This site is about how good nutrition and health contribute to good skin, and health fits in so snugly with the humane treatment of animals. Who doesn’t like animals, right? I think most people would say they like animals, but others say they’re a “dog” person but they hate cats or they like swans but turkeys are so ugly. Okay that’s not evil and people are different. I can’t pass an animal on the street in need but I’m not perfect. I’ve been vegetarian for decades but I’m not vegan. You don’t have to love animals to be a good person but unfortunately, way beyond that are people who treat other creatures as if they were inanimate units. Factory Farms crowd them into cages and confine them in boxes with no regard for the fear they must feel as they head to the slaughterhouse.
I’m probably preaching to the crowd but our fellow beings feel pain and experience fear and they suffer just like we do. They don’t have to THINK in the same ways in which a human being thinks in order to be AWARE and to FEEL. There are those who use that rationale for not caring about cows being fed their own dead carcasses and standing in their own waste.
What’s wrong with fattening them up for slaughter with corn and then shooting them full of antibiotics? What’s wrong with injecting them with growth hormone (rbST/rBGH) to the point where their (dairy cows’) udders are infected and again antibiotics are needed? Animals are stupid, they say. They don’t know what’s happening. Anyone who’s been close to an animal knows that is so wrong. They have their own personalities and idiosyncrasies and preferences and they respond to love and affection. Unless made neurotic by humans, they live fully in the present moment. They don’t obsess about the past and future as do humans. They are like we are when we are thrown into the present moment or actively seek it out in ways like yoga or meditation.
Not only is the cruel treatment of animals bad for them, but the implications for human health are harrowing too. Bovine growth hormone has been banned in Europe and Canada for good reason. As stated above, cows injected with this hormone are more likely to develop infections. The antibiotics used to treat them show up in the milk. This is why antibiotic-resistant bacteria is becoming such a problem. In addition this hormone raises insulin-like growth factor, which is linked to elevated rates of colon and breast cancers.
You can go to cancer.org to read more on the relationship between health and rBGH. People ingest the antibiotics, the hormones, the pesticide residues and I believe people ingest the suffering of the animal at the same time. This holds true for all factory-farmed animals.
My story to becoming vegetarian (not vegan at this time) began as a teenager because of my love for animals. 
It was when I lived in France from age 17-20 roughly that I became more aware of the suffering of other creatures we use for food. The French ate (and some still eat) horses. Poland and China are amongst the many countries whose citizens still eat horses. The French are known for their duck pate created by force-feeding ducks to enlarge their livers. Foie gras is still considered a delicacy in some of the best restaurants around the world, including the United States. I’d always thought of eating cows and pigs as just the way we do things, but it jolted me when I saw that other countries’ – including in Asia – ways of doing things included eating animals whom I’d considered out of the realm of food.
I cut out meat at a time when it was seen as odd and there was very little information about how to eat without meat. The fact that I never much enjoyed steak or hamburgers or roast beef even as a kid, helped me to make the change. It used to “gross me out” whenever I’d have a hamburger and stumble upon something as hard as a piece of rubber in my mouth. My mom used to call it gristle – hardened fat – Ick!
That was enough for me to think about what I was eating; then I contracted food poisoning from a burger at a fast-food place in Paris and that was the last time I ate meat. I was so sick I couldn’t even take down water without dry-heaving for days. It was awful being so far from home and being so sick but I was lucky to have a great boyfriend who took precious care of me (even though my father said later that I should’ve been in the hospital. What did I know? I was only 18.)
Don’t get me wrong. I have great memories of backyard barbeques with my family and the smell of meatballs cooking in tomato sauce, and still today I can’t say I dislike those smells. I admit that if bacon weren’t meat I’d gladly enjoy it because the taste is delicious. My mother used to make a snack of toast topped with bacon and that will always evoke my childhood.
I’ve never turned back though and for decades now I haven’t eaten any birds or mammals. That’s been my line in the sand: no birds, no mammals. I am not a vegan, even today, but I’m getting closer. I still occasionally eat eggs but only from pasture-raised chickens; dairy is rare but still on occasion and even rarer is shellfish. I know this is not showing the complete dedication of a vegan but I do believe nonetheless that I’ve made a contribution with decades of committing to a vegetarian diet.
Aside from my own story and love for animals is the growing awareness of the toll that meat-eating takes not only on human health but on the health of the planet. Cattle use a lot of water and to create one pound of beef takes 1,900 US gallons of water. The Amazonian rainforest is being clear-cut of its valuable carbon-dioxide-trapping foliage in order to provide land for beef production to supply the world’s population with big macs. Cows also release methane and methane is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Global warming is leading to increasingly fierce hurricanes and flooding due to rising sea levels, to destructive wildfires at an all-time high, and to the extinction of animal species as they try but often fail to adapt to warmer living conditions.
I am optimistic about the future of the humane movement so I want to applaud the ways in which things are changing and the ways in which we are caring for our own health as we protect animals at the same time. More and more people are quitting meat and becoming vegetarian or vegan. High-profile people are coming out! Bill Clinton went vegan to save his life (I’ll take it.) Performing artists seem to have inherent empathy and so tend to gravitate to being vegetarians. Joaquin Phoenix, Alicia Silverstone, Woody Harrelson, Olivia Wilde, Casey Affleck, Michelle Pfeiffer, Beyonce, Ariana Grande, and too many others to name are now vegan or vegetarian. Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, Congressman Corey Booker, is also a vegan. We are no longer on the fringes!
I will take any excuse for people to eat less meat. I believe it’s a process and everyone who goes this direction has his or her own reasons. I’m not in favor of vegans who say it’s all or nothing, because I don’t think that helps the cause. Civil rights for people of color, women, and the LGBTQ communities didn’t happen overnight and is still a work in progress. I believe in human evolution and if humans don’t evolve to be more compassionate beings we will eventually perish as egos finally create the war to end all wars, or we simply make the planet uninhabitable.
When I hear people say, “It will never happen. The world will always want its meat,” I point to all of the changes I already see like the ways in which business is meeting the demands of consumers who want more vegetarian food choices. For the first time ever there was a question during one of the Democratic debates about becoming vegan to protect the planet. I loved that! Evolution takes a long, long time – millennia. I think we are seeing a growth spurt right now, as each generation builds on the last and the compassion we develop for each other is extending to compassion for the other animals with whom we share the planet.
Now let’s have fun and eat well and stay healthy and beautiful!
Maria
