Making Dietary Changes: What Motivates You?

By now, many peoples’ New Year resolve has gone by the wayside. (Don’t you wish the snow would do the same?)Changing dietary habits can only happen one meal at a time so there is always an opportunity for change several times a day. So, what could help motivate you to change to a plant-based diet? Here are some facts and issues that might help spur you on:

Improved overall health: Lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, reduced risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, obesity, osteoporosis, improved BM---these are just some of the health benefits of eating plant-based. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine www.pcrm.org offers links to studies by credible research scientists and institutions that support these health benefits. Reports of these remunerations have (incredulously) made it into mainstream media. Apparently now it is cool to eat vegan and plant-based recipe books abound. My favorites are anything written by Isa Chandra Moskowitz like “Vegan with a Vengeance” and “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World”. You can eat, drink and be merry all the while eating a healthy and delicious plant-based cuisine.

The Animals: Horrors of factory farms and slaughterhouses, how eating dairy perpetuates the veal industry, how eating eggs perpetuates the killing of millions of male baby chicks, how animals are skinned and scalded alive and other gruesome realities food companies want to hide from the public. If visual reinforcement of these facts will help motivate you to stop eating animals and their by-products, watch this video: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/animal-rights/videos/7264734/title/farm-animal-abuse-video


If interacting with living animals who were destined for your dinner plate would help motivate you, then visit and support various local NJ sanctuaries that take have taken in these precious and personable animals. To meet your “meat”:

In South Jersey: http://www.thecowsanctuary.org/index.html

In North Jersey: http://fortheanimalssanctuary.org/

“Down the Shore”: http://www.ahscares.org/page2.asp?page=farmanimals&style=2

The Environment: 51% of all global warming gases are directly attributed to animal agriculture. Reduce animal agriculture, reduce and slow global-warming = save the Planet. If you are an environmentalist but haven’t switched to an earth-friendly diet of plant-based foods, then consider reading these reports to help motivate you:
http://www.aplnj.org/assets/pdf/WorldWatchLivestockClimateChange.pdf
http://www.aplnj.org/assets/pdf/HSUSAnimalAgricultureGlobalWarming.pdf
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

Lastly, here are several Life Lessons I have learned from my sweet ducks:

1. Bathe frequently, preferably with friends

2. If you are upset about something, vent immediately then GET OVER IT.