For many becoming vegan is often a journey. In its initial steps, it could be seen as a spectrum. We see this in marketing at the moment with the supermarkets aware that the term Vegan can put people off, most are using the term Plant-based instead.
It can be very intimidating for those just starting on this journey. For some, the journey can be an overnight awakening from meat-eater to vegan but for most people, the journey can take a long time, sometimes years.
So I’m going to suggest 3 must-read helpful books for those who would like to give veganism ago but feel they don’t yet understand the issues enough and to help speed up your journey.
The steps to becoming vegan:
The asleep meat eater
Followed by flexitarian
Then pescetarian
Onto vegetarian
And eventually finally vegan.
Wake up! For the asleep meat-eater read this book first:
Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows by Melanie Joy
I love this book, Melanie a social psychologist gives a peek behind the curtain with her invention of the term carnism which is the dominant, yet invisible paradigm in modern culture supporting the choice to consume meat.
First, carnism denies there is a problem with eating animals; second, it justifies eating meat as normal, natural, and necessary; third, to prevent cognitive dissonance, carnism alters the perception of the animals as living individuals into food objects, abstractions, and categories. People who hold to these beliefs may also be called carnists. Through this denial, justification, and perceptual distortion, Joy argues, carnism influences people to violate their core values.
In a nutshell, wake up! You are eating a dead animal. Once you see this, it’s hard to unsee.
For the flexitarian /pescetarian/ vegetarians thinking about their own health
How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease. by Michael Greger,Gene Stone
This is a Plant-based and not a Vegan read. From the physician behind the wildly popular website NutritionFacts.org, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death.
In a nutshell, wake up! This book makes a very strong case for,when you get into the actual science the secret of not dying early from disease may well be not eating animals and instead, eating whole food plant-based foods.
Almost vegan but need a nudge then read this book:
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
I really enjoyed this book. Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his life oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. Once he started a family, the moral dimensions of food became increasingly important.
Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them.
Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is a book that, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, places Jonathan Safran Foer "at the table with our greatest philosophers."
In a nutshell, wake up! Not a vegan book but it sets out many of the ethical arguments as to why you should consider becoming one and the problems and issues with the lack of transparency in the meat industry.
I have many other books to recommend on the subject of veganism which I will come back to.
Which books would you recommend, please let me know?