Why eat plant-based?
Because it is the single most important action I can take to help our planet.
Scroll through the slides and transcript excerpts of the One Movie for the Planet presentation below...
This all started when I made the observation that many people who change their diets to eat more sustainably do so after watching a convincing documentary. I know my sister made the switch to a fully plant-based diet (meaning no meat, poultry, fish, eggs, or dairy) after she watched the movie Game Changers in her enviro class a few years ago and then got my mom to watch it and she switched too. I went vegetarian after watching Cowspiracy and then also went fully plant-based after watching Dominion. And, I follow a lot of social media sites about plant-based eating, and when people talk about what made them make the switch, by far the most common trigger is a movie about the environment, health, or animal cruelty.
So this got me thinking...
If I could convince people to. watch documentaries like these, certainly most won't go exclusively plant-based but could I inspire a person here or there to:
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Think about sustainable food choices?
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Start a conversation?
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Consider a small change like Meatless Mondays?
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​Either way, getting people to watch these movies would spread some awareness and would be a small step in the right direction
So this inspired me to create a campaign called "One Movie for the Planet"
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·In a nutshell, the campaign involves me or someone else making a 10-minute presentation like the one I’m giving you now to various groups around our community.
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·At the end I ask audience members if they’d be willing to commit to watch one plant-based diet advocacy documentary within 7 days of my presentation.
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·That’s it. Very simple. All the campaign is asking is for a person to just commit to watch 1 movie within 1 week.
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So, if someone is mostly interested in the health benefits of plant-based diets, they could watch Forks over Knives, What the Health or Game Changers.
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If someone is more worried about animal-cruelty they could watch Dominion or Earthlings.
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And if they're more curious about the environmental impacts of animal agriculture they could watch Eating Our Way to Extinction, Food Inc., or Cowspiracy, etc.
This segues to more the meat (no pun intended) of my presentation which is just a couple of slides on the arguments for plant-based eating to make sure everyone understands the logic behind the campaign.
The way I see it, there’s basically 3 main arguments for eating plant-based:
the health reasons, the animal cruelty reasons, and the environmental reasons.
Quickly, the health reasons.
·Most of us grew up with the meat and dairy industry convincing us that in order to grow strong you needed milk for bones and steak for muscles.
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·Well scientists now know that this is 100% NOT the case.
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·The A.D.A. (probably the most respected nutrition organization in our country) has officially stated that a well-planned vegan diet is quote “healthful and nutritionally adequate for all stages of life… and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”
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·The W.H.O. has classified processed meats (meaning sausage, hot dogs, bacon, ham) as Class 1 carcinogens: meaning there is convincing evidence that it causes cancer. The same class a tobacco and asbestos.
There are too many reasons to get into of why to follow a plant-based diet for improved health, but the bottom line is that well-planned plant-based diets are rich in certain nutrients that improve health while animal products contain many components associated with poorer health. Ultimately, healthy plant-based diets have been shown to be associated with lower risk of several diseases that are among the most common causes of premature death.
Now that you understand that humans no longer HAVE to eat animals to be healthy, the question becomes whether the taste is worth the animal suffering. Almost all of the meat, eggs, and dairy in this country come from factory farms. The conditions on these farms are horrific .I don’t want to upset people so I’ll be very brief on this. Animals are confined to cages not much larger than their bodies for their entire lives. Even chickens labeled “cage-free” are never let outside of their hen house where they’re crammed with thousands of others. Cows and pigs are similarly stuck in small cells where they can’t turn around for their entire lives and have their body parts clipped and snipped without any anesthesia as the standard practice. These aren’t the exception farms, this is how 99% of the meat, eggs and dairy farms ARE in the US.
Just think about it: pigs are more intelligent than dogs, most people would not castrate a dog or cut off its tail or extract their teeth without anesthesia and that what we’re doing because we like the taste of meat. If you’re curious about all this, please watch one of the animal cruelty documentaries.
Finally, the Environmental Reasons:
Animal agriculture emits more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined.
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Raising animals for food requires MASSIVE amounts of resources: water, fertilizers, antibiotics, and land.
It’s the #1 cause of deforestation worldwide!
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The reason for this is that livestock require a TON more land and water than a human eating just plants would. I think most people don’t understand this, at least I didn’t. I always thought we were cutting down the rainforests in the amazon for paper or fuel or something. NO!!!! We're cutting down the rainforests to grow all the feed we need to feed the animals we eat!
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Humanity has wiped out 70% of animal populations since 1970 because we're destroying their habitats.
The rainforests are being cut down because we need SPACE to grow food to feed ANIMALS. You need 2 football fields to feed 1 person on a standard animal-based diet for a year. . .whereas 2 football fields would feed 14 people on a plant diet.
That's the pitch!
I understand if most of you are thinking, “Guess what, watching a documentary isn’t going to make the whole world become vegan!”
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I totally agree.
My goal with this project isn’t to make people vegans. The goal is just to spread awareness about the impact of our daily food choices. If watching a movie gets people to think about this issue even for a little bit, or start a conversation, then that’s progress.
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The way I see it, if this project gets even just one person the next time they’re out at dinner to order a roasted veggie bowl instead of a burger, just once, then that's a step in the right direction.
