Happy Veganuary! Lots of great reasons to go plant-based

Consider kicking off the New Year by joining a global movement

Happy New Year, readers. I wish you all the best of health, happiness, safety, and peace in the year ahead.

Whether you're inspired to go vegan at the start of a new year as a kind of goal or resolution, or any time after, there are lots of good reasons for this welcome change. Not the least of which is to be part of an exciting global movement in which each individual can contribute to positive outcomes in so many ways.

Veganuary happens at the start of each year, is a perfect time to explore all the great reasons to go vegan. (Though if you need to start with a more modest goal, try adopting the Meatless Monday habit.)

Before we get into reasons to go vegan, let’s clarify for newbies —what is a vegan (sometimes known as plant-based) diet, and how is it different from a vegetarian diet?

Vegan vs. vegetarian vs. plant-based — what's the difference? Vegans avoid all animal products, including eggs, dairy product, and even honey. Ethical veganism goes beyond diet — animal welfare is the top motivation for this designation.

Vegetarians avoid meat, fowl, and seafood, and are often in it for the health aspects, but they keep eggs and/or dairy in their diet. Honey, not part of the vegan diet, can be part of vegetarian fare.

Plant-based refers to the diet that vegans follow, though veganism encompasses a core set of ethics above and beyond what is eaten. Concerns for animal welfare means that any animal-derived products, including leather and wool, are avoided. Environmental issues weigh in as well — we'll get to that later.

If you want to officially take the Veganuary pledge, here’s where you start. Otherwise, you can embark the journey on your own.

**********

Become a Founding Member of The Vegan Atlas & receive these books!

When I launched this Substack newsletter in June, I didn’t add a Founding Member tier, so to kick off the new year, I’m doing just that. How it works: Upgrade your free subscription to Founding Member (if you’re already a paid subscriber, you can do so as well; the price difference will be pro-rated); I receive an email informing me that you’ve become a Founding Member; I’ll respond to ask you for your mailing address. Sorry, this offer is for U.S. subscribers only, as international shipping is soooo costly.

Start your year with a mini-library of useful and entertaining cookbooks, while at the same time supporting my work here on Substack. This offer is for a limited time, and, as the saying goes, while supplies last. Or, if you’re not ready to upgrade to Founding Membership, consider upgrading to paid (same button, above), which also has some juicy benefits. Or, stick with this weekly free subscription. It’s all good!

(I love salads all year round. This is Composed Tempeh Salad with Crisp Vegetables)

And now, onto so many good reasons to go vegan …

Food, glorious food

Vegan food is delicious and varied: The ideal vegan diet is based on fresh produce, whole grains, beans and other legumes, nuts, seeds, and plant proteins like tofu, tempeh, and seitan. The mix can include plant-based milks and cheeses, and plant-based meat alternatives.

Rather than being limiting, your food horizons will expand as you explore global cuisines. You don’t have to give up any favorite dishes, because pretty much everything can be veganized! Now, nearly every kind of dish and ingredient is available in a plant-based version, including beefy ground, chicken, and even seafood analogs — if that’s your jam.

A couple of days ago the NY Times ran an article, “13 Cozy Winter Dinners to Warm You Up.” They’ve been presenting a lot more vegetarian and vegan recipes, but this roundup was quite meaty. I thought it would be a fun project to veganize all the recipes. I already veganized the classic beef stew a while back; see my recipe for Beefy Vegan Seitan Stew (shown above).

While I appreciate that there are easy ways to veganize meaty dishes, my preferences run to gorgeous winter salads, stir-fries, and all kinds of plant-rich soups.

Even if you’re not planning to go full-on vegan, anyone can benefit from enjoying plant-based meals on a regular basis. They’re delicious and satisfying, and you just might feel more amazing than you ever thought possible.

For easy, delicious vegan recipes for every meal and every occasion, explore the hundreds of tasty, do-able recipes on The Vegan Atlas. Make everyday eating easier with these basic vegan meal planning tips for busy cooks.

Animals

This is from a project I did some years ago (Greetings from the Pasture) for which I hung signs adjacent to a pasture near my home and documented it. Unfortunately nothing has changed over the intervening years. The livestock bake in the hot sun all summer, then are gone around November and it makes me feel terrible.

Compassion: I lead with food when reaching out to my audience, but animal advocacy is what motivates me most. For ethical vegans, it’s bout compassion toward all sentient beings. Estimates range from 80 to 95 billion land animals slaughtered for consumption each year. Yikes — what a sobering statistic.

Their brutal demise in the slaughterhouse is almost a mercy compared to the way in which they are compelled to live their short lives. Consider also the human factor — slaughterhouse jobs are among the most hazardous of all occupations.

Antibiotic resistance: Farmed animals are fed a steady diet of antibiotics and often hormones that have no place in their system, let alone yours. There have been many well-researched studies on how this practice can lead to antibiotic resistance in humans, and it is rather alarming.

Dairy cow misery: Some people wonder about dairy cows — after all, they say, they “don’t have to die.” That may be true, but without going into the grueling details here, mother cows have the toughest lot imaginable. Any discussion of veganism needs to at least broach the subject of the miserable lives of dairy cows.

Consider this— humans are the only species that drinks the milk of another species, and the only species that drinks milk at all after being weaned. In many cafés all over the world, oat milk is the default "dairy" in coffee. Vegan cheeses and butters have improved so much over the last few years; there's really no excuse to continue using cow's milk.

If you want to learn more about animal welfare, films like Peaceable Kingdom, Earthlings, and Vegucated are eye-openers, and sometimes life-changers.

Environment and climate change

Greenhouse gases: Animal agriculture is a major contributor to the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change. According to a still-relevant 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the animal agriculture sector emits 18% of global, human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

Deforestation for the purpose of farm animal production has devastating repercussions for the environment as well. More evidence for the greenhouse gas-cutting effects of eliminating animals from the human diet are in this report from The University of Oxford.

Water waste: The raising of livestock depletes enormous land and water resources and contributes to the loss of millions of tons of irreplaceable topsoil each year. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, as compared to 390 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. The water use in animal agriculture is truly obscene. More about that here.

Oil, water, and air pollution: Animal waste is a major pollutant of soil, water, and air, and major user of pesticides. Taking this point and the others in this section on environment as a whole, avoiding meat and dairy is “the single biggest way to reduce your impact on the Earth” according to this report.

Though we need to take extravagant claims about individual foods with a grain of salt, there’s little doubt that a vegetable-rich diet is ideal. This is Broccoli with Shiitake Mushrooms & Cashews.

Health

Much care has to be taken about blanket health claims. Of course, it’s logical that a diet rich in fresh whole foods is going to contribute greatly to well-being. But there’s are factors outside of our control, including environmental and genetic, when it comes to health. So many studies are poorly designed, or else set out to prove whatever it is that they’ve been paid to prove.

So when I read things like “eating broccoli may help prevent cancer,” I can’t help but be skeptical — how can the researcher know whether their subjects were at risk of getting cancer in the first place? How in the world can they know if it was broccoli that kept them from getting it?

Still, in large studies of various diets, Mediterranean and plant-based diets nearly always come out on top. I’m just going to cite a couple of science-based studies here: Research has shown that plant-based diets can lower the risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D details one of the largest studies of human nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell came to the conclusion that “people who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease.”

Weight control: Vegetarians, and even more so vegans, tend to have lower overall rates of obesity, not a small point at a time when a majority of American adults are overweight, with some 300,000 yearly deaths from obesity-related diseases, which include not only those listed above, but also hypertension, kidney disease, osteoporosis, and arthritis.

A well-planned diet that centers on whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits provide a pleasant feeling of fullness that keeps the body fueled and satisfied for hours.

Longevity: If you’re intrigued by the promise of longer life, studies conducted on Seventh-Day Adventists (who have traditionally advocated a plant-based diet) have shown that they typically live an average of 7 to 15 years longer than meat-eaters.

Zoonotic disease concerns

Animal diseases can jump to humans. In this Guardian article, Dr. Michael Greger argues that "agricultural intensification ... is leading to zoonotic, or animal-borne, diseases such as bird flu, salmonella, Mers, Nipah and Covid-19."

And further, “In evolutionary terms, rearing poultry, cattle and pigs in high-intensity, crowded, confined, entirely unnatural conditions may be the most profound alteration of the human-animal relationship in 10,000 years.”

I don’t want to end this edition on a bummer note, so let’s return to some delicious food. Here’s a roundup of Hearty Plant-Based Pasta & Noodle Soups.

Do You Enjoy The Vegan Atlas?

I adore creating — books, art, web content, and my Substack newsletters. My work is truly a labor of love. Here are a few ways to support it:

• Forward this newsletter to a friend straight from your email.

• Like, comment, and/or restack this newsletter (scroll to the end).

• Give a gift subscription to a friend — for a year or a single month.

• Upgrade to a paid subscription for yourself and enjoy the extra benefits (including Sunday’s What to Make and Eat edition to inspire your weekly meal planning, + occasional exclusive content).

• Consider my books as gifts for friends or yourself! If you have the latest, Vegan Soups and Stews for All Seasons (5th edition), would you consider leaving a review on Amazon, whether you purchased it there or not?

• If you love books, women’s writing, and women’s history, subscribe to my other newsletter, Literary Ladies Guide.