Vegan Diets Pros And Cons

In essence vegan diets are diets that cut out all food sourced from animals. However, the distinctive attribute of such a diet is that its practitioners also cut off everything indirectly sourced from animals as Appleby and Key (2015) explain. Thus it is understood that vegans cut out meats, poultry, and fish, but also eggs, milk, cheese and even honey. In other words, vegans stop consuming a significant part of the food pyramid, which leads to nutrient deficiency, specifically, vegans stop consuming two out of the five essential groups of the food pyramid, which will surely lead to nutrient imbalances and deficiencies in their bodies given the fact that such groups are considered essential as they cannot be properly replaced by other foods. …show more content…
Such individuals argue that the consumption of animal products is unethical given the fact that animals are abused and suffer at the hands of humans, in order to provide the latter with food. The Vegan Society (n.d.) argues that one of the main reasons for vegan conversions if the prevention of animal exploitation. Vegans believe that animals, being sentient creatures, should not be abused and exploited by humans for food. Even Gunnars (2013), an opponent of vegan diets admits that ethical concerns over the conception of meat are justifiable. Thus veganism is a stand against animal cruelty and seeks to reduce such cruel practices by halting their consumption of animal products. Moreover vegans insist that eating meat is unhealthy, as several health issues have been related to meat consumption. The Vegan Society (n.d.) argues that health issues such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases diabetes and cancer have been associated with the consumption of meats and that switching to veganism would help mitigate such diseases. Additionally Greger (2014) explains that meat proteins can cause autoimmune diseases, as it can irritate the immune system, which might lead to the development of auto immune diseases as the body get increasingly exposed to animal meat. Thus it is clear why vegans believe that eating meat in unhealthy. Not only has this, but the consumption of meat and dairy hurts the environment. The Vegan Society (n.d.) explains that it is ecologically taxing to maintain the production of meat and other animal products to the requirements of such an operation. The vast amounts of water and land needed to sustain the meat industry are leading to deforestation, as in Brazil alone, over 5.6 million acres of land have been converted from forests to fields in order to grow the soya crops needed to feed the animals in Europe.