Becoming Vegetarian: The Benefits To The Planet And Your Body
"I've always been interested in a plant-based diet, but I grew up in a family where burgers, sausages and fish were a staple in my household"
For my senior project, we were asked to take a narrative and change it. I wanted to create something that I could add to my portfolio and benefit me once I graduated college and was looking for work. I knew I wanted to do something based on the environment, but it wasn't until I watched the Netflix documentary, Cowspiracy that I became really inspired. The documentary focuses around how environmental organizations refuse to discuss the leading cause of climate change: Animal production. You're probably asking yourself, “but why wouldn't they want to tell the truth?” the unfortunate truth is that they are scared they’ll lose their followers because it's easy to cut down your showers, or carpool to work but it's much harder to go vegetarian and a lot of people aren’t willing to do it.
As I continued to build my project, I realized I couldn’t fully invest myself into this unless I too became a vegetarian. I had always been interested in a plant-based diet, but I grew up in a family where burgers, sausages and fish were a staple in my household. I started out with cutting red meat out of my diet since I was under the impression that animals like cows and pigs were the biggest part of the animal production problem. But as I started to do more research and watch more documentaries, I learned that of course it was all equally terrible. After watching Cowspiracy’s sister documentary, Seaspiracy and learning the horrors of the seafood industry, I cut out meat completely out of my diet. At first it was difficult, for the first couple of days I had terrible migraines and found myself eating pasta most nights because I was never full after eating a plate of vegetables. But, slowly my body started to adjust and I finally saw what all the hype was about. I was sleeping better, waking up early and having so much more energy. The biggest benefit was my skin. I have struggled with acne my entire life and tried every remedy under the sun. After just a week of cutting meat out of my diet, my skin was completely clear. The amount of years and money I would have saved if I just knew cutting meat out of my diet would cure my skin!
Besides the benefits becoming vegetarian has had to my body, it's also opened up my palette to completely new things. One of the largest issues vegetarians face is struggling to get protein. This has forced me to find new, creative recipes. For example, giving up chicken salad was a tough one for me, but I was able to find a recipe where you can make chicken salad from chickpeas and It tastes just as delicious! I quickly learned that being vegetarian doesn’t mean sacrificing the foods you used to love, it just means expanding your palate to what does and doesn’t work!
My senior project focuses around changing the narrative of animal production. In two weeks, my website will be up and running. It will have a section that helps to inform people about why animal and seafood production are harmful to the environment, along with another section that will provide vegetarian recipes that I have fallen in love with. Additionally, I will provide recommendations of restaurants that have great vegetarian options (I personally have fallen in love with Taco bell’s black bean crunch wrap supreme) My website will not only help to bring awareness to animal production, but it will also provide people with meal options to make starting a plant based diet easier.