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I share two important traits with Albert Einstein. We both had trouble with math (which he seems to have overcome), and we both committed to a vegetable diet. From a letter Albert wrote to Hans Muehsam, dated March 30, 1954: “So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore.” (from: “The Expanded Quotable Einstein,” collected and edited by Alice Calaprice.)
I’ve been vegan since 1971. Since then, I’ve always lived with vegans and vegetarians.
Originally, I chose to be vegetarian, as a move toward better food quality. After a very short time, vegan became my lifestyle.
Through Macrobiotics, I learned that food is medicine. Or, as I like to say: “You are what you are unable to digest.” Just removing refined carbohydrates from my diet provided me with more even energy levels, and better nutritional value.
After reading articles, and seeing pro-animal videos, it became clear that there was a political and economic component to the food industry, which ignored the pain and suffering of animals.
Food corporations bury the science about the inferior food value of meat, and processed foodstuffs. It also hides the dangers of genetically altered foods, as well as the added antibiotics, and weed and bug killing toxins that remain in the foods and environment. It has become very important to eat food that is organically grown.
During the 70s, I formed a household of vegans (and sometimes vegetarians) in Amherst, Massachusetts, who wished to share vegan meals. Over this seven-year period, there were a total of 24 house-mates; usually no more than seven house-mates at a time. We had a core group of five, who had periodically joined the household, before all living together for the last 2 years.
Our household became well-known, and, just to see what our household was like, many came to visit. Usually around supper time.
In 1972, I created a vegan, all-volunteer-staffed restaurant on the University of Massachusetts campus at Amherst. It was called “The Noodle.” While it was supposed to be only a 3-week experiment, it proved so popular that the University’s Student Council sponsors asked us to continue for an additional four more weeks.
Within a year, I joined with three others, to create the vegetarian “Equinox Café,” located in the center of Amherst.
Nowadays, vegan and vegetarian restaurants are easier to access. I think it important to patronize them, and thereby support their efforts to keep in business.
Planetary scientific reasons to be vegan:
PETA:
“Feeding massive amounts of grain and water to farmed animals, and then killing them, and processing, transporting, and storing their flesh is extremely energy-intensive. And forests — which absorb greenhouse gases — are cut down in order to supply pastureland and grow crops for farmed animals. Finally, the animals themselves, and all the manure that they produce, release even more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.
“Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are all powerful greenhouse gases, and together cause the vast majority of climate change.
“Burning fossil fuels (such as oil and gasoline) releases carbon dioxide. Since it takes, on average, about 11 times as much fossil fuel to produce a calorie of animal protein as it does to produce a calorie of grain protein, considerably more carbon dioxide is released. Researchers acknowledge that “it is more ‘climate efficient’ to produce protein from vegetable sources than from animal sources.”
“Eating vegan foods rather than animal-based ones is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint. A University of Chicago study showed that you can reduce your carbon footprint more effectively by going vegan, than by switching from a conventional car to a hybrid.
“The billions of animals who are crammed onto U.S. factory farms each year produce enormous amounts of methane. Ruminants — such as cows, sheep, and goats — produce the gas while they digest their food, and it’s also emitted from the acres of cesspools filled with the feces that pigs, cows, and other animals on these farms excrete. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has shown that animal agriculture is globally the single largest source of methane emissions and that, pound for pound, methane is more than 25 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere.
“According to Vasile Stanescu, a scholar at Mercer University, animals raised by “organic” methods emit even more methane than animals on factory farms do. He believes that so-called “free-range” or “pasture-raised” animals are “significantly worse” in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions.
“Nitrous oxide is about 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. According to the U.N., the meat, egg, and dairy industries account for an astonishing 65 percent of worldwide nitrous-oxide emissions.”
Mother Jones:
“Meat production — everything from cow burps to fertilizer — generates about 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gases, roughly equal to the world’s transportation system. Beef is the worst: It creates about 12 times the amount of greenhouse gases per calorie as poultry, 56 times as much as fruits and vegetables, and 100 times as much as rice.”
CNN:
“You may be aware that a plant-based diet can make you healthier by lowering your risk for obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. But research shows there’s another good reason to regularly eat meatless meals. By filling your plate with plant foods instead of animal foods, you can help save the planet.
“One study, published in October in the journal Nature, found that as a result of population growth and the continued consumption of Western diets high in red meats and processed foods, the environmental pressures of the food system could increase by up to 90% by 2050, ‘exceeding key planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity beyond which Earth’s vital ecosystems could become unstable,’ according to study author Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford.”
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“As (Sharon) Palmer (a registered dietitian nutritionist, and plant-based food and sustainability expert) noted, ‘research consistently shows that drastically reducing animal food intake and mostly eating plant foods is one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce your impact on the planet over your lifetime, in terms of energy required, land used, greenhouse gas emissions, water used and pollutants produced.’ ”
University of Oxford:
“A global switch to diets that rely less on meat and more on fruit and vegetables could save up to 8 million lives by 2050, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds, and lead to healthcare-related savings and avoided climate damages of $1.5 trillion (US) , Oxford Martin School researchers have found.”
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“What we eat greatly influences our personal health and the global environment,” says Dr Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, who led the study.
“Imbalanced diets, such as diets low in fruits and vegetables, and high in red and processed meat, are responsible for the greatest health burden globally and in most regions. At the same time the food system is also responsible for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore a major driver of climate change.”
Nutritional Notes:
B12 is available in cereals, nutritional yeast, miso, and tempe.
Calcium sources include dark leafy greens such as kale, bok choy, broccoli, as well as black-eyed peas, and sometimes added to orange juice and calcium-set tofu.
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