How to start your plant-based journey

At Better Life for Animals we want to help you understand and uncover common myths about plant-based diets. While to some they may seem obscure, strange or even unappetizing, they’re not! That’s why today –and for our first blog post ever– we are going to guide you through some common diets that aim to reduce animal byproduct consumption, and how YOU can help make the world a better, safer and kinder place for everyone. 

First, let’s explain the most common plant diets:

🌱Vegan: 100% plant-based diet. It excludes any animal byproduct, such as meat, milk or honey. Most vegans also choose not to use leather, wool or other animal-produced materials. 

🥦Vegetarian: this diet excludes any type of meat or fish, but allows eggs and dairy products such as butter or yoghurt. 

🐟Pescatarian: avoids meat, but allows eggs, fish and dairy. 

⭐️Flexitarian: mainly vegetarian, but occasionally will consume meat or fish, usually when eating out. 

Of course, there are many other variations and each person decides what products to consume or when to consume them. Perhaps most days you follow a vegan diet but you eat the occasional brie or gouda. Or you aren’t strictly vegetarian because you consume fish due to medical reasons. This is all fine and normal, and in the end we all do what we can – every little counts!  

Now, why do we encourage people to follow a plant-based diet? 

1. 1. Help the animals: our animal friends such as chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, fish and goats (and many more) are kept in industrial farms under horrendous conditions so us humans can enjoy meat, butter or milk. Just in the US, 55 billion animals are killed each year to fill our supermarket shelves. This enormous suffering is unnecessary considering we have so many plant-based options to substitute meat, dairy and eggs. 
       
   2. Help the planet: not only does animal farming cause animals to suffer deeply, it’s also responsible for 15% of GLOBAL greenhouse gas emotions, a key contributor to climate change. Industrial animal farming causes more damage to our planet than global transportation emissions combined.
      
      
   3. Help yourself: plant-based diets can be very beneficial for us, and are proven to lower cholesterol levels, lower the probability of heart diseases and even lengthen our life-spans. Of course, plant-based diets must be balanced and nutritious for us to obtain the benefits – eating processed vegan food isn’t going to cut it!
      
      
   4. It’s delicious: we don’t have to miss out on burgers, hot dogs or pizza since there are plenty of brands who create veggie substitutes! And we can still enjoy a tasty healthy fruit smoothie or a fulfilling coconut curry without having to add meat or dairy.
      
      

All in all, we hope this post was a friendly introduction to plant-based eating. Here at betterlifeforanimals.com we aim to guide you through this journey and offer as much information and resources as we can so you can make your own decisions and take care of yourself and the planet. 

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