What about the planet, climate change and why I don't eat fish, meat and animal products anymore?

I never planned to change my diet. I certainly didn't plan to move forward with vegan diet lifestyle. I always found vegetarians, vegans, let alone raw vegans pretty extreme. However, after many years of living in pain, coexisting and surviving rather than living, I started to dig. Conventional medicine was helpless in finding cure for my health problems and I needed to take my health into my own hands. I started with finding out what foods may have triggered my long term diseases first. When it came to meat, dairy, fish and finally starchy foods, which I was eating in massive quantities, I realised that those foods are responsible for chronic sinusitis, joint pain, digestive problems, anxiety, neuropathic pains, and more. That was my turning point and for the first time in my life I felt that there is hope and I could live pain free.

When I got through the transition from full meat eater to a vegan eater ( although I do not like being labeled this way, I prefer to think of myself as a "natural mucus lean, mucus less eater", plus I do eat honey occasionally and it will stay so for now) I realised there is more to it.

There is a tight connection between these massive food productions and us. As consumers we are taught to love these products ( and yes they taste so good!), and to support these products, even though they create more harm in our bodies. After all it's all about the money, mostly money for the few individuals. I would never accept it myself, if my own health wasn't at risk. I now promote healthy eating habits for myself, my clients, friends and all my blog readers. I think it is very important to spread the word about the truth of nutrition. What exactly do we bring to the tables? It's important to share the knowledge we have about nutritional values of meat, fish and dairy and what damage it creates and disease it brings. It is important to say out loud about consequences those food productions have on our planet, its vitality and a climate change. So here are few facts I gathered and I hope they will move you as much they moved me and encourage you the way they did encourage me into a new, healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

Fish industry

Sea turtles 6 out of 7 species are threatened or endangered not because of the climate change or ocean pollution but because of the commercial fishing industry.

USA fishing vessels cause 250 000 sea turtles deaths per year.

World plastic causes 1000 sea turtles deaths per year

Latest study says that 51% waste in the oceans comes from fishing nets.

Commercial fishing industry is the biggest issue by far and responsible of ocean pollution and dying sea species.

Destructive fishing practices such as bycatch are leading to the endangerment of global fisheries. It is estimated that 40.4% of all marine catch around the world is discarded back into the ocean as bycatch, by which most of them are dead before they hit the water again.

Plastic straws are only accounted for 0.03% of all plastics entering the oceans

By 2050 90% of coral reefs will die.

The hidden news is fish keeping coral reefs alive. When fish excrete, it becomes food for the corals. Fishing has become the major threat for many reefs around the world.

Ocean is the biggest carbon sink on the planet. Both big and small fish sequester carbon when they sink to the bottom of the ocean. 93% of all CO2 is stored in our oceans.

Simply leaving the ocean be, is the way to protect it and at the same a way of addressing the climate change.

Marine plants store 20 times more carbon than forests on the land.

Ways of fishing devastate all spaces and the bottom of the ocean leaving it a barren wasteland.

None of the environmental groups around the world address fishery problems. There are no existent ocean areas which prohibit fishery.

Sustainable seafood does not exist. Eating sustainable fish does not help the oceans to thrive as a definition of sustainability does not exist. Sustainability can not be measured hence fish quantity in the oceans can not be measured. The true commercial fishery observers are mostly absent to watch the techniques of fishery, or being silenced with a bribe.

To produce 1kg of farmed salmon you need 1.2kg of feed. It does sound not too bad at all! However, fish feed is heavily processed and is made from dried fish meal and extracted fish oil, which requires a massive amount of fish to produce. So the reality is that you need many more fish going into the farmers feed than will ever come out.

Each salmon farm in Scotland produces organic waste equivalent to a town of 10 to 20,000 people. And all Scottish fish farming industry together produce every single year of organic waste equivalent to entire population of Scotland.

Meat Industry

Cows and other farmed animals produce a substantial amount of methane from their digestive process. Methane gas from livestock is 86 times more destructive than carbon dioxide from vehicles.

Raising animals for food is responsible for 51% of human caused climate change.

To produce 0.45kg of beef, you need 9,463.523 litre of water.

Making one hamburger uses water equivalent to two months of showering.

216,000 more people are born on the planet every day; this means we need 34,000 of new acres of farmable land every day. We can't accommodate that.

To feed one vegan person per year, you need 1/6 acre of land.

To feed same person on a vegetarian diet (incl eggs, dairy), you need three times as much land.

To feed same person on a meat, egg, dairy diet, requires eighteen as much land.

On 1.5 acres ( little more than a football pitch) of land you can produce 16,782 kg of vegetables.

But on 1.5 acres you can only produce 170 kg of meat.

Environmental groups don't address the real problem of environmental devastation, which is animal agriculture. They survive from donations, they are a business and they behave like one. They look to maximise people making the contributions, hence they can't get identified as inti- meat or challenge people on their everyday habits, it will challenge their fundraising and mess with their donation income

Dairy Industry

Cows can live to the age of 20, however average lifespan of a high-producing animal doesn't even top five.

It is only female cows that are allowed to survive in any case. Each female cow should get pregnant each year, if not she is sold to meat farm and killed for meat.

Females are repeatedly forcibly impregnated. Babies are torn away from their mothers, mutilated, kept in filthy and severely crowded conditions, and fed a cocktail of drugs, sometimes causing their bodies to become oversized, resulting in numerous health problems

Cow's milk is a baby growth fluid, which has got the hormones, the lipids, the proteins, the sodium, the growth factors, the IGF, which allows to blow calf into a great big cow.

Whether you pour it into your cereal, latte, cloth it into yoghurt, or ferment it into cheese or freeze into ice cream IT IS STILL A BABY CALF GROWTH FLUID that you eat.

Dairy products stimulate womens tissues, give them breast lumps, makes uterus big, gives fibroids, men get man boobs, increased chance of prostate cancer. Dairy increases risk in both male and female cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and again some cancers.

Truths about nutritional values:

All nutrients are there in the plant kingdom, not in the animals' one.

Calcium. Today three out of four cows are fed pasture and needs to be given calcium supplements, which milk contains when cow is grazing. This amount of calcium in milk from cow fed pasture though, can not compare with milk from grazing cows. If that's the case why don't we get nutrients from the direct source or plant based supplements? Naturally calcium is found in green leafy vegetables, pulses, sesame seeds and okra.

Omega 3 fish oil. Fish don't produce Omega 3, fish eat algae which is rich in Omega 3. We squeeze fish with the oil to make a supplement we can then take.

Vitamin B12 plays huge role in nervous, digestive, and immune system and it is responsible for energy relies. Animals don't have vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is originally made by bacteria found in soil and water - not by plants or animals. Bacteria can grow in animal or human body, once appropriate conditions are presented. We don't have to take it through animals, in contrary, when deficient in B12 it is advised to take supplementation not increasing meat consumption. Due to the way our food is produced today, the naturally occuring B12 from the soil is often lost, leaving many of us deficient in this crucial vitamin. Some amounts of vitamin B12 are naturally found in seaweed, algae, mushrooms, tempeh, spirulina. There are fortified foods packed with Vit B12, however various factors may diminish vitamin B12 making its source less reliable. Therefore most reliable source of all for both vegans and non-vegans is B12 supplementation.

Protein. Plant based foods rich in protein include beans, legumes, nuts and seeds, tempeh, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms or spirulina. These foods are excellent examples of protein source great for building and maintaining muscle mass, maintaining our nervous system, keeping our hair, skin and nails strong and healthy. Elite athletes like James Wilks, Dotsie Bausch, Lewis Hamilton, Scott Jurek, Kendrick Farris (and many more) converted into veganism, which their swear by to help them to be the best.

Energy. The best energy source is found in all fruit. Fruits are great foods which can release energy very fast like ripe banana or slow like an apple. They have all pallet of minerals and vitamins, which give us energy boost whenever needed throughout the day, let our body function well and keep it healthy.

Vitamin D. In the UK from about late March/early April to the end of September, most people should be able to get all the vitamin D we need from sunlight. From October until March we rely on getting our vitamin D from various food sources and more reliable source - supplements.

Bottom line

After weeks of reading, this new to me information, watching documentaries, and investigating various sources I looked in the mirror. I said to myself, that I have one health and I have to rescue it and bring it back. But it wasn't only about my health. I wanted to stop contributing to all ( or at least most) devastating events. I had to stop being comfortably unaware. I believe none of us intend this situation to get this far, animals suffering, species dying out and our planet being suffocated, but since we are in it now, and know so much about it, it's time to make a change and and revert it back to good times. This is my manifest and my way to show respect to all living species, to bow, to unite, to be equal to the all living on Earth animals and make the peace with them. I owe it to them more than ever. Don't you? Earth has got all this kind of speases for a reason and everyone is contributing and playing a huge role in healthy ecosystem. Without us all, no one and nothing can exist.

"Most of the positive and negative changes, which bring in human civilisation start with someone. Some ONE. And no ONE can do everything, but every ONE can do something"

Sylvia Earle

I hope this blog can empower You to at least reduce meat, fish and dairy consumption. With so many delicious and healthy plant-based options available, going vegan is easier than ever. Tell your friends, family and colleagues. Persuade them to follow your example! Lets be healthy and happy together, in the world where harmony and every living is respected and cherished. Where pain and illness doesn't have to be unavoidable part of our existence.

Resources:

United Nations,

Sir David Attenborough,

Sylvia Earle,

Mucusless Diet Healing System,

Comfortably Unaware,

Kip Andersen,

Richard Oppenlander,

Michael Klaper,

Keegan Kuhn,

Christian Drewing,

James Wilks,

Joseph Pace,

Lewis Hamilton

If you want to learn more, there are some great documentaries you can watch:

A life On Our Planet,

Seaspiracy,

The Milk System,

The Game Changers