to change or feel strongly about, usually cover a good number of arguments that I would need to know and answer to when discussing with others.

When I discussed about going vegan, giving up milk and eggs because of ethical reasons, he needed some more reasons. Eventually we discussed ethical, health and environmental reasons for a convincing conclusion.

A similar discussion on the weekend with friends led to a familiar first reaction. As hubbs pointed out to me later that day, that we had had that discussion before, and he had a similar reaction to it. Like any big change, if you extrapolate it , the event and the change become too big for the mind to fathom. This usually leads to skepticism to make the small change.

For eg. Going vegan, if we start thinking of say , if most of the world or the entire world goes vegan, will that actually be beneficial and balanced for everyone?. will that not affect the current man animal, environment balance. Sure it would. According to most research and statistics, that is the best path for this planet to survive, but as with any big long term change, things can go differently, which no one can completely predict. Does that mean that we do not take that step, of going vegan completely or few days a month or whichever small step towards what we currently know as a better path?

We all are dependent on gas. We already know what that dependence is doing to the world, to our health, to the environment. If we decide to take the step to reduce gas consumption, and then extrapolate it to a world in the future when our gas consumption is extremely minimal, can you actually imagine a world like that? I dont think so.. In the slow path to getting there, there could be several other influencing factors that could change things. The shift of power from the gas producing countries, other political, ecological, economical impact depending on what other source of energy gets tapped into. But does that change the fact that the better path to take right now is to reduce our gas consumption?.

And hence eventually we concluded that the skepticsm is because of inaction inertia. Because we do not know both sides of the coin well enough, or all of the future consequences, and because there are already overwhelming number of problems to solve on the world, it is human nature to choose the least or no action path.

If everyone in the world goes vegan( which it self is such a far far away eventuality), the cows are not going to rule the earth.

Veganism is not about food. It is a belief system. That tiny change causes a lot of small and big ripples, which we might not be able to see. Try going completely vegan for just 2 days. Not a commitment, not an exam, no judgement, just an experiment to listen to your body. No milk, cheese, ghee, any dairy, eggs and also organic and as less processed as possible. And leave me comments on what your body told you.

Some reading about how organic, humane are just keywords these days which may or may not be enforced, other statistics and reading

http://crisisboom.com/2011/03/24/usda-refuses-to-enforce-organic-standards/

http://ocveganista.wordpress.com/why-vegan/

http://organicfood.einnews.com/article.php?oid=YJ2ZP0TDE+KA8A

http://www.ecolips.com/notes-from-the-prez/is-organic-in-an-end-game-article

http://humanemyth.org/