Before I went #vegan I was a massive meat eater.

I loved steak, chicken wings, lamb kebab.

I ate meat practically every day of my life for over 30 years.

I didn't know any vegans.

I have always been a foodie. I began to research the food industry. I was concerned about "Frankenstein food".

I started to read the science.

It turns out you don't NEED meat or dairy - the opposite of what I'd been taught. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet

I discovered that meat and dairy are almost always UNHEALTHY.

This is exacerbated by industrial farming where additives, pesticides, antibiotics and horrendous treatment of animals is not (as I had assumed) declining, but rapidly worsening.

I had assumed that food in the west was getting safer, healthier and more humane.

Not so.

The cost of producing food - in terms of human dignity, animal welfare and environmental sustainability is immense. It's getting worse every day.

The holier-than-thou attitude towards poor countries where animals are badly treated is understandable but short sighted. The richest countries eat the most meat and dairy. The conditions in which that "food" is produced is worse than any wet market.

When I began watching the footage of how my food went from sentient life to tasty morsel I was horrified.

I obviously knew animals were slaughtered. But now that I understood the futility of it - that we are killing ourselves and our planet for this - it suddenly was much worse

Meat tastes good. Milk is refreshing. Cheese is delicious.

But none of this is so appetizing as to merit killing billions, destroying our planet and giving ourselves heart disease.

It's not sentiment. It's science. We don't NEED it. We really need to end it.

Go #Vegan