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How Veganism Helps Your Body

A vegan lifestyle isn’t just extremely good for the world, it’s personally good for your own body. For all the concerns about protein and other nutrients, a plant-based diet is a healthy one. You’ll do yourself a lot of good by saying good bye to meat and other animal products.

Cholesterol: We all know about cholesterol, a type of fat that is only found in animal products. Too much of it can lead to hardening arteries and heart disease. Since cholesterol doesn’t exist in the plant world, this is one health problem you won’t have to worry about.

Other forms of fat are pretty high in meat as well, though you can get high-fat vegan foods too (avocados are one example). Overall, you’ll find your fat intake drops considerably when you ditch the animal foods.

Antibiotics: These are unfortunately becoming a common “ingredient” in most meat and dairy products raised in factory conditions. Animals are given huge amounts of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick in their dirty living conditions, and those antibiotics are still present in the meat or dairy products once they hit the shelves. They are in the environment as well as your body, and it’s slowly but surely helping to create antibiotic resistant “superbugs,” or illnesses that cannot be treated because they have mutated to be unaffected by the drugs.

Hormones: Along with antibiotics, hormones are also being added to meat products which means you’re consuming them when you eat meat (or eggs or dairy). They’re used to force animals to grow larger or faster than what is natural, or to mature earlier. That makes livestock farming more profitable, even if it’s very unhealthy. When you eat meat or milk products, you’re consuming traces of these hormones which can lead to a disruption in your own body chemistry.

Vitamins, Fiber & Antioxidants: The health benefits of being vegan aren’t just from the things you’re avoiding, but also the increase in your intake of nutrients. The variety of fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds that are part of a vegan diet offer much more for your body than meat products do. By filling up your plate with healthier plant-based food, you’re going to be getting more nutrition overall. If you’re still worried about protein, check out the section on vegan proteins. It’s not a problem.