Go Vegan: Try Veganuary This Coming January & Help Environment!

Veganuary is an annual global campaign to promote and educate people about veganism by supporting people to follow a vegan lifestyle for a month in January.

Veganuary is a blend of two words, “Vegan” + “January.” This made it very convenient to also promote it as a new year’s pledge to give up meat, eggs and dairy, and any product consisting of animal ingredients for the entire month of January.

Veganuary is a crowdfunded campaign founded by a British vegan couple, Jane and Mattew, in January 2014 in the UK and run by a UK nonprofit organization. As per the founders, this movement was inspired by Movember (a campaign involving growing beards/mustaches during November to raise awareness about men’s health issues).

Check out this video to find out how to pronounce Veganuary!

Since 2014, Veganuary has undoubtedly come a long way. As of 2022, more than a million people from 228 countries have signed up for the campaign.

Following the sign-ups, there has been significant growth of vegans around the world:

• In Great Britain, the number of vegans quadrupled between 2014 to 2016, with 150,000 in 2014 (0.25% of the total population) to 600,000 in 2019 (1.16% of the total population).
• In 2020, UK’s vegan population was estimated to be 1,545,899, about 3% of the total population.
• In 2020, 5% of the USA’s population was vegan.
• In 2020, 4% of the European population was vegan.

• In 2020, 13% of the Asian population across the region was vegan.
• In 2020, 44% of the total population was vegetarian, whereas 1% of the Indian population was vegan.
• In 2022, 1% of the Australian population was vegan.
• The most recent UN estimated the world population in 2020 is 7.8 billion, and as of September 2020, the world’s population of vegans is approx. 78 million.

The future of Veganism looks good!

There are plenty of good reasons to try this fantastic campaign. But a few of them are my personal favorites and they are as follows:

As per the World Health Organisation report 2015, processed meat has been ranked as some of cigarettes, alcohol, and asbestos all causing carcinogens meaning cancer. To quote, “Eating just 50g per day (two rashers of bacon) increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%”.

The meat-based diet causes high blood pressure, heart diseases, and strokes which are less common among vegans. Vegan diets help lower blood pressure, cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

A heavy meat diet leads to overweight and fat gain, whereas a vegan diet has been shown to help reduce weight without restricting calories.

On average, Vegans are up to 20 pounds (9 kgs) lighter than meat eaters, and unlike yoyo diets, a vegan diet helps you keep the excess fat off you and give you this plenty of energy without making you feel tired.

Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, this reason alone stands as the foremost important. We all must have felt the importance of fresh air, the urgency of climate change, and freedom of movement. I collected some facts to prove why a vegan diet is a need at this hour.

“Globally, Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transportation systems combined,” says PETA.

2018 Greenpeace report found that if we leave “global meat and dairy production” unchecked and don’t cut it by half by 2050, then the estimated 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions will come from meat and dairy, and they alone will project a threat to world’s climate change.

Animal farming provides just 18% of calories. Still, it takes up 83% of our farmland (meaning we can’t use that to grow food but to read animals for meat production), mentioned by a 2018 Oxford University study.

You will be surprised to know that cows around the world drink nine times as much water and seven times as much food as all humans, and if you are interested in maths, it’s about 45 billion gallons of water, and 135 billion pounds of food cows around the world eat EACH DAY!!

Why does giving excessive farmland and food to animal rearing problematic 82% of starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals for meat and then eaten by Western governments.

The best and only way to celebrate Veganuary month is to try Veganism, and if you like it and think you got it, then go vegan. As mentioned earlier, this lifestyle change requires a bit of planning, and if you are seriously looking to go vegan, then please refer to the guidelines which the talented team of Veganuary has put together.

Their website has a tremendous amount of resources to help vegan newbies kick-start their journey into Veganism.