Projekt Nachhaltigkeit: Herausforderung 3 – Eating Vegan

Recently I decided to live a vegan lifestyle and thus I did a lot of research on veganism. What I found were ways of eating vegan and tips for staying vegan but also a lot of opinion sharing.

I came along all this information because I have been struggling with cutting out eating animal products. This had many reasons. First off, I live in a family that eats animal products on a daily basis, just like any other family in Germany. In addition, concentrating on what I eat is not my main focus. I have other things I prioritize like school or exercising. These were the main causes that led me to struggling with veganism. So, like every other human in this situation, I decided to get some help from the internet.

What I found out was that some people only eat vegan because it is said to be healthier, not because they think it is better for the environment. Therefore, I became interested in the question whether veganism really is healthy or not. Firstly, I realized that one can still eat a lot of junk food when eating vegan. There are lots of sweets and unhealthy things that do not contain any animal products. So, eating vegan does not mean eating healthy automatically.

Still, eating vegan brings a lot of good things with it. I started informing myself more about what food is actually good for our body and what we need for our body to function correctly. If you eat vegan and respect all that comes with it, it can be very healthy. But given the fact that our body is meant to eat at least some animal products, reducing them or cutting them out from your diet can get fairly unhealthy. I realized that through eating vegan I concentrated a lot on where my food came from and, of course, I automatically cut out the unhealthy things from my diet.

Everyone experiences veganism differently and if somebody shares their experience or opinion on it, one shouldn’t fully adopt the opinion because people react differently to different types of diet depending on their varying genes.

In one video, a girl talked about how she had been eating vegan for five years consequently. Out of the blue she experienced changes. She felt weak and got skin problems. As she started eating animal products again, she felt better and her symptoms faded.

What I want to say is that there is a lot of information concerning veganism on the internet, and on people’s minds, since it is starting to become a trend in certain regions. In conclusion, I would say that a vegan diet can be a smart way of eating when really focusing on eating the healthy things but it is clearly not for everyone.

(Text: Sophia B. (S2); Foto: unsplash.com))