On May 5th, 2021 I did it. I became vegan. After about three years of being kind of vegetarian, but still eating fish and seafood, I just decided to go full-on plant-based — and I haven’t looked back.

Is Veganism Radical?

If these three first sentences provoke you, perhaps this post isn’t for you. I totally get it, I used to eat meat myself for as long as I can remember and understand how it can seem radical to go vegan. However, if you, just like me for many years, have thought about finding alternatives to eating dead flesh from animals, and perhaps think that the most “radical” thing to do is not to eat vegetables, but actually to kill a living being for our taste buds’ pleasure, perhaps my journey towards veganism might inspire you.

Feeling Whole As A Person

I have, for a long time, tried to find a habit and a way to live that will combine three things I really care about: my health, the environment, and animals’ rights. Why? Because this is how I truly live in harmony with my ethical values. It might sound cliché, but after becoming vegan, for the first time in my life, I feel completely whole as a person — as if my doing is completely aligned with my being. My everyday choices in the supermarket to pick oat or soy-based products instead of cow-milk products, or to find my protein in vegetables, nuts, and beans instead of dead animals really make me truly live my life on purpose. My purpose.

Vegan Athletes

My thoughts on veganism started when I played handball in the Swedish Junior National Team, where nutrition coaches taught us to eat meat to perform on top. I found that very questionable considering that the world’s strongest man, Patrik Baboumian, is vegan. It IS possible to be both strong, perform on an elite level AND eat no meat. There are LOTS of protein (and all other nutrients) to be found in a vegan diet. It’s all a matter of relearning, changing old habits, and trying new recipes. My passion for cooking has definitely increased since I started my journey towards veganism.

We all have our reasons for behaving the way we do, but I believe it is wise to sometimes stop and reflect on what these reasons are. At least I did.

My Health Reason For Going Vegan

I have, over the past years had five friends and relatives dying from cancer, which has affected me with tremendous sadness, and forced me to start thinking seriously about this. Red meat includes cancerogenesis which is what, in combination with other factors, can cause cancer. When working at Google I got my blood levels tested, which revealed that my cholesterol was skyrocketing. After a dietitian recommended that I remove red meat from my diet, my cholesterol levels got back to normal again. This was, to me, very clear evidence that red meat can cause real health damage to us, even if we are young and healthy. Since I had no desire to die either from cancer or a stroke caused by high cholesterol, red meat never entered my mouth again. After going fully vegan my body feels lighter and less bloated, and my brain is more focused and energized.

My Environmental Reason For Going Vegan

After watching numerous documentaries about how the environment is affected by farms producing meat on a large scale, I felt like what I was currently contributing with to “save” our planet was not enough. Simply recycling my trash and taking shorter showers won’t have a substantial environmental impact if I still eat meat. In fact, to produce one single hamburger, 2400 liters of water is needed. 2400 liters has been fed into the grain that’s been fed to the cattle — and the cattle have been made into beef. One hamburger is 2400 liters of embedded water! Instead of planting soy plants for cows to eat and then we will eat the cow, why not just remove the “middleman” – the cow – completely from this equation and produce soy plants only for us humans to consume. If the end goal is just to feed humans, then this can be done directly by making delicious products from the soy plants — without any animal suffering! Global meat production has skyrocketed by more than 370 % since 1960, which is straining resources and consuming lots of land — even land like the Amazonas are burnt down for this reason! The meat and dairy industries create 7,1 gigatons of greenhouse gases annually, which corresponds to 14,5 % of the total man-made emissions. This can be compared to emissions from airplane traffic, which corresponds to “only” 2,8 % in the same statistics. For every kilogram of beef that is produced, it’s generating 60 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions! If we want to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, it’s wise to start thinking about our everyday choices and habits.

My Animal Rights’ Reason For Going Vegan

I want to emphasize that ALL lives matter, that all animals (even the small fish!) have emotions just like us humans (yes, that is true), and that the reality of the cattle industry is far away from the beautiful commercials where the cows are walking freely on a sunny green field. In fact, cows are slaughtered by throats being slit open and the blood splashing out while the animal (still alive!) is hanging in a rope to bleed to death. Cows are being milked so heavily that their nipples are constantly bleeding, and when they give birth to a calf they are separated from their baby the day after birth! Imagine that happening to us humans! Small pigs have their tails and ears cut off with a knife while still awake and screaming loudly — all of this so that they can fit more pigs into the tiny dark boxes — where they will “live” their whole lives until they are eventually killed to become our bacon and hamburgers.

Inspiration

There is a lot more to this that will not fit in this post, and if you are interested in learning more, I would highly recommend you to watch “What the Health”, “Seaspiracy”, Cowspiracy” on Netflix and, for the very brave ones, “Earthlings” starring Joaquin Phoenix on YouTube. I had postponed watching them for a very long time because I knew that I would reach the point of no return, and after watching “Earthlings” on May 5th I had seen things that couldn’t be unseen, which made the decision to become vegan/eat only plant-based food very easy. I am today very grateful for this final “push”.

SO this year I brought a vegan cake (see the picture) to the Swedish Midsummer party I was going to. It was a DELICIOUS and juicy carrot and orange cake with vegan chocolate and walnuts inside and buttery frosting on top. Nobody at the party could tell that there were no eggs or cow-based butter in the cake, so why would we waste an animal’s life if we could make it equally delicious VEGAN?