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Last Updated on December 8, 2023
Being vegan is so much more than just a talking point, there are so many benefits to leading a vegan lifestyle – in fact, the more time you spend living a vegan life, the more new benefits keeping on popping up. I made the mistake once of addressing this in a class as “Top Benefits to Eating Vegan”, which is a great title…until people misread it as “Top Benefits to Eating a Vegan”. I have never eaten any human, least of all a vegan, but I can imagine that they would be better for you than a junky meat-fed human; at the very least they are grass-fed. Here is a roundup of my top favourites benefits to being vegan:
- Reduces Your Risk of Developing Cancer
The C-word is one we all live in fear of hearing one day from our doctors. The best news about converting to a vegan lifestyle is that plant-based foods – like fruit & veg, legumes and nuts, are packed with cancer-preventing healthy nutrients. Plants produce loads of phytochemicals which can protect your cells from damage.
- Significantly Reduces Your Cholesterol Levels
If you have high cholesterol, or are worried about your rising cholesterol levels then a vegan diet is the best move you can make. Instead of living off nasty chemicals in the form of chronic medications, you should switch to vegan menu options instead. A vegan diet is plant-based which significantly reduces your saturated fat intake. Saturated fats are often the biggest contributor to higher LDL cholesterol levels, so by reducing these levels you will greatly reduce your bad cholesterol numbers. Not only that, a plant-based diet will also increase your good cholesterol levels.
- Mood Booster
A vegan diet greatly improves mental clarity and your overall mood by balancing out your gut bacteria. A happy gut equals a happy you because your body is better equipped to produce mood-enhancing hormones and produce them far more efficiently than it can with a meat-based diet.
- All Natural Ingredients
The best part about converting to a vegan lifestyle and diet is that it is so much more than just what you put in your body – it’s what you put on it too. Vegan is all about the natural plant-based life, from what you eat right down to what skincare products you use. Going vegan is more than just a passing fad; it is a change in how you view life, and all life – not just your own. Vegan cosmetics, however, aren’t guaranteed to be all natural, it simply means that vegan cosmetics do not contain ingredients of an animal nature or ingredients that have been tested on animals.
- Helps You Lose Weight
One of the fastest ways to help you lose weight is to cut out dairy products. Dairy products, most often, are very high in calories and fat. Plant-based foods are typically much lower in overall calorie content than animal foods are; this is because plants are so much lower in calories per serving than animals. If you make sure that you’re getting enough calories and you’re eating the right kind of carbs, you may even find that you have more energy than you did when you ate animal products – which is why many athletes swear by the vegan conversion.
- Animal and Earth Friendly
This one may seem like a no-brainer – not eating animals obviously saves them. It is so much more than just saving the animals you don’t eat – which is an astounding 20 to 30 animals per person per month (just by the way). Following a vegan diet helps save non-farmed animals too, by preventing habitat destruction, climate change as well as ocean dead zones caused by over-fishing.
- Richer in Nutrients
You may be worried that by eliminating meat and other animal products from your diet that you will be end up with nutrient-deficiency problems – fear not though as this is certainly not the case. Quite far from it in fact, following a vegan diet will make you consume more whole-foods like whole grains, fruit & veg, beans, nuts and legumes and these little gems (gems…gem squash… I’m a comic genius I tell you…) are all densely nutrient rich.
- It Helps Save The Bees
Honey is so important. Being vegan means no honey (animal product) which could have a massively positive impact on bee populations around the world. We all know that bees are one of the most important species on this earth, so if we stop stealing what they work so hard to make then maybe they will have half a chance at bouncing back. There are vegan-friendly alternatives to honey such as maple syrup or agave nectar.
- Prevents Diabetes
Eating whole foods, like fruit and vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts, can significantly improve your blood sugar control. Having better control over your blood sugar will make your body more responsive to insulin which, in turn, prevents you from developing type 2 diabetes. This is especially true, as studies have shown, for those people who are overweight and struggling to shed their extra pounds.
- Reduces Inflammation
Bad inflammation is one of the nastiest afflictions to hit your body. Inflammation is great for your body when you need it and it does serve a great purpose – like at a wound site, to help you heal. Bad inflammation, on the other hand, creates havoc in your body and causes arthritis, asthma, cancer and even blindness! Bad inflammation has also been linked to autism and mental illness. The nutrients in a vegan diet helps to ease inflammation and fight the pain caused by it.
Choosing to convert to a vegan lifestyle is not a decision to take lightly, it is totally different to what most western folks are used to. You can, like most things in life, take things slowly and ease yourself into your new normal. Make the change today by implementing “Meat-Free Mondays” into your lifestyle and gradually add on from there. If you feel that you can make more changes all at once then by all means, do that. The benefits of converting to a plant-based vegan lifestyle are clear, what you do with this information from here on is entirely up to you.
