Flexible thinking

Not me! Image courtesy of Wellcome Images.

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?”
  -- John Maynard Keynes

I guess it can seem pretty strange to others when someone you've known for years, sometimes decades, as an omnivore - eating a typical Western diet - goes vegan. For me, it's because the facts have changed, or at least my appreciation of them.

We're all aware that fruit and veges are supposed to be good for us, and that we shouldn't eat "too much junk." However, reading books like The China Study, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease and Eat to Live made me realise that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that unrefined plant food consumption protects against the most common chronic diseases that afflict wealthy countries like Australia, while animal products cause and promote these diseases, even at levels well below what is typical in a Western diet. I also read The Pleasure Trap, which has an interesting outlook on why it's hard to escape from the foods and substances that are bad for us, and also shows why most people on a typical Western diet put on weight inexorably over time, while those on a whole-foods, plant-based diet eat as much as they like and never get overweight.

With these "new" facts in mind, I was convinced that a diet much lower in animal products would lead to better health now and a longer healthspan - ie. length of healthy disease-free life. But, I was also now more open-minded about re-evaluating other issues with animal food products. Books like Food Revolution and Eating Animals, docos like Earthlings and Meat the Truth, and websites like Unleashed and Voiceless opened my eyes to the cruelty of modern factory farming and the environmental issues involved in meat, dairy and egg production. Whether you agree with every detail in these sources, you have to admit that eating less meat, eggs and dairy is only going to lead to less animal suffering and environmental problems, not more. For me, it was enough to make me want to go vegan, rather than near-vegan.

So, when the facts changed, I changed my mind. What would you do?

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

  -- John Maynard Keynes