Best 263 quotes in «vegan quotes» category

Plants are not cognizant. When we cut a leaf, we assume that the plant is suffering. But that's our own anthropomorphism about what's going on.

Poor animals, how jealously they guard their bodies, for to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself.

Rabbits will always have a special place in my heart. They are often discredited as being good pets because they don’t ‘do anything’—ask any rabbit owner and watch how they laugh!” -Shenita Etwaroo

...recent research suggests that presenting people with proof that their beliefs are incorrect doesn't change their minds. Instead, it actually reinforces their erroneous beliefs, as they work hard to defend them against fact and logic.

Remember at all time that just as your life is precious to you, so too is all life precious to those living one.

Results from a prospective study of 25,892 Norwegian women clearly showed that consumption in excess of 750 ml of whole milk a day leads to a relative risk of breast cancer of 2.91 compared with consumption of less than 150 ml with a relative risk of 1.0 [104].

Results about disease risk that largely agree among different studies include those for CHD [Coronary Heart Disease] and perhaps diabetes and colon cancer. In addition, data on other risk factors for chronic diseases, such as overweight, blood lipids, and blood pressure, fit this criterion. Mortality and incidence rates of coronary disease events are indeed clearly lower in vegetarians. This is true in the 2 previous cohorts of Adventists (16, 22) and in the older cohorts of British and German vegetarians (23–25). A combined analysis of those cohorts (26) confirmed this result with a 32% higher CHD mortality rate in the nonvegetarians. This is not surprising because there is convincing evidence that several important risk factors for CHD have more optimal values in vegetarians. Regular, moderate nut (16, 27) and wholegrain (11, 16) consumption are associated with lower risk of CHD. These are foods often preferred by vegetarians. Several other studies of nonvegetarians have strongly suggested that dietary patterns emphasizing fruit, vegetables, and less meat are associated with much lower risk of CHD (10, 28) consistent with the CHD mortality data in studies of vegetarians. Animal fats (largely saturated) raise LDL cholesterol (29) and increase risk; these obviously come from foods eaten less or not at all by vegetarians. Total or LDL cholesterol is typically lower in vegetarians (30, 31). HDL cholesterol is not consistently different (30, 32), although it does tend to be a little lower in Adventists (33), perhaps because of the lack of alcohol consumption. Vegetarians are consistently thinner, or at least less overweight, than are nonvegetarians within the same studies (34, 32). It is also probable that vegetarians have lower blood pressures than others (32, 35, 36), although the reasons are still controversial, and effects are sometimes small as in British vegetarians (37).

The 5-unit BMI difference between vegans and nonvegetarians indicates a substantial potential of vegetarianism to protect against obesity. Increased conformity to vegetarian diets protected against risk of type 2 diabetes after lifestyle characteristics and BMI were taken into account. Pesco- and semi-vegetarian diets afforded intermediate protection.

Some people do not really hate junk food. They merely love themselves a lot.

Some studies have shown that hypertension occurs less frequently among vegetarians than among nonvegetarians, regardless of body weight or sodium intake. Intake of red meat has been linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer. Vegetarians, including lacto-ovo and vegan, have reduced incidences of diabetes and lower rates of cancer than nonvegetarians, particularly for gastrointestinal cancer.47,48 Vegetarian-style diet patterns are associated with lower all-cause mortality.49 Vegetarian-style eating patterns are being used for the prevention and therapeutic dietary treatment of numerous chronic conditions, including overweight and obesity, cardiovascular disease (hyperlipidemia, ischemic heart disease, and hypertension), diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis.50

Sources of Plant Protein Grains and grain products, legumes (lentils and dried beans and peas such as kidney beans or chickpeas), starchy vegetables, and nuts and seeds all provide protein (see Table B). A serving of a grain product or starchy vegetable provides an average of about 5 grams of protein, a serving of legumes provides 10 to 20 grams of protein, and a serving of vegetables provides about 3 grams of protein. Although a serving of these foods contains less protein than a serving of meat, you can eat more plant protein foods for fewer calories.

Speak to meat eaters the way you would speak to a wild animal: softly and without any sudden movements.

the ~25% lower mortality from all other causes (a catch-all category in which the most common cause of death is old age) in low meat eaters compared with regular meat eaters is hard to explain.

Several previous researches reported that stroke incidence is greater among participants with a higher consumption of red and processed meats because they tend to have unhealthy behaviors and conditions.15, 24, 25 Although studies included in this meta‐analysis adjusted for major stroke risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking, obesity, and alcohol use, the effect of unadjusted risk factors still remain.

Spain is more vegan-friendly than you've been led to believe. The truth is, most places are.

Start with your heart, and only good can follow!

The chickens? Why those poor little birds live shitty-ass lives before being hauled off in hellish fucking trucks to clusterfucks known as "slaughterhouses", where they're killed by turd-faced asshats who have no sense of decency, and their legs and wings are served at dumbfuck football parties.

The Butcher’s Shop The pigs are strung in rows, open-mouthed, dignified in martyrs’ deaths. They hang stiff as Sunday manners, their porky heads voting Tory all their lives, their blue rosettes discarded now. The butcher smiles a meaty smile, white apron stained with who knows what, fingers fat as sausages. Smug, woolly cattle and snowy sheep prance on tiles, grazing on eternity, cute illustrations in a children’s book. What does the sheep say now? Tacky sawdust clogs your shoes. Little plastic hedges divide the trays of meat, playing farms. playing farms. All the way home your cold and soggy paper parcel bleeds.

The mass of the population before the modern era rarely ate meat as the mass of the peasantry rarely do in underdeveloped countries today. In Europe, in the Middle Ages, meat, especially red meat, was associated with aristocracy, landed gentry and their militaristic and hunting culture. It was this, also, that tended to strengthen the association of meat with power and aggression.

The fundamental principle of morality which we seek as a necessity for thought is not, however, a matter only of arranging and deepening current views of good and evil, but also of expanding and extending these. A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.

The high level of meat and saturated fat consumption in the USA and other high-income countries exceeds nutritional needs and contributes to high rates of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and some cancers.

The idea that damage has to be pain is mistaken. We feel pain because we have specific types of receptors called nociceptors which are programmed to respond to pain, not to touch. People can have genetic malfunctions where they feel pressure but never feel pain because they don't have pain receptors.

The latest estimates from the RSPCA and others claim that 19% of dairy bull claves are killed at birth, but no questions are asked as to why this is the case.

The main finding was that vegan and lacto-ovo vegetarian diets were associated with a nearly one-half reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes compared with the risk associated with nonvegetarian diets after adjustment for a number of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, as well as low BMI, that are typically associated with vegetarianism. Pesco- and semi-vegetarian diets were associated with intermediate risk reductions: between one-third and one-quarter. These data indicate that vegetarian diets may in part counteract the environmental forces leading to obesity and increased rates of type 2 diabetes, though only vegan diets were associated with a BMI in the optimal range. Inclusion of meat, meat products, and fish in the diet, even on a less than weekly basis, seems to limit some of the protection associated with a vegan or lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. These findings may be explained by adverse effects of meat and fish, protective effects of typical constituents of vegan and lacto-ovo vegetarian diets, other characteristics of people who choose vegetarian diets, or a combination of these factors.

The main finding was that vegan and lacto-ovo vegetarian diets were associated with a nearly one-half reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes compared with the risk associated with nonvegetarian diets after adjustment for a number of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, as well as low BMI, that are typically associated with vegetarianism.

The combined results from 5 articles15, 24, 25, 26, 30 with 8 comparisons (254 742 participants) on red meat intake and stroke incidence comparing the highest versus the lowest category show that red meat consumption is linked to an increase of 3% to 20% stroke incidence.

The main finding was that vegan and lacto-ovo vegetarian diets were associated with a nearly one-half reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes compared with the risk associated with nonvegetarian diets after adjustment for a number of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, as well as low BMI, that are typically associated with vegetarianism. Pesco- and semi- vegetarian diets were associated with intermediate risk reductions: between one-third and one-quarter.

The number of individuals enslaved and slaughtered on factory farms every year exponentially surpasses—by trillions—any form of exploitation of human beings anywhere, at any time. . . . American meat eaters were responsible for about 198 deaths per person in 2009, which accumulates to about 15,000 animals in the course of one individual’s lifetime.

The most powerful bond we know of is the bond between mother and child, and we break it in order to make "comfort foods" for ourselves" Michael Schwarz

The number one element on the list for changing and improving one's lifestyle is definitely in the area of health for most people. Good health paves the way for even more awesomeness to happen all-the-way-around.

The paleo diet uses a distorted view of ancient history to argue that a diet of 50 to 80 percent animal products is the most life span enhancing. (This recommendation is double to triple the average animal product consumption in America today.) Early humans ate many different types of diets in various parts of the world, but what they ate here or there is not even the relevant question. It is how long they lived, and how long present humans will live (in good health) with various diet styles that is more relevant. The answer to this question is clear as the preponderance of evidence is overwhelming today.

The only really useful thing about zoos is that most of them pay most of their workers most of the time.

There is convincing evidence that vegetarians have lower rates of coronary heart disease, largely explained by low LDL cholesterol, probable lower rales of hypertension and diabetes mellitus, and lower prevalence of obesity. Overall, their cancer rates appear to be moderately lower than others living in the same communities, and life expectancy appears to be greater.

There is general agreement that red meat consumption increases the risk of colon or colorectal cancer. This was the only food association with cancer that was labeled ‘‘convincing’’ in the recent report from the World Cancer Research Fund, American Institute for Cancer Research (42). The evidence, of course, largely came from studies of meat consumption in nonvegetarians, although data from Adventist vegetarians in California concur (43).

There is a stereotype that vegans talk about being vegan all the time. The irony is, once people find out I’m vegan, I quickly become their confessor, counselor, and sounding board.

There is no particular merit in being nice to one's fellow man... We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is a result of our emotions - love apathy, charity of malice - and what part is predetermines by the constant power play among individuals. True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buries from view), consists of attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental débâcle, a débâcle so fundamental all others stem from it.

This touches on the issue of how vegans should handle the caveman argument. Many of us are tempted to strain credulity and torture the evidence to ‘prove’ humans are ‘naturally’ vegan. This is a trap, and one into which carnists (especially paleo-dieters) would love us to fall; the evidence isn’t on our side. There’s no doubt that hominids ate meat.... The argument for veganism has always been primarily ethical, and ought to remain that way. It’s based on a concern for the future, not an obsession about the past.

The results suggest that consumption of total meat is significantly associated with a 9% to 28% increased risk of stroke.

The Torah teaches that God created all beings, all creatures are good in and of themselves, and that the Creator remains personally invested in creation. Scriptures also indicate that human beings were created “in the image of God” by a deity who is munificent and compassionate toward all creatures. The Creator assigned human beings the task of protecting and serving creation . . . . Jews are to be compassionate, to avoid harming anymals, and Jewish law specifically protects anymals as ends in themselves. Jewish religious traditions honor anymals as individuals, and as our kin. God created a vegan world, peaceful and without bloodshed, and the Tanakh encourages people to work to create a path back to this original Peaceable Kingdom.

They’re not fat pigs; we’re mad scientists.

Twenty years ago, the vast majority of persons, as we then wrote, had never tasted a really new-laid egg, and did not know what it was like: now many thousands do, and are willing to pay for it.

Those who are willing to work for change, and make changes, too often do so only for the sake of their own liberation, without much thought to the oppression of others—especially other species. Feminists lobby against sex wage discrepancies, gays fight homophobic laws, and the physically challenged demand greater access—each fighting for injustices that affect their lives, and/or the lives of their loved ones. Yet these dedicated activists usually fail to make even a slight change in their consumer choices for the sake of other much more egregiously oppressed and exploited individuals. While it is important to fight for one’s own liberation, it is counterproductive (not to mention selfish and small minded) to fight for one’s own liberation while willfully continuing to oppress others who are yet lower on the rungs of hierarchy. While fighting for liberation, it makes no sense for feminists to trample on gays, for gays to trample on the physically challenged, or for the physically challenged to trample on feminists. It also makes no sense for any of these social justice activists to willfully exploit factory farmed animals. Can we not at least avoid exploiting and dominating others while working for our personal liberation? Those who seek greater justice—whatever their cause—must make choices that diminish the cruel exploitation of others. As a matter of consistency and solidarity, social justice activists must reject dairy products, eggs, and flesh. There is no other industry as cruel and oppressive as factory farming. With regard to numbers affected, extent and length of suffering, and numbers of premature deaths, no other industry can even approach factory farming. Billions of individuals are exploited from genetically engineered birth, through excruciating confinement, to conveyor belt dismemberment. Consequently, there is no industry more appropriate for social justice activists to boycott. Even if we aren’t prepared to take a public stand, or take on another cause, we must at least make a private commitment on behalf of cows, pigs, and hens by leaving animal products on the shelf at the grocery store.

Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' and orders it. The other says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and orders something else. Who is the sentimentalist?

Vegan diet is not necessarily healthy, but it does have the moral high ground.

Vegetarians and especially vegans have a significantly lower prevalence of obesity than meat eaters. Differences in macronutrient intakes (protein, fat, carbohydrate, dietary fibre, sugars, alcohol) accounted for about half the difference in mean body mass index (BMI) between vegans and meat eaters.

vegetarians and vegans had significantly lower mortality than regular meat eaters for pancreatic cancer and digestive diseases, and fish eaters had significantly lower colorectal cancer mortality than regular meat eaters (Supplemental Table 2). Further adjustment for BMI left these associations largely unchanged.

Vegan is just pure love. Love for animals, love for the planet, and love for yourself.

Vegans avoid animal products because we oppose any use of animals, regardless of how small- or large-scale, but as we live in a non-vegan world we have to accept that some of those products are unavoidable at this point in time.

Vegans following a whole food diet had a borderline supply of vitamin B12. Folic acid, vitamin B6, TSH, iron metabolism, and the blood count were in the normal range. Vegans taking dietary supplements demonstrated satisfactory overall results. An ingestion of sundried mushrooms can contribute to the supply of vitamin D.

Vitamin D has been added to milk in the United States since the 1930s to prevent rickets. We report the unusual occurrence of eight cases of vitamin D intoxication that appear to have been caused by excessive vitamin D fortification of dairy milk.