Vegan vs. the Food Industry

I am a vegan. Let me delve deeper into what it really means for me to be a vegan. My ethics, my passion, and my vision for the future lies within my belief or better yet my ethics for equality between all species. In many ways it could be an issue by just the way people tend to lean towards how they treat their foods. Some people believe that it's completely okay to eat unhealthy just because their body “has low metabolism” or “I have a disease” and those people are the people who make excuses, excuses for everything. Your disease nor your metabolism should grant you the right to be lazy and unhealthy, to pack seven bags of chips in your cart and to only put a single fruit like strawberries in just so you can drown it in Hershey's chocolate syrup later. For the people who make excuses that they need their vitamins and protein and that veganism does not supply that for them. There are plenty of vitamins and proteins in foods other than meat, milk, and eggs. To the people who make the excuse “I just can't live without…” people need to learn how to stop making excuses and open their eyes to the truth.

The industry makes it so easy to consume unhealthy foods. A bag of family sized chips is two for $5, but does that same price go for a bag of fruit that would weigh the same amount? Sadly, it’s a no. Sometimes me and the lady behind me could pay the same amount, but just because I'm vegan and I live for being healthy I walk out with two bags and she walks out with four. Why are we monetarily punished for being healthy? Speaking of less money for more food, let's have a talk about fast foods. Everywhere they advertise five for $4 and yes, it's easier to feed multiple people that way but what about when you are consuming that multiple times a day, multiple days a week and then you go home and you have those seven bags of chips waiting for you to gobble up? What’s even worse about transportation is that my fruit from local farmers and growers travels a shorter distance to the grocery store than a refrigerated fish or even Cheetos for that matter. Now in comparison you would think that the cost of gas and production facilities alone would make junk foods cost at least a couple dollars more not to mention the ingredients they must buy to make it, but no, the family-sized bag of Doritos costs you two bags for $5 and my 1lb of blueberries coming from across the city local growers costs me $5, I’m not having it. People again use excuses to label why they can’t eat healthy and how much they would have to invest into preparing their own food at least three nights a week. Excuse me, ma’am, I doubt you or your kids need that 24 pack of Capri Suns. Instead you could buy two 48 packs of 16.9oz water bottles for the same price and then you wouldn't have to worry about why their pediatrician suggested you place them on a diet or why they have so many cavities and pimples.

Is it the businesses' issue to produce better foods for their customers? Is it their purpose to raise the prices? Some would like to argue yes, while the plain fact is that they are fishing the money in. They are receiving the funds they want because their product is cheap. Is it the company owner’s morality on the line or is it at the fault of the people? Here we have the CEOs profiting off low-income families because of the uncontrolled amount of junk food they purchase from those companies weekly. The morality of the CEO and their view of how to get the most money while producing the weakest forms of nutrients they could possibly produce is outstanding. It bothers me to think that some people could be so blind in the way they consume food.

Eating ethically? Well, once you cut open your eyelids you cannot taper it back on, and if you try then you look like a fool. What I mean by that is that I have been given the opportunity to see my food for what it truly is. The first time I ever made a step in the right direction is after my first time seeing the McDonald's pink slime video. From that day on, I vowed to never eat at a fast food restaurant unless it was urgent, and personally it's never that urgent. That was when I was 13. Best decision of my life. Now, if I had gone back and had those nuggets, I would not only be breaking my own promise but I would be disappointing myself. Oh, how Immanuel Kant would despise me for that. Eating ethically not only concerns you, but it concerns the animals and the planet around you. Six hundred sixty gallons of water for one pound of beef. Remember that next time, California, when you're struggling to take a hot shower.

For those people who think that it's hard to eat healthy because they “just can’t do it,” listen, I am just as idle as you when I think about making dinner for myself, yet here I am still alive and only consuming vegetables, fruits, bread, nuts, and seeds. Somehow people get their doctorate degrees in nutrition as soon as I tell them that I am a vegan, but I get all my protein, b12, and vitamins from my food; I know what’s in my food, they don't, and aside from being smart aleck, they don't really care when I tell them, and more astonishingly it's not like they know exactly what's in their food either. To consider one thing on the opposing side is that yes maybe money holds you back from trying to eat healthy, but then so does your laziness. The only thing holding people back is their own will power to do something. Sometimes people know what's not good for them, but then they consume loads of it anyway.

Obesity begins at home with enablers. Most of whom are parents unluckily in the lower class. Yet even when they watch their children consume all their Halloween candy in a week, they get upset and angry instead of regulating such behavior from the beginning. It starts with the parents. The biggest and first influencers of children. They model us from the time they can walk. So, if the parent eats more than they should, then the child will too. The mind of a child imprints what it is taught, and if it is taught bad habits, then we cannot completely blame them for being overweight in the first place.

Obesity can be a mixture of parental enablers, economic class, and ignorance to the foods one places in their bodies. Although not verbatim, these issues form a simplistic ideal as to what guarantees obesity in people across the world.